New collaborative science magazine launched.

This article was originally written for ABSW:

Today sees the release of the pilot issue of the new free digital ‘science lifestyle’ magazine, Guru.

Edited by Stuart Farrimond, it will be published bi-monthly and aims to cover the importance of science in everyday life “without being geeky”.

“At the moment those with academic interests in science are well catered for by existing publishers” said Farrimond. He continued “There are a variety of magazines and periodicals which focus on science and technology subjects. However, the majority of these publications attract a demographic with either prior expertise or a specialist interest in that field…Our vision is to make science engaging and understandable to a lay reader who has little or no scientific background”.

The first issue covers many areas including the science of decision making, common misconceptions about medicine and the do-it-yourself satellite project CubeSat.

Marketing itself as a ‘science lifestyle’ magazine it aims to target people who are interested in the world around them, but who would never pick up a ‘science’ magazine. It also seeks to harness some of the power of new-technology, having been designed to look attractive and easy to read on computers, tablets and smart phones.

The publication’s content is crowd sourced, which makes it an interesting potential platform for science writers and bloggers. Crowd-sourced science has become a popular way of engaging online. Projects such as FoldIt and GalaxyZoo rely on members of the public who have an interest in science to aid research and have been very successful. The use of this model to produce a publication could be seen as unreliable. But, according to science blogger David Robertson “the internet is teeming with people keen to contribute to the spread of science knowledge. This can be seen in the sheer numbers of science blogs out there and their online popularity”.

As the debate on unpaid internships rumbles on, media outlets have come under increased scrutiny. For those looking to pursue a career in science journalism it could be that crowd sourced publications, such as Guru, become a valuable experiential platform.

With the launch of the magazine today, the team at Guru hope that it “will get people get excited and inspired about science”.

If you would like to get involved with Guru Magazine drop them an email: info@gurumagazine.org