Alice Fleerackers (she/her) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Scholarly Communications Lab, Simon Fraser University (SFU). She is the Vice President of the Public Communication of Science and Technology Network (PCST), the co-founder and co-chair of PCST’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Committee, and a co-founder of the International Communication Association Journalism Studies Division’s Mentorship Program. Her research explores the intersections of health and science communication, journalism, digital media, equity, and open science and is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship. 

Alice has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (with a focus on science journalism) and a Master’s in Publishing from SFU. She has over 10 years of experience as a freelance science writer and editor, with bylines in the Globe and Mail, National Post, and Nautilus, among other outlets. Find her on Twitter/X at @FleerackersA.

Alice is grateful to live and work in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Select Publications

Céspedes, L., Fleerackers, A., & Maggio, L. A. (2024). “Giving them the best information I could with whatever I had at hand”. Physicians’ online health communication practices in a post-normal science context. Journal of Science Communication, 23(6), A04. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.23060204
Benson Marshall, M., Pinfield, S., Abbott, P., Cox, A., Alperin, J. P., Barata, G. F., Chtena, N., Dorsch, I., Fleerackers, A., Oliveira, M., & Peters, I. (2024). The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: a qualitative analysis of published materials from the period of the pandemic. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03804-w
Alperin, J. P., Shores, K., Fleerackers, A., & Chtena, N. (2024). Stark Decline in Journalists’ Use of Preprints Post-pandemic. https://doi.org/10.1177/10755470241285405
Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., Alperin, J. P., Riedlinger, M., & Maggio, L. A. (2024). From impact metrics and open science to communicating research: Journalists’ awareness of academic controversies. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.03.609638
Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., Alperin, J. P., Riedlinger, M., & Maggio, L. A. (2024). From impact metrics and open science to communicating research: Journalists’ awareness of academic controversies. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.03.609638
Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., & Alperin, J. P. (2024). “I’d like to think I’d be able to spot one if I saw one”: How science journalists navigate predatory journals. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.24.604934
Marshall, M. B., Pinfield, S., Abbott, P., Cox, A., Alperin, J. P., Barata, G., Chtena, N., Dorsch, I., Fleerackers, A., Oliveira, M., & Peters, I. (2024). The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: An analysis of expert opinion. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xy874
Fleerackers, A., Shores, K., Chtena, N., & Alperin, J. P. (2024). Unreviewed science in the news: The evolution of preprint media coverage from 2014-2021. Quantitative Science Studies, 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00282
Fleerackers, A., Chtena, N., Pinfield, S., Alperin, J. P., Barata, G., Oliveira, M., & Peters, I. (2024). Making science public: a review of journalists’ use of Open Access research. F1000Research. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.133710.2
Maggio, L. A., Céspedes, L., Fleerackers, A., & Royan, R. (2024). ‘My doctor self and my human self’: A qualitative study of physicians’ presentation of self on social media. Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.15384
Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). Why do health professionals create content on social media? Uses and Gratifications of Egyptian “physician vloggers” on YouTube. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 12(2), 188–210. https://www.thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/1287
Chtena, N., Alperin, J. P., Morales, E., Fleerackers, A., Dorsch, I., Pinfield, S., & Simard, M.-A. (2023). The neglect of equity and inclusion in open science policies of Europe and the Americas. SciELO Preprints. https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.7366
Chtena, N., Alperin, J. P., Morales, E., Fleerackers, A., Dorsch, I., Pinfield, S., & Simard, M.-A. (2023). The neglect of equity and inclusion in open science policies of Europe and the Americas. SciELO Preprints. https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.7366
Maggio, L. A., Céspedes, L., Fleerackers, A., & Royan, R. (2023). “My doctor self and my human self”: A qualitative study of physicians’ presentation of self on social media. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.27.23296214
Moorhead, L. L., Fleerackers, A., & Maggio, L. (2023). “It’s my job”: a qualitative study of the mediatization of science within the scientist-journalist relationship. Journal of Science Communication, 22(4), A05. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.22040205
Fleerackers, A., Chtena, N., Oliveira, M., Dorsch, I., Pinfield, S., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). Open data journalism: A narrative synthesis of how, when, and why data journalists use open data sources. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/wh8jx
Alperin, J. P., Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., & Haustein, S. (2023). Second-order citations in altmetrics: a case study analyzing the audiences of COVID-19 research in the news and on social media. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.05.535734
Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). “Influencers” or “doctors”? Physicians’ presentation of self in Youtube and Facebook videos. International Journal of Communication, 17(0), 24. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/19700
Ratcliff, C. L., Fleerackers, A., Wicke, R., Harvill, B., King, A. J., & Jensen, J. D. (2023). Framing COVID-19 preprint research as uncertain: a mixed-method study of public reactions. Health Communication, 0(0), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2164954
Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. (2022). Academic explanatory journalism and emerging COVID-19 science: how social media accounts amplify The Conversation’s preprint coverage. Media International Australia, 1329878X221145022. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X221145022
Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., Maggio, L. A., Fagan, K., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Science in motion: A qualitative analysis of journalists’ use and perception of preprints. PLOS ONE, 17(11), e0277769. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277769
Fleerackers, A., Nehring, L., Maggio, L. A., Enkhbayar, A., Moorhead, L., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data. Scientometrics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04510-7
Fleerackers, A. (2022). A focus on science communication at #ICA22. Journal of Science Communication, 21(6), R01. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21060601
Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Doctors on YouTube: Exploring the Uses and Gratifications of Health Vloggers. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/pb47w
Morales, E., Kalir, J. H., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Using social annotation to construct knowledge with others: A case study across undergraduate courses. F1000Research. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.109525.2
Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Moorhead, L., Ahmed, R., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Communicating scientific uncertainty in an age of COVID-19: an investigation into the use of preprints by digital media outlets. Health Communication, 1–13. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1864892
Maggio, L. A., & Fleerackers, A. (2022). Preprints in health professions education: raising awareness and shifting culture. Academic Medicine, 10.1097/ACM.0000000000005001. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000005001
Riedlinger, M., Fleerackers, A., Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Guenther, L., Joubert, M., & Osman, K. (2021). The conversation, ten years on: assessing the impact of a unique scholarly publishing initiative. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12130
Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Moorhead, L., Ahmed, R., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). Replication Data for: Communicating scientific uncertainty in an age of COVID-19. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WG9VDS
Kalir, J. H., Morales, E., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). “When I saw my peers annotating”: Student perceptions of social annotation for learning in multiple courses. Information and Learning Sciences, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-12-2019-0128
Matthias, L., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). Framing science: How opioid research is presented in online news media. Frontiers in Communication, 5(64). https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00064
Fleerackers, A., & Albrecht, C. (2019). You-niversity? Perceptions on the public effectiveness of university knowledge production. 13.