On March 4th,2015, the National Publication Foundation unveiled the list of projects chosen to receive funding in 2015, and the project “Lectures on Science Popularization by 100 Academicians and Experts” from Multimedia Press, The Open University of China (OUC), was among those chosen. The National Publication Foundation is the third largest fund set up by the state, following the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Social Sciences Fund. It mainly subsidizes the publishing of books and a few electronic audio-visual products with cultural inheritance and preservation value.
In order to implement the spirit of the 18th CPC Congress, reinforce national cultural creative vitality, and comprehensively promote the scientific and cultural quality of all citizens, as well as to create chances for the general public to learn from top scientific talents, the OUC and the Academic Division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) applied their respective advantages and mutually planned a series of programmes entitled “Science and China: Lectures by Academicians and Experts”, which was produced and edited by the OUC Multimedia Press, and published under the name “Lectures on Science Popularization by 100 Academicians and Experts”.
The idea for “Science and China: Lectures by Academicians and Experts” stemmed from the two developments. First was the “Science and China: Academicians and Experts Tour Lectures” event initiated by the CAS and promoted by the six ministries and commissions: the CAS, the Ministry of Education, the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the China Association for Science and Technology in 2003. The tour lectures team, composed of a good number of scientists including famous academicians and academic leaders, was designed to promote science popularization education among the general public by way of a speaking tour. The second was the project “OUC Open Forum” introduced by the OUC in 2012. “OUC Open Forum” was a series of video lecture courses aimed at the public, which was another means for the OUC to practice its core concepts of ”Openness, Responsibility, Quality, Diversity, and Internationalization” and to explore ways to provide public education. In light of the high conformity of the goals and concepts of the two projects, the Academic Divisions of the CAS and the OUC officially launched their cooperation on the project “Science and China: Lectures by Academicians and Experts” in 2013, in the hope of producing and broadcasting the latest research results in science and technology in China to benefit the public, utilizing the latest technology.
By utilizing the latest technology of the digital era, “Lectures on Science Popularization by 100 Academicians and Experts“, as the integration of excellent resources of the series “Science and China: Lectures by Academicians and Experts”, will be available via video-on-demand for the general public for free via the network platforms of the CAS and the OUC as well as non-profit broadcasting through CETV. In addition, the programme will be published as an electronic publication (available on USB flash drive) so as to enable individuals to view the programme and to allow institutional users to spread the programme on such digital media as the video websites, digital libraries, CATVs, and all kinds of digital learning platforms.
The project of publishing “Lectures on Science Popularization by 100 Academicians and Experts” is planned to be finished by the end of 2015. The publications will fill a gap in high-end video resources on popular sciences in China.
By Che Yan from the OUC