Last May, when The Authors Guild launched its Fair Contract Initiative, the NASW board voted to add our name in support. As part of the initiative, last week The Authors Guild published an open letter to members of the Association of American Publishers demanding improved book-author contracts and requesting meetings with publishers to discuss “what publishers can do to ensure this business is fair and profitable for those who create the works that sustain it.” As co-signers of the letter, along with more than two dozen U.S. and foreign author groups, we urge you to learn more about the initiative and share the open letter.
Jan. 15, 2016Featured news
When a pickpocket grabbed his wallet in Barcelona, Douglas Fields fought back. He recovered his wallet, and was unharmed, but later marveled at his instantaneous, unthinking reaction. In his book, Why We Snap: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain, he explores the neurocircuitry driving such automatic responses. Some people put themselves in harm’s way to aid strangers, while others respond to minor traffic incidents with road rage and other violent behaviors. From a neuroscience perspective, he suggests, the same brain circuits drive these dissimilar acts.
The International Science Writers Association (ISWA), arguably the world’s oldest international organization of science journalists, has a new roster of officers as of Sept. 1. James Cornell has retired from the office of president and was succeeded by Pallava Bagla, author, columnist, Science correspondent, and science editor for New Delhi Television, India.
Most NASW members and other freelancers are “cash basis” taxpayers. That’s IRS jargon for, among others, writers who have to declare advances and royalties for books and payments for articles in the year that they actually receive them. Similarly, the IRS generally forbids freelancers from deducting business expenses and other allowable outlays until the year that they actually pay them.
In Improving Numeracy in Medicine, Bonny McClain aims to help journalists and scientists better understand the imperfect world of prediction and analyses. This is not just another book on statistics or biostatistics, she asserts. It is a guide to such books, addressing topics such as what a hazard ratio is, how effect size is determined, and what is meant by number needed to treat, to harm, or to screen. Learning more about these subjects, she says, can help reporters improve their healthcare coverage.
Which programs help you write and edit most efficiently; let you import and mark up articles from publications, websites, and other sources; and let you share documents with a co-author? What is the learning curve? The NASW-Freelance discussion list recently explored these questions.
Zoologist Susan J. Crockford has studied polar bear ecology and evolution for more than 20 years, and blogs at http://polarbearscience.com. In Eaten, Crockford’s novel set in 2025, residents of hundreds of small towns in northern Newfoundland face a spring onslaught of hungry polar bears. Some of the bears have killed and eaten people. Mounties, biologists, and citizens struggle to protect the population — and the bears.
Entries for the 2016 Science in Society Awards are closed. Winners will be announced in September 2016. Entries for next year's contest open in December 2016. Stay tuned to nasw.org/scienceinsociety.
While humans have evolved to detect visible light — the energy range our Sun radiates most strongly — we also are surrounded by an invisible spectrum that ranges from radio waves to gamma rays. In Light: The Visible Spectrum and Beyond, Kimberly Arcand and NASW member Megan Watzke, both of whom work in the communications group at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, explore and explain, using words and artists’ science-based visual translations, all the light we can and cannot see.