As regular readers will already be aware, SpotOn is a series of community events hosted by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) for the discussion of how science is carried out and communicated online.
SpotOn stands for Science Policy, Outreach and Tools Online and reflects the three discussion strands that run through the events in London and NYC which are:
In October of last year we launched the SpotOn website which is the online home for the SpotOn events. The site hosts a wealth of content organised around the discussions that we host: every event has its own aggregator page where you can find video archives, Storify storyboards, slide presentations, photos, blog posts and more about that individual session. Moreover, we are beginning to create toolkits of links and resources from those conversations.
All of this great content is made possible by contributions from the community – via participation at events, sharing thoughts on social media and writing blog posts for the site about their personal experiences and opinions.
To make this archive freely available for re-use so that as many people as possible can benefit from it, we’re now licensing all of the content that the SpotOn team creates under a CC-BY licence and we’re also offering this as licensing option to all past and future contributors to the site.
Content that is licensed in this way will have a Creative Commons badge on it so that you know that it’s available for reuse under the terms on the Creative Commons website.
One of NPG’s core values is to play an active and encouraging role in the online science community. We hope that by sharing the SpotOn content under CC-BY licence, this underlines our commitment to on-going discussions about the intersection of people, science and technology.
If you have any questions or would like to share your ideas or offer to contribute to the site, do get in touch [spoton@nature.com].