Annual Review 2014-15 Bringing science and development together through original news and analysis
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Vision SciDev.Net is a leading online source of science and technology news and analysis for global development, for, from and by the global South. Our mission is to help individuals and organisations apply evidence and innovations from science and technology to decisionmaking in order to have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. We bring science and development together by providing news and analysis, including multimedia content and data visualisations. These are written and created by our network of freelancers around the world, the majority of whom are from or based in the global South.
The global edition is coordinated from London, while our 6 regional editions are commissioned, edited and produced in the relevant region below: ■■ Latin
America and Caribbean
■■ Middle ■■ South
East and North Africa
Asia
■■ South-East
Asia and Pacific
■■ Sub-Saharan
Africa (English)
■■ Sub-Saharan
Africa (French)
Contents Vision
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From our director
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Aim: Provide access to understandable scientific information
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Aim: Socioeconomic analysis of research findings
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Aim: Build relationships in key spheres
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Aim: Capacity building to support and sustain uptake of science
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News from our editions
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Latin America and Caribbean
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Middle East and North Africa
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South Asia
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South-East Asia and Pacific
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Sub-Saharan Africa (English)
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Sub-Saharan Africa (French)
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Financial information
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Who we are
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We report in English, French, Spanish
and technology through our regional
and Arabic, and most of our content
networks of committed individuals
is available for reproduction under a
and organisations, and by providing
Creative Commons licence.
training, practical guides—including
We also help to improve the ability of
tips for journalists, communicators and
reporters and researchers in developing
researchers in science and technology—
countries to communicate science
and specialist workshops.
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From our director The last year was another period of impressive growth for SciDev.Net.
O
ur audience continues to increase in direct traffic to the site, in reach through social media and, most impressively, through the republishing of our content by media and networks around the world. Increasing readership and engagement is clearly an important way for us to demonstrate advances in our mission to bring science into the awareness of development planners and their constituencies.
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This growth has been underscored by a number of developments in our digital capacity, editorial output and audience engagement strategies. All of these have been focused on innovating, with new ways to make research and scientific analysis resonate more clearly and sustainably with our key audiences. We have introduced a format for online debates that allows us to go behind the headlines and explore the research behind topical issues for our regional editions across the global South. This
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has been a great success, presenting a new format for research synthesis and allowing us to capitalise on our social media platforms in various regions. Another significant area of development has been the production of interactive data journalism features on urbanisation and hydropower. These packages reflect a great deal of creativity and effort across the organisation, so it’s gratifying to see the interest they have provoked from other media outlets. In the midst of these innovations, we recognise that we cannot make
assumptions about online accessibility, so much work has been done over this period to increase the user experience in low bandwidth areas for both desktop and mobile users. In the end, it is the emails, tweets and comments on articles from our readers—whether they are in funding organisations, research institutions or development agencies—acknowledging our unique coverage that marks the passing of another year for us. And this was a year marked with pride. For this we thank you.
Nick Ishmael Perkins Director director@scidev.net
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Aim:
Provide access to understandable scientific information • T his year we published 3 of our flagship spotlights, which are a collection of articles including feature articles, multimedia, facts and figures and expert analysis pieces looking at an issue in depth. The spotlight topics were: Big data for development; Making higher education work for Africa; Transforming cities for sustainability and we updated another (Ocean science for development in small island developing states). • T he redesigned SciDev.Net at large blog has featured coverage of key conferences including the COP 20 climate summit in Peru. There have been 134 SciDev.Net at large blogs published across all editions over the past year.
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• O ur multimedia work continues to grow. We now have a monthly podcast on iTunes and are making more use of infographics and data visualisation, most notably in our piece Africa’s hydropower future and urbanisation: where, why, when? The site now regularly features photo essays and series pages that group collections of articles focused on key issues. • W e achieved our highest ever audience as our articles were syndicated by outlets around the world such as The Guardian, The Huffington Post and All Africa. This has helped us to reach politicians, researchers and the private sector with our articles.
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• U sers (unique visitors) to the website increased by 20% on the previous year, including a 95% growth in mobile users — mobile traffic now represents 36% of our users. • O n social media, we had our best year yet as a result of more staff in the regions, increased Facebook marketing and utilising more multimedia features. These have all helped drive steady growth in our audience reach and engagement. • W e launched an in-house data dashboard, allowing us to closely monitor how articles are performing on our website, social media reach and through other news organisations republishing our content.
Trustworthiness of SciDev.Net Reader survey results
Very high
15%
High
32%
Good
37% 8%
Average Poor Not applicable to me Don’t know
1% 3% 4%
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Aim:
Socioeconomic analysis of research findings • Our analysis blogs, looking at key science and development issues from the specific angles of gender, disability, poverty, migration or private sector, grew with the addition of ‘View on’ blogs featuring opinions from experts. Both these and our original ‘Focus on’ blogs look at key science and development issues from a specific angle such as private sector, gender, disability, migration or poverty. • Over the past year we have exceeded the targets for the number of both female registrants to the site and gender-related articles. At the beginning of 2015 we have already published a practical guide on considering gender in science journalism. • Our independent gender review group, made up of experts from across three continents, continues to provide positive feedback on our content. Our internal working groups on gender and wellbeing continued to explore ways that we can enhance our impact in these areas.
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How often do you use the SciDev.Net site to increase awareness and understanding of contexts in different parts of the developing world? Reader survey results
Regularly
63%
Occasionally
28%
Seldom 5% Never
4%
• A s a part of our Africa’s PhD renaissance series exploring the role PhD’s play in Africa’s growth, we have a set of multimedia interviews — called PhDs in Focus — that feature stories from researchers on their studies and career, including a female mineralogist who is the first female lecturer at the University of Zambia.
“SciDev.Net has earned a spot among the global scientific community. We pay a lot of attention to the news they bring, and because they’re interesting and concise, we frequently discuss them in our academy’s meetings. Not to mention that for us in Venezuela, it’s very important to have a reliable science news outlet with which we can share our activities. But SciDev.Net has also reflected, now more than ever, our concerns about the present and the future of science in our country. More media like this is needed in the developing world.” Claudio Bifano, president of the Venezuelan Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences
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Aim:
Build relationships in key spheres • W e introduced our new online debates, to help us build links with panellists and those who comment. The first of these was a global debate on GM, which was followed by one on higher education in Africa and several debates in our regional editions. • W e ran two events in London: Making it count — a conference about Big data — which we ran with the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences, the International Development Research Centre and the British Council; and a memorial lecture for our founding director, David Dickson, given by Chris Whitty, chief scientific advisor at the Department for International Development. • W e held focus events in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal and South Africa, giving us an in-depth insight into trending debates and issues faced by the regions in relation to science communication – the results of which were captured in reports which we published in the learning series section of the site.
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Scidev.Net has helped me frame or redefine ideas, projects, programmes and so on. Reader survey results
Strongly agree
27%
Agree
55%
Disagree
6%
Strongly disagree
1%
Not applicable to me
11%
• T he South Asia edition ran a joint event, called Mainstreaming science, technology and innovation for public communication, with Sri Lanka’s Coordinating Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation. This was attended by journalists from The Sunday Times, Ceylon Today, The Nation, Lakbima, Echelon and Le Monde diplomatique. • T he Middle East and North Africa edition had its first anniversary event in Cairo, Egypt, where researchers quoted in the most-read stories presented their experience of working with SciDev. Net. A wide range of stakeholders attended, including policymakers, NGOs, researchers, academics, UN staff and media. • T he South-East Asia and Pacific region hosted a networking event in partnership with the DOST Welfare Foundation and a policy discussion alongside the International Rice Research Institute.
• T he regional advisory groups, which support our editorial teams and provide quality assurance on regionally produced content, have been expanded and now include Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa and South-East Asia and Pacific. • B etween 2014 and 2015, we were grateful for funding support from the UK Department for International Development, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Canadian International Development Research Centre, the Wellcome Trust, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, FAPESP (Sao Paulo Research Foundation) and the Hewlett Foundation.
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Registered users’ professions
Aid agency official 1% Student 12%
Commercial/Industry manager 4% Consultant 7%
Science researcher 14%
Editor/Journalist 7%
Government official 5%
Health worker 5%
Science communicator 5%
Information manager/ Librarian 3%
Research administrator 4%
Policy researcher 4%
Other/unknown 12%
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Lecturer/Teacher 11%
NGO official 6%
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Aim:
Capacity building to support and sustain uptake of science • O ur new training coordinator has developed a strategy to deliver training in a sustainable and scalable way. A key focus of this has been forming strategic partnerships in several regions and developing a toolkit that is rigorous but also caters for capacity building, particularly regionally.
• O ur learning series continues to grow and has resulted in a number of invites to write blogs for other organisations, give presentations and attend conferences. This has allowed our user engagement teams to share our research and insights of science communication more broadly.
• I n 2014 we published four practical guides: How to record and produce audio slideshows; How to report on foreign aid for science; How to engage with participants in field research; and How to target a journal that’s right for your research.
How often do you use the SciDev.Net site for personal knowledge building and to keep up to date with topics related to your area of expertise?
• W e ran our first investigative science journalism award. We received a huge number of interesting applications from people across the global South.
Regularly
73%
Occasionally
18%
Seldom 6% Never
3%
Reader survey results
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News from our regional editions Latin America and Caribbean We were one of SciDev.Net’s most visited regional editions during the past 12 months. Our network of 36 correspondents allowed us to report 411 stories from 28 countries in the region. We attended various key events, including the COP 20 climate summit in Peru. We also continued our efforts to reach all stakeholders through the organisation of events and the creation of an online advisory panel during 2014 and 2015, which allowed us to take a deeper look at what we can improve and what kind of stories have the most impact. The region’s social media channels saw significant growth and engagement over the past year. With more than 13,000 fans on Facebook and 2,000 followers on Twitter, our network is a space for frequent discussion among readers and journalists. YouTube has also become an attractive platform for us: between 2014 and 2015 we published 27 videos, most of them produced exclusively for our edition, which gathered 139 hours of views.
Latin America and Caribbean
20% of registrants
Middle East and North Africa The region is still politically unstable as a result of the Arab Spring, which has affected many areas of development. Despite this, we successfully covered the conflict. In particular, stories related to Islamic State’s impact on higher education and healthcare in Iraq received a lot
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of positive feedback as readers felt their inclusion of local commentators meant they reflected the actual situation. Our visitors mostly come through social media, with our 80,000 fans on Facebook and
growing number of Twitter followers regularly visiting the website. We also expanded our multimedia production in 2014 to include photo galleries, audio interviews and audio slideshows.
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South Asia We continued to lead with news stories on disaster forecasting and mitigation, and had great success when we interviewed Vijay Raghavan, secretary of the Indian Department of Biotechnology, as part of our ongoing series
of Q&A features. The discussion led to several potential collaborations and also aided a debate on genetic modification that the region conducted in June 2014. In April 2015 we also held a live debate with a panel
of eminent researchers and politicians on critical issues relating to nuclear energy that was widely noted to have been successful. We were also invited to give presentations at several conferences,
notably at one held by the Sri Lanka Press Institute. The talk was seen positively by attendees, including journalists and communications experts from scientific institutions.
South Asia
13% of registrants
South-East Asia and Pacific
13%
Middle East and North Africa
of registrants
7%
of registrants
South-East Asia and Pacific This year, our edition opened an office in Manila in the Philippines, and recruited a full editorial team, which helped to increase output by 75% into 2014. One of our most popular articles honoured the delegates of a New Zealand AIDS conference who were among those killed when a Malaysian plane was shot down over Ukraine by a missile. Further popular articles included an editorial on how science can help the economic integration of members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and a blog
post — entitled Science and policy: Still an old boys’ network? — that proved controversial as readers challenged the claim that there is uneven gender representation in developing countries. We also attended lots of successful networking events and were invited to speak and moderate at the Aid & International Development Forum food security [correct event?] summit in Indonesia and the European Commission’s EURAXESS Links conference held in Singapore and Thailand.
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News from our regional editions
Sub-Saharan Africa (French) Our edition has continued to build its reputation as one of the fastest reacting media organisations in the region. During a meningitis epidemic in Niger, Mano Aghali, the country’s health minister, said: “SciDev.Net helped by raising the alarm in a timely manner.” The minister had previously been interviewed on the difficulties Niger faced in trying to curb the epidemic. The article received a record number of likes on Facebook and was retweeted by key international humanitarian organisations, including Médecins Sans Frontières. It was also widely syndicated.
Sub-Saharan Africa
We were also one of the first media organisations to report on Ebola. Two stories did particularly well: one on the first Ebola vaccine trials and another on the role of anthropologists in the fight against the disease in West Africa. Sylvain Landry Faye, head of the anthropology department at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar in Senegal, told us that SciDev.Net’s articles helped scientists understand local people’s resistance to the response effort. He was subsequently invited by universities around the world to deliver conference talks on his experience fighting the epidemic. The head of the Ebola response team in Guinea also congratulated us for our coverage and said he referred to our articles to get inspiration for policymaking.
22% of registrants
Sub-Saharan Africa (English) Our edition has built on a successful start in 2013 with stories on agriculture, including an outstanding article on soil health, being particularly well received. Unique visitors to our edition rose
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by 67% compared with 201314, which demonstrates that the increased volume of content, including multimedia products, and greater strategic use of social media channels helped stories
reach our audience. Our Facebook page in particular has encouraged visitors to explore the website, with over 37,000 people subscribed.
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Financial information Trustees’ statement
Statement of financial activities 2014 (£)
2013 (£)
Incoming resources Incoming resources from generated funds: Voluntary income Other incoming resources Total incoming resources
1,968,865
2,070,765
42,175
49,470
2,011,040
2,120,235
Resources expended Costs of generating funds Charitable activities Governance costs Total resources expended Net income/(expenditure)
135,462
98,964
2,012,879
1,681,874
42,194
49,227
2,190,536
1,830,065
(179,496)
290,170
Total funds at 1 January
680,094
389,924
Total funds at 31 December
500,598
680,094
The Statement of Financial Activities and Balance Sheet are not the full statutory accounts but are a summary of the information that appears in the full accounts. The full accounts have been audited and given an unqualified opinion. The full accounts were approved by the full board on 15 May 2015. Copies of the financial statements have been submitted to the Charity Commission and Registrar of Companies. These summarised accounts may not contain sufficient information to allow for a full understanding of the financial affairs of the company. Further information, including the auditor’s report, can be obtained by contacting the company’s offices.
Independent Auditors’ Report to the Members of SciDev.Net Statutory Auditor: Kingston Smith LLP
Summary balance sheet 31 December 2014 2014 (£)
2013 (£)
275,849
258,426
Debtors
272,196
425,437
Cash at bank and in hand
194,407
505,662
466,603
931,099
(241,854)
(509,431)
Fixed assets Tangible assets Current assets
Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year Net current assets
224,749
421,668
Net assets
500,598
680,094
416
8,188
275,849
258,426
23,745
240,877
Funds Restricted funds Unrestricted funds Designated fixed asset funds Designated core funds General funds
200,588
172,603
Total funds
500,598
680,094
We have audited the financial statements of SciDev.Net for the year ended 31 December 2014 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities (the Summary Income and Expenditure Account), the Balance Sheet and the related notes. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) … In our opinion the financial statements give a true and fair view of the state of the charitable company’s affairs as at 31 December 2014 and of its incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure for the year then ended; have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 … [;] the information given in the Trustees’ Annual Report for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements.
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Who we are Global edition, London Nick Ishmael Perkins
Latin America and Caribbean Andrew Lee
Luisa Massarani
Director
Head of digital
Regional coordinator
Kay Ali
Anita Makri
Caterina Elizondo Lucci
Head of business development
Opinion and special features editor
Shaheda Begum
Imogen Mathers
Finance assistant
Tom Campbell Subeditor
Juan Casasbuenas Training coordinator
Paul Dawson Head of finance and operations
Lou Del Bello Multimedia producer
Jan Evetts Digital support technician
Producer and assistant opinions editor
Tania Rabesandratana Reporter/assistant editor
Immy Robinson Monitoring and evaluation coordinator
Jessica Romo Monitoring and evaluation coordinator (Left 2015)
Jon Spaull
Digital producer
Lisbeth Fog Writer and consultant
Daniela Hirschsfeld Writer and consultant
Zoraida Portillo Assistant editor
Andrea Small Carmona User engagement coordinator
Middle East and North Africa
Caitlin Flint
Reporter and multimedia producer
Bothina Osama
User engagement manager (Left 2015)
Mic’o Tatalovic’ News editor (Left 2014)
Nehal Lasheen
Joshua Howgego Deputy news and opinions editor (Left 2015)
Shannon Marie Harmon Digital producer
Kaz Janowski Editor
Harriet Jarlett User engagement manager
Mariama Kamara Office administrator and PA to the director
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Inga Vesper News editor
Sam Viney External relations assistant
Regional coordinator Assistant editor
Wafa’a Mohsen Digital producer
Saleh El Shair Copy editor
Hisham Soliman Subeditor
Yasser Teilab User engagement coordinator
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South Asia Ranjit Devraj
Sub-Saharan Africa (French)
Regional coordinator
Amzath Fassassi
Mallika Aryal
Regional coordinator
Subeditor
Julien Chongwang
Smriti Daniel
Assistant editor
User engagement coordinator
Béatrice Diop
Funders and Partners
Digital producer
South-East Asia and Pacific Joel Adriano Regional coordinator
Théodore Koudore News editor (Left 2015)
Bilal Tairou User engagement coordinator
Judith ‘Jum’ Balea Digital producer
Eugene Calapit User engagement coordinator (Left 2014)
Jose ‘Ping’ Galang Subeditor
Fides Lim
Trustees Graham Stegmann (Joined July 2014)
Andrew Bennett (Retired July 2014)
Judit Arenas
Assistant editor
(Joined July 2014)
Sub-Saharan Africa (English)
(Retired March 2015)
Ochieng’ Ogodo
Nalaka Gunawardene
Nadia El-Awady
Regional coordinator
Bernard Appiah Subeditor
Albert Otieno Leny
Judith Francis (Retired July 2014) (Retired July 2014)
Andrew Jack (Joined July 2014)
Khotso Mokhele
Assistant news editor
(Retired July 2014)
Bernice Nduta
Rob Sloley
User engagement coordinator
Calvin Otieno Digital producer
David Viney (Joined July 2014)
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