At the third Russian National forum of scientific communicators the winners of the prize «Communication laboratory — 2019» were named. The Group of scientific communication of the Krasnoyarsk Science Center SB RAS became the winner of the Small Grand Prix "Eureka", the award for high-quality standards of work for small communication teams (1-3 people) in scientific organizations.


The prize «Communication laboratory» has existed for three years.  It is given to communication specialists and teams from universities and research institutes, working in the area of fundamental and applied science, which have shown outstanding achievements in providing the dialogue between science and society using corporative communication possibilities of their own organizations.

Yegor Zadereev, the head of the Group of scientific communication of the Krasnoyarsk Science Center SB RAS, informs the portal Taiga.info  about his opinion concerning the causes of this success:

«Some years ago one used to say that universities were the leaders in the area of scientific PR in Russia. They usually have more funds for such an activity; there exists external pressure and internal motivation to be active.  The results of the 2019 prize show that now the academic society competes with universities on equal terms. If to look at the short-list (25 positions in 5 nominations), one can see that more than a half of the list is occupied by institutional or academic organizations. Moreover, among the winners of this year, two out of three special nominations were given to the communication teams of the Academy of Sciences. I feel glad about it: the more good-working teams exist in our country, the easier for all of us. In the long run, we are all involved into the promotion of a single brand - science.

For a small communication team to be successful, of great importance is the integration into the existing society of scientific PR and journalism. First, we are trying to get our scientists-experts and our topics involved into all the existing types of activities: festival of modern scientific cinema FANK, events of the Information centers on Nuclear energy, Russian National Festival of science „Science 0+“, Open laboratory. We organize the events in such a way that all the most successful formats of popularizing science should be present in the city and the scientists from the Krasnoyarsk science center should participate in them. Second, we interact with press services of other organizations. When we are unable to write about all the significant research of the Center, we can always ask our colleagues for help. A common press release or a comment in a press release of another organization aids in distributing efforts.

What I would like to advise to small communication teams is to establish priorities in their activity. Taking up all the directions will never bring success. So, it is better to decide what can be done with the best quality taking into account  the resources and abilities and to focus on it. Probably, it can be a monthly press release of scientific papers or interesting pages in social media.  In my opinion, for a big team, along with the obvious requirements of permanent presence in the information field and high quality content, non-standard approaches are also of importance. The leaders should not only consider usual formats, they should constantly suggest something new which can be borrowed by others. ».

The winners in five nominations were the following:

Nomination «Experiment» for the best work in the area of off-line communication:

1.    Karelian center RAS
2.    Skoltech
3.    FSC Biotechnologies

Nomination «Effect of presence» for the best promotion of scientists in media:

1.    Lomonosov Moscow State University
2.    Saint Petersburg State University
3.    Institute of Medical and Biological Problems RAS

Nomination «Superfluidity» for the best management of the internal communication channels:

1.    Siberian Branch RAS
2.    Cultural and educational Center of the V.L.Komarov Botanical Institute RAS
3.    Tomsk State University

Small grand-prix «Eureka!» for high quality standards of work for small communication teams (1-3 people) in scientific organizations:

1.    Krasnoyarsk Science Center SB RAS — the winner
2.    Karelian Science Center RAS
3.    Lomonosov Moscow State University

Grand-prix «Communication laboratory» for high quality standards of communication work in scientific organizations:  

1.    National Research University Higher School of Economics — the winner
2.    Skoltech
3.    Siberian Branch RAS.