Full-time researcher, Peter Matthews, from NZ, is working in Japan, at a museum with many international research visitors. This multilingual environment made him very aware of:
(1) the difficulties that non-English based researchers face when using English, and
(2) the difficulties that English mono-linguals face when trying to access or publish research in other important research languages, such as Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, and so on.
Hence his website: The Research Cooperative.
This is an NPO site and represents a growing community of researchers, editors, translators, illustrators, publishers, and others.
The aim is to promote better communication in the realm of research-based writing and publishing. The site is incidentally also a great place to meet other researchers who are enthusiastic about their chosen fields, and have a strong interest in getting research published.
The first rudimentary version of the site acquired 500+ members over a period of six years. It now enjoys a more sophisticated system, and is approaching 200 new members within less than a year (objectively speaking, he says they probably need a 1000 members to become truly impressive, but even with the present number, the diversity of their members is very interesting – with more than 23 countries represented).
Please take a look, join in, and please tell any friends and colleagues about this site if you think they might find it useful.
This submission was posted on behalf of Dr Matthews by sciencebase
Our new site, mentioned by David Bradley above, now has more than 800 member (July 2009). Only a few people are using our forums; most people are relying on the member profile pages to convey and discover information.
There may be a general reluctance to engage interactively on social networks. This probably reflects the extreme competition that every website faces for the attention of visitors. We are constantly looking for new ways to make the site more useful and engaging for members, while staying focused on our core mission:
‘to support academic, scientific, and popular research communication in all subjects, languages, and media’
Cheers, Peter (Chief Administrator, The Research Cooperative)