I work for a show on public radio. We're doing a series of segments on science and design. My task today is to figure out which magazines we should be subscribing to so that we get all of the cutting edge info. We're looking for dramatic stuff that could interest the layman with a minimal amount of jargon. Trade journals are okay if they use simple language.

So, TWW, what do you think?

3/12/2009 10:33:05 AM

popular mechanics

3/12/2009 10:39:34 AM

so far I've got

Popular Mechanics
Popular Science
Scientific American
New Scientist
Chemical and Engineering News

3/12/2009 10:41:49 AM

discover

3/12/2009 10:42:32 AM

wired? i've never read the magazine, just the online stuff

3/12/2009 10:43:47 AM

Seed
Technology Review

3/12/2009 10:49:44 AM

Jet

3/12/2009 10:51:40 AM

Quote :

"popular mechanics"

This is great if you want to be up to date on redneck conspiracy theories. Its like science and technology written by the characters of King of the Hill.

I'd go with Wired, PopSci or Discover (reading both would be a waste of time) and Scientific American. A few industy-specific publications and a couple of actual peer-reviewed journals would be good.

I think you need to decide if you honestly want to be informed, or if you want to get sugar-coated science journalism written by people trying to sell magazines. The more dramatic!!! you try to get, the less credible your sources will be.

3/12/2009 10:55:05 AM

Scientific American

3/12/2009 10:55:41 AM

yeah that's already been mentioned.

you can usually find a wired subscription for free on the internets. that's where i got mine.

3/12/2009 10:56:42 AM

I'm looking for mags that will be good to scan and find stories
we'd have to do secondary research anyway

so journals might not be exactly what we're looking for

a collection of abstracts, maybe

but we're looking for a radio story for an arts/culture show - not a complete academic understanding of a scientific field

3/12/2009 11:11:06 AM

Nuclear News

3/12/2009 11:14:44 AM

Beware press release science.

3/12/2009 11:19:50 AM

Quote :

"I'm looking for mags that will be good to scan and find stories we'd have to do secondary research anyway so journals might not be exactly what we're looking for a collection of abstracts, maybe but we're looking for a radio story for an arts/culture show - not a complete academic understanding of a scientific field"

Ok, that makes more sense. You may as well just go to Barnes and Noble and scan the magazine collection for stories. That might get you more of what you're looking for than reading every magazine that people recommend.

3/12/2009 11:22:56 AM

Quote :

"you can usually find a wired subscription for free on the internets. that's where i got mine."

Please PM me if you or anyone else sees a free Wired subscription.

3/12/2009 11:27:51 AM

i love wired, though i'm about 2 issues behind

3/12/2009 11:48:43 AM

^^a wired subscription isn´t that expensive to start with, you can get them from coke points, too, though

Quote :

"Popular Mechanics Popular Science"

wired
national geographic

3/12/2009 11:49:23 AM

its a little specialized, but sky & telescope gives the latest news on space stuff.

3/12/2009 1:05:14 PM

Seed is a good one.

3/12/2009 1:08:38 PM

science, dur

...and nature

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 2:08 PM. Reason : and actually the ieee magazine is pretty easy to read]

3/12/2009 2:07:39 PM

science and nature are expensive subscriptions and will mostly be beyond what the public will understand because it is the most advanced science research and requires a lot of background knowledge. That being said, they are the top 2 peer reviewed scientific journals you can get published in.

For the public, popular science is pretty good

3/12/2009 2:12:48 PM

you have to also consider that they're weekly publications

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 2:25 PM. Reason : and student memberships to aaas are actually pretty reasonable]

3/12/2009 2:24:48 PM

true

3/12/2009 2:28:59 PM

^^^^ Science may be peer reviewed, but poorly so. There are a lot of junk papers that make their way in there. In fact, I talked to a colleague who described Science as being ironically named. That's not to say that all the articles are bad, just that it's hard to truly asses scientific merit in less that 4 printed pages.

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 2:29 PM. Reason : not enough ^s]

3/12/2009 2:29:29 PM

^


whoever told you that was obviously pissed that their paper didn't make it.

science is the top journal out there, adn it's tough to get in. I've never even bothered submitting my papers there cause I already know they won't make it

3/12/2009 2:41:45 PM

my wired subscription was $2.75 during one of those online promotions that always show up on slickdeals or ben's bargains

in fact, i won't pay for a subscription that's more than $0.50/issue

3/12/2009 2:48:48 PM

^ That's basically what I do. I subscribe to several magazines, so the difference between $12 per subscription and $3 per subscription can actually add up when you think about it in those terms.

3/12/2009 3:08:49 PM

i <3 wired.

3/12/2009 3:18:57 PM

I'd recommend Nature. Another great one is Natural History. It is written at a level approaching layman but covers stuff published in big peer reviewed journals. It has more of a biology aspect than the others.


also, peer review doesnt mean shit these days. one of my grad classes had a significant lit review portion to it and at least of half of the papers the professor handed out were intentionally peer reviewed publications that had serious flaws. Apparently it would make us write better to pick these things apart, but I'm not so sure.

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 3:33 PM. Reason : ]

3/12/2009 3:31:22 PM

i've had a subscription to a number of the magazines mentioned and i'd say that scientific american was my favorite. i'd say discover is second.

3/12/2009 3:44:25 PM

American Scientific Mind

I think my favorite part about the magazine is that its written in laymen terms so the articles are pretty easy to follow even when discussing complicated subject matter. They also pick interesting, relatable topics. Defiantly worth your time to check out a copy

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 3:48 PM. Reason : op]

3/12/2009 3:47:20 PM

http://www.nature.com/news has great moderate length reviews of current literature with links to the primary literature they describe in case you need more details. If you have access to the Nature Reviews series of journals through a university, they're a great way to build a high-level background on a field you're interested in by just skimming through the issues.

The Public Library of Science (http://www.plos.org) are a series of open-access, free journals. For biology research, they have impact factors around PNAS and the papers are often much easier to read than in other journals as they are online only and don't suffer from space restrictions to the same degree.

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/ is a great blog on lots of current research (mainly biology) that is very easy to understand.

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 4:10 PM. Reason : .]

3/12/2009 4:04:52 PM

Quote :

"whoever told you that was obviously pissed that their paper didn't make it. science is the top journal out there, adn it's tough to get in. I've never even bothered submitting my papers there cause I already know they won't make it"

Maybe your papers won't get in because they don't have enough unreproducible, anecdotal evidence.

The person who made the comment was a reviewer and was ranting about the paper that still get published despite negative reviews.

3/12/2009 4:38:11 PM

If you haven't, take a listen to WNYC's Radiolab. They talk a lot about psychology, math, and biology. Its very well done, sort of sucks you in.

3/12/2009 5:16:24 PM

I don't know if it has been mentioned already but The Scientist. http://www.the-scientist.com/ Its more specific to the life sciences.

3/12/2009 5:21:20 PM

The Lancet: World's leading general medical journal.

The New England Journal of Medicine

3/12/2009 7:16:41 PM

Quote :

"Maybe your papers won't get in because they don't have enough unreproducible, anecdotal evidence. The person who made the comment was a reviewer and was ranting about the paper that still get published despite negative reviews."

Whatever man, you are trying to claim Science isn't well reviewed? Yea... it's only the most prestigious American journal... lolz. Most scientists would give their left nut to get published in it.

3/12/2009 7:24:52 PM

Astronomy for space-related sciences

3/12/2009 7:25:30 PM

http://sciencedaily.org

3/12/2009 7:51:33 PM

Nature

Scientific American - In grad school my advisor swore by SA and had been reading it for years. Said it was a fantastic way to get exposure to a broad swath of scientific knowledge.

3/14/2009 9:00:22 PM

Quote :

"i've had a subscription to a number of the magazines mentioned and i'd say that scientific american was my favorite. i'd say discover is second."

Forget about Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.

Add Wired to your list (if only for their one big, nice, article in each issue).

Get 2600: The Hacker Quarterly.

Lots of other good suggestions in the thread

3/14/2009 9:08:15 PM

Popular Science is fun to read. I keep a copy in my bathroom.

3/14/2009 9:10:02 PM

Quote :

"http://sciencedaily.org"

this is your single source.

they distill the essential information of all scientific news that is covered in all other magazines.

3/14/2009 10:33:46 PM

Quote :

""If you haven't, take a listen to WNYC's Radiolab. They talk a lot about psychology, math, and biology. Its very well done, sort of sucks you in.""

Absolutely agree. Radiolab is simply phenomenal.

3/15/2009 5:13:29 AM

When I was in high school I babysat for a couple that subscribed to the American Journal of Human Genetics. I would always read it after the kids went to bed because I was a total dork.

3/15/2009 10:27:45 AM

Quote :

""http://sciencedaily.org""

there are many pages that don't open for me, such as "geology" and some of the multimedia.
it happened today and yesterday. is this normal?

3/15/2009 11:16:34 AM

Quote :

"Absolutely agree. Radiolab is simply phenomenal."

RadioLab is an outstanding program, but unless the public radio show/station that Snewf works for strikes a deal with RadioLab to air their program, or parts of their program (sometimes snippets of RadioLab episodes show up in All Things Considered when doing a science segment), I'm not sure it's a good place to get good, fast science content to stay on "the cutting edge".

If you already have a story about a topic, maybe a certain RadioLab episode or segment could be used to supplement that story. But in the amount of time it takes to listen to one RadioLab episode on one topic, which includes a lot of back-and-forth between Robert and Jadd and a lot of fluff, you could read about several topics in SciAm or Wired which are newer and more relevant.

3/15/2009 11:27:12 AM

Quote :

"RadioLab is an outstanding program, but unless the public radio show/station that Snewf works for strikes a deal with RadioLab to air their program, or parts of their program (sometimes snippets of RadioLab episodes show up in All Things Considered when doing a science segment), I'm not sure it's a good place to get good, fast science content to stay on "the cutting edge". "

RadioLab is three cubicle dividers down from us
we're Studio 360... we can't air other show's stuff like some of the news magazines can

we're doing science stuff because we have a mandate (in the form of funding) from the SLOAN foundation to provide programming on science and the arts

3/15/2009 2:53:47 PM

oh, well in that case, wouldn't the RadioLab staff be a great resource to get science news and magazines?

3/15/2009 8:51:42 PM

set em up

3/15/2009 9:17:01 PM