Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing.

In today’s post, we’re highlighting Germana Barata, a science communication scholar and practitioner with interests in social media, altmetrics, and science journals. A researcher at Labjor-Unicamp in Brazil, Germana is a former visiting scholar at the ScholCommLab and continues to collaborate with us to this day. 

In this post, she tells us more about her work on mapping Canadian science communicators, her research into academic metrics, and the importance of collaboration and partnership—during the pandemic and beyond. 

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Q#1 What are you working on at the lab? 

I am involved in the Metrics Literacies project, a great initiative coordinated by Stefanie Haustein to improve academics’ knowledge of indicators and metrics that have been extensively used yet not so well understood. I’d love to contribute more. So far I have worked on building the profile of one the personas we are using to guide our research: Paulo Barbosa, a PhD Brazilian student whose name is a tribute to Paulo Artaxo (Brazilian top cited climate change scientist) and Márcia Barbosa (a physicist who fights for increasing women’s presence at STEM).

Q#2 Tell us about a recent paper, presentation, or project you’re proud of. 

Although my work as a visiting scholar at the ScholCommLab formally ended in 2018 we are still publishing some results from the research conducted during my stay. The project, Mapping the new landscape of Science Communication in Canada, was a great chance to use altmetrics methods to track science communicators geolocated in Canada. So far, we have identified 417 science communicators on Twitter and Instagram in the country. The majority are female, from either Ontario or British Columbia. Many of them are communicating science as a personal effort, frequently with no financial support. I was surprised to find out so many awesome and creative initiatives! The map we created through this project provides a great chance to give visibility to the actions of these communicators, strengthen collaboration among them, and call attention to the need to invest in science communication in times when misinformation is dangerously widespread. 

Throughout this project, I worked with Michelle Riedlinger, Alexandre Schiele, and Juan Pablo Alperin, with the collaboration of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada (SWCC) and Association des communicateurs scientifiques du Québec (AQC) and the support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This project can only be sustainable with collaboration from all.

Q#3 What’s the best (or worst) piece of advice you’ve ever received? 

A great piece of advice is a quote from John Lennon: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality” (a bit tacky, I know, but it’s true). This applies to both personal and professional life. Partnership has been my favourite keyword for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has shown even more strongly that we live in a collective world and that our actions affect all of us.

Partnership has been my favourite keyword for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has shown even more strongly that we live in a collective world and that our actions affect all of us.

Follow Germana on Twitter at @germanabarata.