Sweeping Online Changes by the Journal Science

Based on a merger of ScienceCareers.org and Scienceís Next Wave, the journal Science today announced a new Web site that is believed to be the single most comprehensive, freely accessible source of online science-career support currently available for scientists, teachers, students, career counselors and the public.

The debut of free online career support coincides with a sweeping redesign of the Science family of Web sites and the journalís decision to make newly published content on its ScienceNOW daily news site freely accessible to the public. The Science Web sites are published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

ìAltogether, these changes to the Science family of Web site make a unique and rich array of science career information and science news easily available to anyone visiting the site. Science is pleased to be offering these resources to budding scientists, their mentors, researchers at various stages of their careers, and other members of the public who are interested in science,î said Donald Kennedy, Scienceís editor-in-chief.

The newly tooled ScienceCareers.org offers job listings, a grants directory and other resources for the many facets of a young scientistís career, all in one place. Free to everyone and easy to navigate, the site also provides career advice, a CV database, meetings and events calendars, information about funding opportunities, advice on cover letters, interviews, career development, and more. Users will also find special topic portals, including the Minority Scientists Network and the Postdoc Network.

ìAll in all, on a single page you have Iím sure the richest set of career related tools available anywhere,î said Jim Austin, editor of the new ScienceCareers.org.

Austin emphasized that the editorial content on the site will continue to be editorially independent, maintaining the rigorous journalistic standards of the former Scienceís Next Wave site and of Scienceís News department.

ìThe field of science is so important for so many reasons, for international security, economic reasons, but to me most important is it offers prospect of hugely rewarding, satisfying career. Yet, it can be a difficult, trying career too. I can think of no better way to advance science and serve society than by helping people interested in science find satisfying careers,î Austin said.

The websiteís launch occurs along with a new design for the entire family of Science Web sites (www.sciencemag.org), which includes the online version of journal Science, the daily news service, ScienceNOW, Scienceís knowledge environments on signal transduction (ìSTKEî) and aging (ìSAGE KEî), and other resources, as well as the new ScienceCareers.org site.

The redesign began after a series of surveys, focus groups, and user testing revealed that user wanted to find content on these sites more easily and that they generally were overwhelmed by the volume of scientific information available today.

ìWe tried to move toward a much more integrated look and function, in effort to make the sites more comprehensible to users and to help with the need for making sense of the whole world of science in an information-glutted age,î said Stewart Wills, the online editor of Science.

Traffic to ScienceCareers.org and the rest of the Science Web sites will also likely increase as a result of all the redesign and merger, Wills and Austin agreed.

ìItís a much more welcoming site, and weíre hoping to attract new users we havenít had before, said Wills. ìThis is a good thing from the perspective of the AAAS mission. Being able to bring nontraditional audience segments into the orbit of the Science sites is a really nice opportunity.î