Alice Fleerackers - Scholarly Communications Lab

Alice Fleerackers (she/her) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC’s) School of Journalism, Writing and Media and at Simon Fraser University’s (SFU’s) ScholCommLab. Currently, she is also a Visiting Associate at Bournemouth University’s Centre for Science, Health and Data Communication Research. Her research focuses on the intersections of health and science journalism, science communication, and scholarly communication and is funded by a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship.

Alice has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Master’s in Publishing from SFU. She is also a freelance science writer, an instructor at UBC’s School of Public and Population Health, and a co-chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Committee for the Public Communication of Science and Technology Network (PCST). Find her on Twitter at @FleerackersA.

Alice is grateful to live and work in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Select Publications

Marshall, M. B., Pinfield, S., Abbott, P., Cox, A., Alperin, J. P., Barata, G., Chtena, N., Dorsch, I., Fleerackers, A., Oliveira, M., & Peters, I. (2024). The impact of COVID-19 on the debate on open science: An analysis of expert opinion. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xy874

Fleerackers, A., Shores, K., Chtena, N., & Alperin, J. P. (2024). Unreviewed science in the news: The evolution of preprint media coverage from 2014-2021. Quantitative Science Studies, 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00282

Maggio, L. A., Céspedes, L., Fleerackers, A., & Royan, R. (2024). ‘My doctor self and my human self’: A qualitative study of physicians’ presentation of self on social media. Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.15384

Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). Why do health professionals create content on social media? Uses and Gratifications of Egyptian “physician vloggers” on YouTube. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 12(2), 188–210. https://www.thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/1287

Chtena, N., Alperin, J. P., Morales, E., Fleerackers, A., Dorsch, I., Pinfield, S., & Simard, M.-A. (2023). The neglect of equity and inclusion in open science policies of Europe and the Americas. SciELO Preprints. https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.7366

Maggio, L. A., Céspedes, L., Fleerackers, A., & Royan, R. (2023). “My doctor self and my human self”: A qualitative study of physicians’ presentation of self on social media. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.27.23296214

Moorhead, L. L., Fleerackers, A., & Maggio, L. (2023). “It’s my job”: a qualitative study of the mediatization of science within the scientist-journalist relationship. Journal of Science Communication, 22(4), A05. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.22040205

Fleerackers, A., Chtena, N., Oliveira, M., Dorsch, I., Pinfield, S., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). Open data journalism: A narrative synthesis of how, when, and why data journalists use open data sources. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/wh8jx

Fleerackers, A., Chtena, N., Pinfield, S., Alperin, J. P., Barata, G., Oliveira, M., & Peters, I. (2023). Making science public: a review of journalists’ use of Open Science research [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]. F1000Research. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.133710.1

Alperin, J. P., Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., & Haustein, S. (2023). Second-order citations in altmetrics: a case study analyzing the audiences of COVID-19 research in the news and on social media. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.05.535734

Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). “Influencers” or “doctors”? Physicians’ presentation of self in Youtube and Facebook videos. International Journal of Communication, 17(0), 24. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/19700

Ratcliff, C. L., Fleerackers, A., Wicke, R., Harvill, B., King, A. J., & Jensen, J. D. (2023). Framing COVID-19 preprint research as uncertain: a mixed-method study of public reactions. Health Communication, 0(0), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2164954

Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. (2022). Academic explanatory journalism and emerging COVID-19 science: how social media accounts amplify The Conversation’s preprint coverage. Media International Australia, 1329878X221145022. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X221145022

Fleerackers, A., Moorhead, L. L., Maggio, L. A., Fagan, K., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Science in motion: A qualitative analysis of journalists’ use and perception of preprints. PLOS ONE, 17(11), e0277769. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277769

Fleerackers, A., Nehring, L., Maggio, L. A., Enkhbayar, A., Moorhead, L., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data. Scientometrics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04510-7

Fleerackers, A. (2022). A focus on science communication at #ICA22. Journal of Science Communication, 21(6), R01. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21060601

Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Doctors on YouTube: Exploring the Uses and Gratifications of Health Vloggers. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/pb47w

Morales, E., Kalir, J. H., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2022). Using social annotation to construct knowledge with others: A case study across undergraduate courses. F1000Research. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.109525.2

Maggio, L. A., & Fleerackers, A. (2022). Preprints in health professions education: raising awareness and shifting culture. Academic Medicine, 10.1097/ACM.0000000000005001. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000005001

Riedlinger, M., Fleerackers, A., Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Guenther, L., Joubert, M., & Osman, K. (2021). The conversation, ten years on: assessing the impact of a unique scholarly publishing initiative. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12130

Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Moorhead, L., Ahmed, R., & Alperin, J. P. (2021). Communicating scientific uncertainty in an age of COVID-19: an investigation into the use of preprints by digital media outlets. Health Communication, 1–13. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1864892

Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Moorhead, L., Ahmed, R., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). Replication Data for: Communicating scientific uncertainty in an age of COVID-19. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WG9VDS

Kalir, J. H., Morales, E., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). “When I saw my peers annotating”: Student perceptions of social annotation for learning in multiple courses. Information and Learning Sciences, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-12-2019-0128

Matthias, L., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). Framing science: How opioid research is presented in online news media. Frontiers in Communication, 5(64). https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00064

Fleerackers, A., & Albrecht, C. (2019). You-niversity? Perceptions on the public effectiveness of university knowledge production. 13.