Barros, K.

López-Pujol, J.

Montes-Moreno, N.

Nualart, N.

Collectanea Botanica

English

Collectanea Botanica (E-Journal)

Collectanea Botanica 34: e010enero-diciembre 2015ISSN-L: 0010-0730On-line visibility of the Botanic Institute of BarcelonaN. NUALART, K. BARROS, J. LÓPEZ-PUJOL & N. MONTES-MORENOBotanic Institute of Barcelona (IBB-CSIC-ICUB), pg. del Migdia, s/n, Parc de Montjuïc, ES-08038 Barcelona, SpainAuthor for correspondence: N. Nualart (nnualart@ibb.csic.es)Increasing access to scientific results and knowl-edge transfer are considered today as important as scientific activity itself, and active policies are nec-essary for their improvement. Science communica-tion has usually two dimensions: (1) with scientific colleagues through scientific papers or congresses and (2) with non-science community like practi-tioners, agencies, or general public through spe-cifically-designed outreach tools. This second sort of audience is of paramount importance in public-ly funded institutes and research centers, because people should know the results of the research and understand the need to continue financing it. As a part of this strategy, the visibility of the Bo-tanic Institute of Barcelona (IBB) on the Internet has been significantly increased since the last year. With this aim, a new dynamic website, a YouTube channel and a Facebook page (in order to be present in social networks) were created. Due to the IBB is a small re-search center, setting up a communication department is not feasible; thus, a working team of staff has been created to manage all these tools. In the developing of all the outreach contents, the staff members of the center, both researchers and technicians, are involved. The new websiTeIn today’s Information Age it is very important to be present on the Internet with an updated and dynamic website that makes available all the information of the institution to a wide number of people at any time. Our new website (http://www.ibb.bcn-csic.es/) is sim-ple, well organized and easy to navigate with the goal that people can find what they want quickly (Fig. 1). It is available in Catalan (a co-official language in most of eastern Spain), Spanish and English, and includes a descriptive section (top tabs) and a dynamic section encompassing news and events. This new website has received 5788 visits, and 25,734 pages were consult-ed since its publication in February 20151. The events and activities in which the center staff is involved are included in the left frame of the home-page, accompanied by a calendar. Conferences, work-shops, courses and other botanical outreach activities are published continuously (available only in Catalan and Spanish). The top of this frame also includes a button to access to the available open job positions (as a researcher or technician) as well as possible collab-orations. At the bottom of this frame there is a list of interesting links such as the research groups EtnoBi-oFic (Plant Biosystematics and Molecular Phylogeny and Cytogenetics/Ethnobotany in Catalan Countries) and BioC (Conservation Biology of Plants) in which some of the IBB researchers participate. The descriptive section includes a first tab “The Institute”, where the user can find a brief description of the center, its history, staff, location, contact data, and access to annual reports. The second tab “Re-search” includes the two main research lines of the noticias y novedades del institut botànic de barcelona1 Data from October 27, 2015.Collectanea Botanica vol. 34 (enero-diciembre 2015), e010, ISSN-L: 0010-0730, http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/collectbot.2015.v34.0102 N. NUALART, K. BARROS, J. LÓPEZ-PUJOL & N. MONTES-MORENOcenter: (1) Biodiversity and Plant Evolution, and (2) History of Botany and Analysis of Collections. Each research line has different sections including a short description, main objectives, staff, publications, re-search projects, and research training. The third tab “Documentation” includes different sections about the library, the archive, the BC Herbarium and the Salvador Cabinet (a natural history collection from the 16th to 19th centuries, one of the oldest in Eu-rope). Each section encompasses a brief description of the funding as well as how to consult or visit it. The fourth tab “Training” is currently under construction and will be available in 2016; once available, it will include all the teaching and training activities carried out by the IBB researchers or technicians. The fifth tab “Publications” comprises all the books, journals, monographs, or databases published by the IBB. In this tab there is also a link to Digital.CSIC (the CSIC’s document repository; see also below), where the user can access to recent or older publications of the IBB staff. Finally, the tab “Exhibitions” includes information about the current exhibition displayed in the IBB as well as a list of previous exhibitions. ibb ouTreach newsTo achieve a good scientific communication, an institution needs to disseminate its research and activities on the Internet. Many research institu-tions have a section in their websites to publish outreach notes, or even a scientific blog. In the case of the IBB, a news section has been created on the website homepage (Fig. 1), where scien-tists and technicians can publish different kind of small texts (see below). These texts are also avail-able in Digital.CSIC, the institutional repository that organizes, preserves, and provides open ac-cess to CSIC (Spanish National Research Coun-cil) research outputs.This news section is updated biweekly and in-cludes pieces on mainly three subjects: (1) research, (2) documentation, and (3) activities (available only in Catalan and Spanish). The research news covers the main findings/results of the IBB researchers, but also includes the release of IBB-sponsored sci-entific publications and the activity of the IBB re-searchers (such as the publication of a new volume of Collectanea Botanica, a thesis defense, or the attendance of a scientific meeting). Regarding the documentation news, texts are related to the library, the archive, the BC Herbarium, and the Salvador Cabinet. Finally, the last subject includes news about the different activities carried out by the IBB staff or where the IBB staff participate (e.g. a sci-ence tour). Since its creation, up to 29 pieces of news have been published1. The six texts with more reach are:• Ambrosio, U. “Alimentary plants and multicul-turalism at Fondo district” (Plantes alimentàries i multiculturalitat al barri del fondo), March 7th, 2015 (research): description and results of the re-search project “Food plants and multiculturalism in Fondo district: transcultural processes and ur-ban ethnobotany in Santa Coloma de Gramenet in 21st century”. • Barros, K. “Digitization tasks begin” (Inici de tasques de digitalització), April 16th, 2015 (doc-umentation): presentation of the two projects for digitizing archive collections, funded by the Bar-celona Open Challenge.• López-Pujol, J. “An IBB delegation visits the In-stitute of Botany of Beijing, China” (Una deleg-ació de l’IBB visita l’Institut de Botànica de Pe-quín, Xina), June 15th, 2015 (research): report of the visit of three IBB researchers at the Institute Figure 1. Homepage of the new website (http://www.ibb.bcn-csic.es/) with the top tabs, the left frame with events and activities, the calendar and the list of inter-esting links and the central frame with the news section.Collectanea Botanica vol. 34 (enero-diciembre 2015), e010, ISSN-L: 0010-0730, http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/collectbot.2015.v34.0103On-line visibility of the Botanic Institute of Barcelonaof Botany of Beijing to achieve some scientific collaboration between the two institutes.• Montes-Moreno, N. “Education Fair” (Saló de l’Ensenyament), March 27th, 2015 (activities): report of the Education Fair where the IBB has collaborated in the CSIC stand.  • Nualart, N. & Montes-Moreno, N. “Collection campaign AHIM 2015” (Campanya de recol·lec-ció AHIM 2015), July 10th, 2015 (activities): de-scription of the collection fieldtrip organized by the Association of Ibero-Macaronesian Herbaria (AHIM) in Burgos.• Nualart, N., Montes-Moreno, N., Garnatje, T., Pyke, S. & Ibáñez, N. “BioBlitzBCN 2015, first results” (Primers resultats del BioBlitzBCN 2015, May 22th, 2015 (activities): presentation of the first results of this event, in which volunteer scientists and citizens work together to find and identify as many species of organisms as possible within an urban environment.YouTube channelScientific broadcasting is becoming increasingly popular in recent years and the video platform You-tube allows reaching wide audiences. Accordingly, in May 2014 an own channel on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdqw5n8hifq35b-cd8yxyM8Q) was created following this objective (Fig. 2). The first videos of the channel were the lec-tures given in the IBB within the events organ-ized by several institutions to honor the ecologist Ramon Margalef in the 10th anniversary of his death. Since then, other videos have been added, mainly the records of the scientific seminars held each month at the IBB, as well as other videos about the center activity. In order to organize the contents of the channel, four playlists were cre-ated:• Tribute to Ramon Margalef: this playlist groups together the videos of the three lectures held in the IBB to honor this distinguished Catalan ecol-ogist. • Research seminars: it includes the videos of the scientific seminars about botany and biodiversity topics held each month at the IBB. Some semi-nars are not available because they are subject to embargo periods or because the lecturer preferred not to be recorded.• The Institute: it contains informational videos dealing with the activity held in the IBB. • Salvador Cabinet: this playlist contains videos about this important naturalistic collection men-tioned above and kept by the IBB. Facebook pageSocial media platforms like Facebook or Twitter allows a new form of communication consisting of the interaction between a scientific institution (or its scientists) and their followers. The IBB Face-book page (http://www.facebook.com/InstitutBo-tanicBarcelona) allows on one hand disclosing those events in which the center participates and spreading the news published on the website (Fig. 3). On the other hand, the page also allows publi-cizing research papers, projects and botanical ac-tivities carried out in the center and interacting with other plant research centers. This page was created in April 2014 and at present has already exceeded 400 followers from 10 different countries (being Spain the most representative, although Brazil and Portugal are also important regarding the number of followers).The number of posts published until now is 403, and 11 of these have reached more than 700 people1. The four posts with more outreach are:Figure 2. YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdqw5n8hifq35bcd8yxyM8Q) with the vi-deos uploaded and the playlists created.Collectanea Botanica vol. 34 (enero-diciembre 2015), e010, ISSN-L: 0010-0730, http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/collectbot.2015.v34.0104 N. NUALART, K. BARROS, J. LÓPEZ-PUJOL & N. MONTES-MORENO• Information on the events of the memorial tribute to Dr. Ramon Margalef in the University of Bar-celona website. April 25th, 2014.• Notice of the declaration as a National Heritage of Cultural Interest (BCIN) of the Salvador Col-lection. January 30th, 2015.• Link to the “El Periódico” news on the Salvado-rian Wikipedia Marathon, an event with the goal to improve the articles related to the Salvador lineage. June 15th, 2015.• Information of available open job positions with-in the program “Youth Guarantee”of the Euro-pean Comission to work in the laboratory (as a researcher or as a technician), the herbarium, and the library. September 9th, 2015. Figure 3. Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/InstitutBotanicBarcelona).   

On-line visibility of the Botanic Institute of Barcelona

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Collectanea Botanica (E-Journal)