From the Editor; July 2010; Scientific American Magazine; by Mariette DiChristina; 1 Page(s)
As I type this letter, I am sitting in a hotel room in Barcelona, Spain, having just completed an important but little-known meeting: the twice-a-year gathering of editors and other members of Scientific American’s international editions. Reflecting the scientific enterprise itself, the producers of the 14 local-language editions are spread around the world. Although we are in frequent e-mail and phone contact throughout the year, we also meet in person in various cities, the better to learn from one another.
Around the long table were representatives from Brazil, China, Japan, Kuwait, Russia and essentially every European nation. Our collective readership is a diverse audience that numbers more than one million, but they all share a passion for science and technology. And we, as editors, share a common mission to comb the globe for the science that matters, the better to serve those readers. Members of the editions traded intelligence on best practices and also shared new ideas. One initiative, which I expect to be under way on www.ScientificAmerican.com by the time you read this, is to conduct global surveys about science topics, working together and also in partnership with the journal Nature (which is in the same Macmillan corporate family). I will report further in the coming months.
