YOSCIWEB · Young people and the images of science on websites

To face the issue of the declining interest of young people for studying and working in science and more generally to reduce the doubt in the population regarding the link progress/science, the public authorities as well as large companies and professional associations have developed initiatives and tools. Scientific websites play an important role as it is a new media, well adopted by the young people, easy to use and environmentally friendly. Nevertheless there is a lack of tools and methodology to analyse the quality and the orientation of the websites and to adapt them to the different publics (students, pupils, disabled, others) and to the different images of science. Seven organisations of national reputation from France, Spain, United Kingdom, Estonia, Iceland, Netherlands and Bulgaria have decided to combine their efforts in solving the above two issues. As the consortium consists in a mix of operators of scientific websites and/or researchers analysing websites, it will provide larger geographical coverage and set of competences. Yosciweb will be divided in 3 work packages in addition to those of management (WP1) and dissemination (WP5). WP2 will focus on assessing the current situation in terms of: • What are the different approaches already used in those matters? • What kind of public is addressed by the existing websites and on what images of sciences are they built? • How to classify the different scientific websites? WP3 will consist in a deeper analysis of a selected sample of websites, taking into account common parameters. WP4 will consist in defining best practices, in making recommendations for developers and managers of scientific websites and in preparing future actions to render the network sustainable and to increase the impact of the project. Yosciweb will provide the European population with tools and methods able to increase the impact and the efficiency of the scientific communication towards the youth.