Curated by professional editors, The Conversation offers informed commentary and debate on the issues affecting our world. Plus a Plain English guide to the latest developments and discoveries from the university and research sector.
We publish trustworthy and informative articles written by academic experts for the general public and edited by our team of journalists.
On this website (and through distribution of our articles to thousands of news outlets worldwide), you’ll find explanatory journalism on the events, discoveries and issues that matter today. Our articles share researchers’ expertise in policy, science, health, economics, education, history, ethics and most every subject studied in colleges and universities. Some articles offer practical advice grounded in research, while others simply provide authoritative answers to questions that sparked our curiosity.
The Conversation U.S. is part of a global group of news organizations founded in Australia in 2011 by Andrew Jaspan, a former newspaper editor who wanted to encourage academics to engage with the public, and Jack Rejtman. Jaspan led the U.S. launch in October 2014. Our main newsroom is in Boston, with editors working remotely in cities across the country.
There are also editions in Africa, Australia, Canada, France, Indonesia, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom.
It’s a little unclear who writes for phys.org from my quick scan of the website it looks like staff writers take published journal articles kinda make them easier to read and add some journalistic flair. I could be wrong tho the author information isnt easy to find on mobile.
Usually each article in the conversation is written by the authors of the journal article that specific The Conversation article is about, if that makes sense. It’s basically a good way for high impact academic papers to reach a ‘lay’ audience. Editing of the conversation article is done staff writers but I’m pretty sure the academic has the final say in publishing. I don’t think it’s a perfect system as it relies on the peer review of the journal the original paper is published in to provide credibility of the methodology but it’s kinda the best we have currently.