Page 133 - Annual Report 2019-20

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India Science Wire
(Indian Science News and Feature Service)
The main objective of India Science Wire, the Indian News and Feature Service, is to highlight science and technology (S&T) research activities in Indian labs/research institutions in the media for public consumption. The ISW editorial team sources stories from research papers in published journals and those presented in S&T events such as conferences. Besides, stories are also generated based on specific inputs from various S&T institutions, interviews of scientists, and on policies.
l The in-house team of ISW comprises
minimal editorial, technical and social media staff. Efforts were made to build a team of high-quality science writers to work on a freelance basis, which resulted in having an external team of freelance science writers.
l Major scientific conferences such as the Indian Science Congress and the India International Science Festival (IISF) were covered by science reporters and editors of ISW. The institutions covered by ISW include Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), laboratories of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), autonomous institutions under the Department of Science and
Technology (DST) and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), as well as leading universities such as Jawarharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi University (DU), University of Hyderabad, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), and the University of Madras. Further, the team has made other efforts as well to gather news, including field visits.
l A total of 533 stories (English and Hindi) have been released by ISW during 2019-20. l Dissemination of these stories and their outreach assume as much importance as their generation. The stories released by ISW had a total of 1,620 imprints during the period. This means that every working day, about 6.23 ISW stories were being published by various digital online and
print media somewhere in the country.
l At present, the news service is being distributed to about 196 media outlets on a daily basis, which is a significant increase from last year’s 125 outlets. The combined reach of these media houses is estimated to be more than 6 million. The list of media outlets using ISW stories includes The Hindu, Hindu Business-line, Amar Ujala, Dainik Jagran, FirstPost, Outlook, Catch
News, Yahoo.com, Down To Earth, etc.
The table below gives the total number of ISW subscribers.
VIGYAN PRASAR ANNUAL REPORT 2019-2020