INNGE since INTECOL 2013
Our last newsletter was released just prior to INTECOL, which was held in London in August 2013. We had a large surge of interest following the conference and have been busy setting up the organizational structure and welcoming lots of new people onboard. Many who were at INTECOL couldn’t help but feel the buzz around INNGE, and regardless of whether you got involved directly, it was hard to avoid the group’s physical and online presence. A lot of our activities happened at INTECOL and in the many months that have passed since then. This newsletter summarizes some of what we’ve been up to and upcoming activities to build a better future for Ecology.
New organizational structure
The organization of INNGE has been formalized in the last year with the passing of bylaws and the election of a governing board and the formation of a working group. The official INNGE Bylaws were passed by our members in August 2013 at INTECOL.
At this point INNGE activities are coordinated by a working group, made up of ecologists based on six continents. This group is made up of members of the governing board as well as volunteers from the general constituency. Amongst other things a priority for the working group is currently working to secure the economy of INNGE more long-term. A further explanation of INNGE’s organizational structure is available here.
Governing Board (2014):
- Chair: Peter Søgaard Jørgensen
- Vice-Chair: Heather Campbell
- Secretary: Naupaka Zimmerman
- Treasurer: Lucía DeSoto
- Assistant Treasurer: Rob Salguero-Gómez
- David Chiawo
- Ellen Cieraad
- Mandu Essienibokkufre
- Nalaka Geekiyanage
- Laureano Gherardi
- Alice C. Hughes
- Timothée Poisot
- Joanna L. Randall
- Alexandra Sutton
- Rachel L. White
Interest Group Leads
- Membership coordination: Rachel White, (assisting: Laureano Gherardi)
- Conference coordination: Alexandra Sutton, (assisting: Mandu Essienibokkufre)
- Interdisciplinary group coordinator: Alice Hughes, (assisting: Peter Søgaard Jørgensen)
- Open science group coordination: Timothée Poisot, (assisting: Naupaka Zimmerman)
- Early-career group coordination: David Chiawo, (assisting: Rachel White)
- Fundraising coordination: Laureano Gherardi, (assisting: Alexandra Sutton, Rob Salguero-Gomez, Rachel White)
Communications Group
- Webmaster: Naupaka Zimmerman
- Newsletter editors: Heather Campbell and Nalaka Geekiyanage
- Blog editors: Timothy Bray and Pawel Waryszak
- Social media (twitter, facebook) editor: vacant
- Wiki editors: Timothée Poisot and Naupaka Zimmerman
- Video channel editor: Nalaka Geekiyanage
- Calendar editor: vacant
- Assistants to the group: Rachel White and Peter Søgaard Jørgensen
Ongoing Election
INNGE is in the process of putting together a governing board for 2015 with a new slate of 8 governing board members to serve for 2015 and 2016 along with joining 9 continuing board members from 2014.
You can run for the governing board by filling out this candidate form before Jaunary 12.
The board consists of a group of highly active early career scientists interested in spending part of their limited free time in doing service for the global community of students and scientists working on ecologically relevant topics.
If you have questions or ideas, you can get in contact with anyone from the working group, including special interest group leaders, via their personal email addresses or via INNGE’s general email address.
Constituent Survey
From Rachel White (Membership coordinator and Governing Board Member of INNGE)
We’d like to know what our INNGE constituents would like from us. You can help to shape the organisation by taking our short 5 min survey that we are asking INNGE constituents (i.e. you!) to fill in.
The aim of this survey is to determine:
- How international INNGE currently is;
- What current constituents are doing education/job wise, and what your research interests are;
- Your motivations for ‘joining’ INNGE/what you like about INNGE;
- What you would like to see INNGE provide for you in the future.
The survey collects anonymous information (no person ID or contact is requested). The collected data will be used to inform the INNGE governing board and working groups, and in turn ensure that INNGE is reaching and representing the needs of early-career ecologists worldwide.
Here is the survey link: http://tinyurl.com/k3xp3da
From Will Wetzel @wcwetzel and Mariah Meek @mhmeek
Hey there, early career scientists. We know you’re out there, just like us, doing your grad student, postdoc, or pre-tenure activities. You work hard and are doing amazing science. However, chances are that you aren’t famous yet—not because your work isn’t transformative (it is!)—but simply because you haven’t been in the game long enough. And if you aren’t a famous scientist yet, you probably have a hard time getting your work the exposure it deserves. The amount of work published each month is staggering. Many of us understandably resort to scanning tables of contents for big names. This is unfortunate for early career researchers because our work is being overlooked. It is also unfortunate for the progress of science because it means the ideas of our most excited and vigorous thinkers are being overlooked. Work done by early career researchers foretells the directions our fields are moving and often showcases cutting edge techniques in science. Therefore, we think it is particularly important that we—those early in our careers—read work by our peers.
So how do we get more exposure for early career scientists and their work? How do we facilitate discussion among early career scientists? How do we get a better understanding of the directions our fields are moving?
Using social media, of course! There is a large and growing presence of scientists, especially early career scientists, on Twitter. We think it’s time to harness this group for the good of early career scientists and for the good of all of science. Here’s our proposition for how we can improve exposure of publications by early career scientists—how we can both do a better job reading each other’s papers and help each other get the recognition we each deserve.
Every Thursday afternoon, tweet about a paper you read in the last week with an early career researcher as the primary author. The author should still be early in their career. Add the author’s twitter handle, if they have one, and a link to the paper. Put the hashtag #ECRpaper, for early career researcher paper, on the tweet. Then add a hashtag specific to the field of study (e.g., #Ecology). An easy place to see all these tweets in one place will be on INNGE’s #ECRpaper aggregator, which even organizes tweets by field of study. We are hopeful we can create a movement of reading, supporting, and advertising all the great work being done by all the hard-working early careers researchers.
Here’s what we hope to achieve with #ECRpaper:
- Foster debate and discussion about research by early career scientists
- Build connections among early career researchers and expand their colleague networks
- Help early career researchers understand directions other early career researchers are taking
- Help early career researchers see the directions their fields are moving
- Bring publicity to work by early career scientists
You do not have to be an early career researcher to join this movement. Scientists from all career stages are encouraged to participate. We all benefit when early career scientists are supported to do the best work they can.
INNGEwiki
Did you know that INNGE has an open wiki accessible and editable for everyone interested? The wiki aims to be a platform for gathering information of all kinds relevant to the next-generation ecologist. In particular, a focus of the wiki is to link to other efforts to aggregate information. Thus, the wiki will with time function as a meta-platform for information about ecological science. Take a look and register to add the content you find is missing. Information curation is a community effort!
Crowd-sourced conference calendar
We have just launched a crowd-sourced conference and event calendar. With your help we hope this initiative will evolve into a prime source of information for upcoming meetings. The way the calendar works is simple. By
filling in a google form you can submit an event to the conference calendar. The
google calendar itself will then be updated weekly by INNGE constituents. You can already
subscribe to the calendar here. Now tell the world what meetings are you attending or organizing in 2015!
INNGE involvement in Future Earth
Since the last newsletter INNGE has increasingly involved in the international research platform for global sustainability, Future Earth. INNGE has provided recommendations for how to engage a new and diverse generation of researchers and we are awaiting the upcoming young scientist engagement strategy with excitement. In early May INNGE promoted the online survey on research priorities for sustainable development, conducted by Future Earth. In mid May INNGE was represented by Peter Søgaard Jørgensen at a follow up workshop in Kyoto, Japan. The workshop had the aim of delivering a list of research priorities for the Future Earth Science and Engagement committees to finalize. This research agenda is scheduled to come out before the year’s end. Finally in the end of May, INNGE co-organized this year’s Future Earth Young Scientist Networking Conference on Integrated Science. This year the conference was on the topic of “ecosystems and human wellbeing in the green economy”. The conference was co-organized along with the Institute for New Economic Thinking Young Scholars Initiative (INET YSI) with the main organizer being the International Science Council and the International Social Science Council. A short conference report was recently published by attending young scientists in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and several research articles are in the planning. You can stay up to date on this work via INNGE’s open wiki. We hope to continue our high level of involvement in Future Earth and do everything we can to make it reach its long-term vision for 2025 (read it here).
Vision for INNGE published – global community innovation platforms
In a recently accepted paper, 15 authors, using INNGE as an example, laid out the conceptual foundation for what they term Global Community Innovation Platforms (GCIPs). GCIPs are characterized by being global in scope, by having a localized network infrastructure, by challenging current paradigms and encouraging innovation, and by working as an open repository for contribution and access of information. The preprint of the article is accessible at bioRxiv.
Upcoming INNGE events
INNGE will be present at the following conferences, and we invite you to join us!
- 18–22 March 2015: The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Japan in Korimoto Campus, Kagoshima University, Japan
- How to find us at ESJ 2015:
- Come stop by the INNGE Booth & say hi!
- Further details are still developing – look to our website and Facebook page for updates!
- 18–21 June 2015: 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Japan Society of Tropical Ecology in Kyoto, Japan
- How to find us at ESJ 2015:
- Come stop by the INNGE Booth & say hi!
- Join the INNGE Networking Workshop
- Join the Networking Dinner..!
- Further details are still developing – look to our website and Facebook page for updates!
- 12 - 16 July 2015: Association for Tropical Biology & Conservation Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawai’i
- How to find us at ATBC 2015:
- Come stop by the INNGE Booth and say hi!
- Join us on our INNGE Thursday or Friday night social outing in Waikiki!
- Look for the Symposium on Conservation in Human-Dominated Landscapes, run by two INNGE board members: Alice Hughes & Alexandra Sutton
- 9 - 15 August 2015: Ecological Society of America Centennial Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland
- How to find us at ESA 2015:
- Come stop by the INNGE Booth and say hi!
- Join us on our INNGE Thursday or Friday night social outing in Fells Point! (And expect particular fun, as we’ll be hosted by INNGE governing board member, Alexandra Sutton, whose hometown is Baltimore!)
- Look out for symposia hosted by INNGE board members
- Join an INNGE professional development workshop, Science Speed-Dating, run jointly with the ESA’s SEEDS student program
- 21 - 25 September 2015: European Ecological Federation Annual Congress in Rome, Italy
- INNGE will be an academic sponsor of this meeting and INNGE has secured lowered rates of attendance for early career scientists. Further details are still developing – look to our website and Facebook page for updates!
Introducing “INNGE Reporter”
INNGE is widening her wingspan with a network of Conference Reporters. We will call for volunteer reporters where Early Career Researchers get an opportunity to report about National or International Conferences, Workshops, and Symposia in Ecology to the world. Photographs, short video clips and other details will be published in INNGE's Vimeo Channel, blog, and other social media outlets. If you are attending any events please see here for details on how to report. The first report from this initiative is now online. Stay in touch!
For INNGE Media questions, contact Nalaka Geekiyanage or Pawel Warysak.
INNGE events for all
As always, we do what we do for you – so if you’re leading an event and would like INNGE’s support; if you’d like to pitch in on an INNGE symposium, workshop, or other event; or if you have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us by contacting Alexandra Sutton (@aesutz).
INNGE is open to everyone in our mission. Get involved!
When you join INNGE it can be hard to figure out what the heck is going on and what difference you can make. Don’t worry, here are a few important things we suggest you do to get yourself familiar with INNGE.
