Please accept my apologies for any cross posting.

This report went to all registered journalists and contributers on
AlphaGalileo earlier this week.

------------------------[REPORT]-------------------------

Thank you for your reply to the AlphaGalileo questionnaire.

We will circulate a fuller report in due course, but I hope you will find
this summary of journalists' and contributors' views helpful.

We received 103 replies from 546 sent to registered journalists (18%
response).

The frequency of visits by journalists were:
72% visit the site at least once a week
58% visit more than once a week
20% visit at least once a day
10% visit the site depending on the content of email alerts
4% visit more than once a day

Stories written were:
40% have written more than 3 stories, this was the largest option we
gave, since it seemed to us that above three we were getting too precise
for peoples' memories, however 10% of respondents referred to writing
'dozens' or 'several a week'. BBC Radio One's News Beat was one of the
later.

Commercial sponsorship was acceptable to 57%, but there were 25% of
'may-bes'.

Changes that you'd like to see were:
31% asked for more science news
30% various changes to the email alert system (including frequency and
keywords)
26% were happy with the service as it stands.

We received 45 replies (11%) from the 390 sent to contributors, however
of those 390 there are only 140 active contributors so the percentage of
replies from those is 32%. These figures reflect the greater interest of
journalists in science news than sadly researchers in promoting their
work.

Now for the good news from contributors. 84% were happy with the service.
None were unhappy. The other 16% were 'others' including 'too new to
comment'.

Only one of our contributor respondent does not have a PC with web access
on their own desk. If you can use the Net easily you will use
AlphaGalileo. There appears to be a similar feed-back operating for
journalists. The more they visit: the more they write.

As for funding AlphaGalileo: 59% of contributors were happy with
commercial sponsorship (obviously with safeguards for the service's
independence) and 62% would never pay.

The changes contributors wanted were more diverse than journalists.

10% were happy with the service as it is
7% asked for feed-back on hits (we already provide the number of email
alerts sent out)
7% wanted translation of releases/events into other languages
7% asked for email alerts to contributors
5% wanted to know the names of journalists registered
5% asked for changes to the keyword system
5 % wanted the service publicised more.

So what are we going to do next?

We hope to introduce omnibus email alerts as an alternative to the
current system, during May when we introduce bi-lingual alerts. That is
journalists will be able to opt for one of the two types. We will be in
touch with journalists again nearer the time. It may not be possible to
offer alerts to contributors then, since those alerts would have to take
into account embargoes and therefore be triggered at a different time to
those for journalists.

Keywords we will change. Again perhaps at a time that fits with the work
we're doing on the bi-lingual site. The keywords have to be simple so
that contributors and journalists don't have to face choosing from a
large and specialised list. The current system, for example, emerged from
discussions with members of the European Union of Science Journalists'
Association via the EUSJA list during early 1998. We are proposing to
split 'Science' into 'Biology', 'Physics', Chemistry' and 'Earth science'.

To help promote the service and meet contributors' needs, we would like
to list registered journalists names and employer. This listing would
ONLY BE AVAILABLE TO REGISTERED CONTRIBUTORS AND JOURNALISTS. The
default display would be for example:

Tim Radford, The Guardian.

If any journalist is unhappy with this please tell me. Equally if any are
happy to have their full office contact details available in a
journalists address book, please tell me.

The other changes requested will go into our wish list for future work.

Finally some news. The European Commission (DGXII) have arranged a
meeting next week of research and governmental representatives and
science journalists from Germany, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, Spain
and the UK to discuss how to extend the Anglo-French pilot wider and to
plan for a full-scale service in the year 2000.

Thank you for your support and encouragement. I hope you agree that
Europe needs to do more to promote its achievements in science and
engineering and it can only do that by working with the media across
national boundaries.

Best wishes



Peter Green
Project Manager AlphaGalileo

[log in to unmask]
+44 (0) 1793 496200 (Answer phone)
The Internet-based press centre for European science,engineering and 
technology



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