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This study aims to explore the potential areas of overlap and reinforcement between critical science literacy and information literacy. As an awareness of the limitations of traditional definitions of scientific literacy and traditional science instruction has grown, there is an opportunity to apply a critical lens to science and IL.

The paper examines the literature of critical scientific literacy and connects it to information literacy practices.

There is considerable room for librarians to foster and support critical scientific literacy in parallel with information literacy. Both literacies align significantly.

IL for students in the sciences can and should take a more critical approach to instruction to support scientific literacy as well as ILI.

Traditional science literacy has had relatively limited impact perhaps, but critical science literacy offers a way to construct science literacy as a meaningful engagement; combining it with critical approaches to information literacy offers the opportunity to reinforce both skills.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge librarians to reconceptualize their professional self-image and practice so that it more closely aligns with the information science discipline that is part of the Masters of Library and Information Science degree.

This column is primarily theoretical and philosophical but also draws on the author’s observations of trends and patterns in both librarianship and changes in information needs in recent years.

Urgent, high-cost information needs created by COVID-19 and climate change coexist in a reality where technological change has made traditional librarian roles and functions less critical. By developing their information science skills and strengthening their professional identity as information scientists, librarians have the opportunity to address the urgent information needs of the day while remaining highly relevant professionals.

Librarians will need to strengthen their science-related skills and knowledge and begin to promote themselves as information scientists.

Librarians are in a position to make a meaningful contribution to two of the most pressing challenges of the day, climate change and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper is relevant to all librarians at any stage of their career. It will help them to reflect on both their skillset and career path and to make any needed adjustments so that they can remain relevant in a volatile and demanding information environment.

This chapter narrows the focus of inclusive practices and principles in literacy education to find the role that science, combined with literature can play in helping children of all abilities. Through the use of implicit and explicit language with active, social, hands-on inquiry related to science concepts and procedures children can construct new knowledge that leads to a firmer understanding of the world in which they live. The chapter demonstrates how children of all backgrounds and needs can work with others through their own investigations, and the guidance of an educator to develop, implement and present findings of scientific investigations that also develop literacy skills. The chapter also addresses the professional responsibility of educators to acknowledge and respect individual curiosity, growth, culture and diversity to plan thoughtfully, to use science language that is acceptable and understandable for children of different abilities and enhance scientific knowledge and literacy through the use of literature that evokes the sense of wonder within the children.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate a blended pedagogical approach to Scientific Writing, and assess its effectiveness in improving students’ writing skills and scientific literacy. Effective writing is vital to the dissemination of scientific information and a critical skill for undergraduate science students. Various pedagogical strategies have been successful in improving writing skills and developing scientific literacy.

Mean scores on draft and revision assignments were examined longitudinally (2013 cohort, n=51) and across cohorts (2011, 2012, and 2013; combined n=94). Domain-specific composite scores were calculated from survey items addressing students’ self-perceptions of knowledge (K), general and scientific writing skills (GWS and SWS), and attitudes (A) related to scientific literacy. Changes in composite scores were analyzed using paired t-tests, and cross-cohort differences were examined via MANOVAs (SPSS, p < 0.05).

Mean scores on revisions following peer review and instructor feedback were significantly higher than those for drafts. Students ' perceptions of their K, GWS, SWS, and A increased significantly over the semester in the 2013 cohort, and were significantly higher in the 2013 cohort than those for the two earlier cohorts. Students identified peer reviews, revisions and other writing assignments, and literature searches as effective learning strategies.

One limitation of the study was that the authors lacked a control group for comparison. Pre-course survey data were only available for the 2013 cohort, and these data were incomplete, particularly with regard to perceptions of attitudes toward science and writing. Instructor feedback was not separated from that obtained through peer review. Thus, it was not possible to determine their respective impacts on students’ scores on revision assignments. Also, the number of writing assignments and peer reviews completed varied among the three cohorts enrolled in Scientific Writing.

Using a blended approach to teaching scientific writing significantly improved students’ writing skills and enhanced their perceptions regarding their knowledge, skills, and abilities related to science and writing. Students identified peer reviews, writing abstracts, and outlining an Introduction as most helpful in improving their SWS. They identified the final peer review, the revision assignment of the Results section, literature searches, and poster presentations of research as most helpful in improving their scientific knowledge and understanding. Engaging students in a variety of pedagogical strategies was successful in achieving specific learning outcomes in an undergraduate human physiology course.

The approach to peer review was more structured than those of previous studies. Engaging students with a variety of teaching and learning strategies improved both writing skills and scientific literacy in undergraduate human physiology.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the challenges of scientific literacy that scientific journalism can promote or suppress as a scientific dissemination activity. To ensure that universities transfer knowledge to society, this vital activity is studied from the perspectives of their stakeholders: professors, researchers, newspaper directors and heads of research areas of two Mexican universities.

From a participatory action research perspective that consisted in applying semi-structured interviews, this study was conducted in two public universities in Chihuahua, Mexico. The group of participants constituted of a random sample of 90 Mexican professors, taken from a population of 246 subjects with the status of national researchers (confidence level = 95 per cent; margin of error = 5 per cent; P/Q correlation = 90 / 10 per cent), in addition to six local newspaper executives and eight research managers at participating universities.

Evidence suggests that scientific dissemination has a low social impact, its recognition by universities and scientific evaluation institutions is limited, and the act of making scientific content accessible to the general public is highly complex, especially when it comes to content related to the exact sciences. These results are predictable under the complex models that evaluate scientific production, because the measurement indicators that define scientific competitiveness levels prioritize specific scientific products other than dissemination products such as newspaper articles.

Data were collected from two Mexican public universities under the implication that the behavior identified through data analysis can occur in other similar environments. Although a participatory action research perspective was assumed, and because this research of a projective nature can be a part of a larger research, no particular actions or interventions were planned or executed, apart from the interviews that aimed to collect data that emerged from participants’ own practice and experiences on the issues studied. Further research can consist of developing forward-looking actions that can contribute to the development of scientific literacy, as well as to the exploration and solution of the issues identified through participants’ own practice.

One of the social roles of universities is to ensure that scientific knowledge reaches all citizens. However, there are not sufficient studies regarding scientific dissemination, especially from the perspective of professors as generators of scientific knowledge, newspaper directors and heads of research areas.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The role of data literacy is discussed in the light of such activities as data a quality, data management, data curation, and data citation. The differing terms and their relationship to the most important literacies are examined. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

By stressing the importance of data literacy in fulfilling the mission of the contemporary academic library, the paper centres on information literacy, while the characteristics of other relevant literacies are also examined. The content of data literacy education is explained in the context of data-related activities.

It can be concluded that there is a need for data literacy and it is advantageous to have a unified terminology. Data literacy can be offered both to researchers, who need to become data literate science workers and have the goal to educate data management professionals. Several lists of competencies contain important skills and abilities, many of them indicating the close relationship between data literacy and information literacy. It is vital to take a critical stance on hopes and fears, related to the promises of widespread ability of (big) data.

The paper intends to be an add-on to the body of knowledge about information literacy and other literacies in the light of research data and data literacy.

Seeking online bilingual scientific information is a key aspect of bilingual scientific Web literacy – abilities to engage critically with science on the Web using two languages. This study aims to determine whether factors such as age, education major, gender and type of school attended at secondary level (monolingual, bilingual, trilingual) influence undergraduates’ ability to search online Spanish-English bilingual scientific information.

The participants in this study were 60 students (43 females and 17 males, 18–25 years old) enrolled in a university bilingual science course at a high-ranked Colombian university. They were asked to complete two tasks in which they had to seek online scientific information in Spanish and in English and post their responses on the Web application, Padlet^® (padlet.com).

Results indicate that students’ gender and age influence their academic performance in both tasks and level of originality in using information obtained via the Web, respectively. Moreover, the “scientific journal” was the top source of online information from which participants sought most information to complete both tasks.

People are becoming increasingly accustomed to seeking and sharing online scientific information to support points of view and make decisions. However, it is not known which factors influence students’ ability to seek online first language-English bilingual scientific information in countries where English is the second or foreign language.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of government supervision and market environment on farmers' pesticide application behavior, as well as the intermediary effect of farmers' literacy, and investigate the substitution effect between government supervision and market environment.

In this paper, logit and Poisson regression models were used to investigate the comprehensive impact of government supervision and market environment on farmers' pesticide application behavior, and the intermediary effect model is used to examine the intermediary effect of farmers' literacy.

Government supervision is an important constraint for the formation of individual behavior paradigm, but it has both positive and negative effects, depending on different instruments. The market subject constraint and market incentive are two important ways that the market environment affects Chinese farmers' pesticide application behavior. Farmers' literacy plays a partial mediating role in the influencing mechanism of government and market factors. The government supervision and market environment, two different constraint forces, have substitution effects in the process of regulating farmers' pesticide application behavior.

In the influence mechanism, farmers' literacy, such as values, responsibilities and skill requirement related to scientific pesticide use, was included into the analysis framework as intermediary variables. The authors found that government supervision and market environment not only directly affect farmers' pesticide application behavior but also indirectly affect farmers' pesticide application behavior through farmers' literacy.

The paper seeks to introduce the “critical open access literacy” construct as a holistic approach to confront the challenges in open access (OA) as a dimension of scholarly communication.

The paper first introduces the concepts of information literacy (IL) and OA in the context of transformations in the scholarly information environment. Via a theoretical-analytical exercise on the basis of a literature review of the intersections between the two concepts and of the criticisms of OA, the paper discusses the role of critical IL in addressing the challenges in OA and lays the theoretical-conceptual groundwork for the critical OA literacy construct.

The structural nature of the challenges and transformations in the scholarly information environment require new foci and pedagogical practices in library and information studies. A more holistic, critical and integrative approach to OA is warranted, which could effectively be achieved through the re-conceptualization of IL.

The paper specifies the avenues for putting the theoretical conceptualizations of critical OA literacy into practice by identifying possible foci for IL instruction alongside a transformed role for librarians.

The paper extends deliberations on the role of critical IL for scholarly communication and attempts to advance the research fields of the two domains by proposing a new construct situated at the junction of OA and IL.