ALPHAGALILEO: A PORTAL TO EURO SCIENCE

by Laura Miles

Every organization is online these days. To avoid information overload by subscribing to several Web sites, how do journalists filter out press information to get what they want?

In Europe, the answer is AlphaGalileo, the online press center for the latest in European research. Registered press officers post releases, diary items, and new book announcements to the site using a secure log-in procedure. AlphaGalileo ensures that every item submitted is checked by a duty editor before it goes live on the site.

Journalists use the site in two main ways: By logging in to www.alphagalileo.org and browsing the content and/or by subscribing to e-mail alerts of news posted to the site. Alerts can be customized by keyword (e.g., physics), by language (e.g., only English), by type (e.g., releases), and by frequency. Registered journalists are the only users who can see embargoed content and access a database of experts for the media.

AlphaGalileo covers science, medicine, health, arts, humanities, and social research carried out by European academics. It also carries news from journals based in Europe, including the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, and BioMed Central, which concerns research by international authors.

AlphaGalileo was created to showcase European research but has users based all over the world. At last count, 4,000 registered journalists from 80 countries use the site, and 400 organizations from 48 countries contribute to it on a regular basis. Some of these organizations are located outside Europe but provide news which is explicitly linked to the European knowledge-base, including the Journal of the American Medical Association.

AlphaGalileo was established in the mid-1990s by the UK’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). It purpose was to function as a portal for disseminating European research news. In 1998, AlphaGalileo moved under the wing of the British Association with the support of the other UK research councils and the Wellcome Trust. Today, the AlphaGalileo project is independently managed as a not-for-profit company under the auspice of the AlphaGalileo Foundation.

The foundation is managed by its members, senior research, and communications specialists, including PPARC’s Ian Halliday and Clive Cookson of the Financial Times, and by a board of directors with expertise in public relations, science journalism, financial management, and marketing. The service is staffed by a small team that has experience of public relations, knowledge transfer, research policy, and journalism. In addition the Foundation is advised by a supervisory council with representatives from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, together with Europe’s leading research and science journalism bodies.

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Laura Miles is operations director of AlphaGalileo. She can be reached at laura.miles@alphagalileo.org.