A new approach to communication on the Web about radiation

This message describes a scientific communication scheme which will be an important part of the Virtual Radiation Museum (VRM). The VRM is under development at the University of Wisconsin Department of Medical Physics under my direction. Most of the VRM will be basic educational material about many aspects of radiation and radioactivity. The VRM can be much more useful than a physical museum. We plan to have a series of Radiation Discussion Rooms (RDR). I give my reasons for initiating such an activity below and describe its initial characteristics. I solicit your comments and your advice.

Science journals serve an important role in science communication but because of cost they must limit discussion. In general all published articles are refereed. This has good and bad aspects. The bad aspect is that refereeing keeps out odd ball material, some of which can be very important. These are often not published in scientific journals. Many important but controversial topics are not discussed in science journals. An example would be the need for a change in the procedures followed by ICRP and NCRP. Although letters to the editor are published, their value is greatly reduced by not having the original article readily available. It is rare that a letter discussing a previous letter is published. The RDR would not have these disadvantages.

Many discussions take place on List servers. They are wonderful for quick communication. Many contributions are done in haste and are poorly written and rarely give references. From my view point List Servers have too much "noise" which often buries the useful contributions. While list servers are often archived, it is not easy to find the material you are looking for since the "noise" is archived along with the useful contributions List servers and journals have a wide mix of topics under discussion at any one time.

Each RDR will be limited to one relatively narrow topic. It it starts to become too broad we will divide it into two or more rooms. All previous contributions at each RDR will be immediately available for review or reference. The RDR are half way between a List Server and a hard copy journal. Journals are arbitrary in what they will publish because of biased editors or referees. All contributions to the RDRs will be filtered to be sure they ae well written, well referenced and appear to make sense. Since contributions will not be refereed, some noise will be included but that also happens in journals. For example, Physics Today recently ran an article on the a new radiation quantity equal to the 24 hour dose from the K-40 and C-14 in the body. We have to tolerate some nonsense because we don't know in advance if a contribution is useful. If any contribution seems plausible and is well written, it will be posted. In other words, we are against refereeing the contributions but we are in favor of filtering them.

Anybody can visit the VRM and the RDRs. They can also contribute a commentary to support or contradict any material already posted in a given RDR. Most contributors are expected to be from radiation scientists. The rooms will be open to the general public. They will not usually post commentaries but may contribute questions to be answered by the experts. Some of the Q & A may be posted if they are of general interest.. Each RDR will have a "Contact the Editor" link which permits them to send a comment or query.

Each RDR is devoted to serious discussion of one topic of interest to some component of the scientific community. Only contributions which are thoughtfully written and include relevant references will be posted in a given RDR. "

The first RDR will discuss health effects of low dose rate radiation. A person visiting this room will find many links to URLs. Each link will have a brief description of the contents to be found at that link.

I hope to have good representation of senior radiation scientists from all over the world as "Room Editors" of the RDR. Some of them may be willing to be listed as "Honorary Editors" to give general advice on which URLs should be included for a particular RDR.

I am writing to solicit your advice on this idea of Radiation Discussion Rooms or RDRs and to ask if you might help monitor contributions to any room that is of interest to you. I am happy to work on this project but its success will depend on help from many people.

I hope to initiate the first discussion rooms within the next month. I do not ask for a large time commitment of time from anyone. I desire advice from a variety of radiation scientists. I will also ask some of the past presidents of HPS to give advice and suggest current URLs that should be linked to a particular room. I plan to announce (i.e., advertise) the existence of the archived discussion rooms as soon as one or more are open for business.

My greatest need for this type of scientific discussion to work is to have a number of volunteers who will work as "Room Editors" to help filter out commentaries which are personal or pointless. Appended is my list of subjects which I would like to see discussed and samples of some of their initial contents.

I hope that eventually "articles" from RDRs will be referenced. They will not replace journal articles but they will greatly open opportunities for scientific discussion. I welcome your comments and advice.

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John R. Cameron (jrcamero@wisc.edu)
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