idw - Special offers for press offices

Professional, targeted and selective - i.e. with direct and specific aim(s) - press work is what characterizes a press office worthy of the name. This must be the central aim in order to enable a press office to demonstrate its efficiency as well as dedication to service, to attract qualified staff, to acquire research commissions, and to maintain its good name and position in the midst of the keen competition existing among scientific and scholarly institutions. At the same time, there is a growing interest - in the media, the economy (national and well as international) and among teachers and private persons - in research and development as well as in the new scientific trends.

idw - - your platform for press work

Informationsdienst Wissenschaft e. V. promotes and supports the dialogue between research institutions and the public. For your work as press spokesman/woman or press information officer, you can utilize idw in a great variety of ways. For some years now, hundreds of press offices serving institutions of higher learning and research have been making good use of the facilities of idw - quickly, easily and at low cost, via the internet.

By means of the idw website, you inform thousands of users who are interested in scientific or scholarly topics, either personally or professionally. Among them are thousands of journalists who subscribe to the up-to-the-minute news published by idw. They appreciate your information from first hand and value as well your expertise for their own necessary research.

idw - the organization

Informationsdienst Wissenschaft e. V. is a non-profit organization established on 3rd June 1992 with its seat in Bayreuth. Scientific and scholarly institutions and organizations have the possibility to become members. Only members, i.e. associated institutions, may publish news within the idw system. The respective individual member is responsible for the information it publishes. Within the framework of your press and public relations work, you can also utilize other idw services and functions, such as our idw Calendar and our idw Address Book.

In order to become a member, your institution must fulfill certain criteria. Should you be interested in membership for your institution, please get in touch with the idw team at idw-Team.

Information on membership

Working with idw

idw offers a platform for the independent use of its member institutions. It works like this: selected persons, the press spokesman/woman as a rule, are granted access to the idw system. Texts, announcements and dates/events can then be placed online directly by these authorized persons, using simple menus. These persons can also subscribe to inquiries from journalists who are searching for experts and/or interview partners in the course of their own research on topics. The institution publishing the information is solely responsible for all contents of its news, announcements, etc. idw has no editorial board of its own. The idw team oversees and is responsible for only the technical operations of idw.

1. You have something to communicate: the press release

The news service of idw enlarges the reach of your public relations work in a big way.

With this service, you are in a position to send out your press releases to thousands of idw subscribers: direct and up-to-the-minute. Press releases are sorted according to fields of knowledge. Every subscriber chooses particular subjects and areas, and then receives exactly what was requested, i.e. only what is of interest, by email or RSS feed.

The procedure is easy and effective. You copy the text of your press release into a WWW form and idw forwards it immediately to the subscribers by email. You reach journalists of all media, scientists and scholars, business people and decision makers, students and private persons as well.

All press releases are stored in our idw archives. They form a constantly growing and comprehensive source for research, containing tens of thousands of texts to which all users have access. idw is visited regularly by all major search engines. Your news thus continues to appear under important key words or headwords, even after some time has passed.

The idw News Ticker puts together the news of the day in a clear, easy-to-read form. It is received and passed on by a large number of suppliers of information via internet - often automatically - every day. This represents an additional chance for your news to reach interested readers. A few examples (in German) of this:

Die Zeit

Medizin.de

2. You offer the expertise of your scientist, specialist, etc.: the idw Expert Finder

The idw Expert Finder makes the connection between your experts and the journalists looking for them - quickly, easily, directly.

Here is the idea and how it works: journalists are always searching for factual information and background knowledge from first hand, competent interview partners, a studio guest or a guest author. They direct their inquiries to idw by filling out a WWW form. This inquiry is then forwarded to the press offices of our associated member institutions - immediately and automatically. You can subscribe to these inquiries from journalists, i.e. specifically to those that have a direct reference or connection to the areas of focus and/or specialization of your particular institution. It is completely up to you how (and whether) you choose to reply to the inquiry, pass it on, etc.

Zu aktuellen Themen, die absehbar viele Journalisten zu Recherche bewegen werden, richtet der idw Expertenlisten ein. Die idw-Einrichtungen werden eingeladen, diejenigen eigenen Fachleuten dort einzutragen, die für Presseanfragen zum Thema bereit stehen. So wächst jede idw-Expertenliste fortlaufend und vereinfacht den Zugang enorm. Akkreditierte Journalisten können die Listen einsehen und direkt Kontakt zu den gewünschten Wissenschaftlern aufnehmen - schnell und einfach. Die idw-Expertenlisten werden weder gepflegt noch archiviert, sondern nach einer gewissen Zeit ausgeblendet.

Hundreds of press offices of universities and colleges, institutes and associations are at the service of our Expert Finder. For the journalists, this means a veritable and unique concentration of competence - a true compendium in which to find exactly what and who they need. What makes the Expert Finder especially interesting for journalists: it is so easy to use! They often receive a number of replies to one single inquiry.

For press and public relations offices, our idw Expert Finder extends the radius of their press work. The experts represent their respective institutions and are able to present these institutions as well as themselves to the public. They can also develop closer contacts to journalists who specialize in certain fields. Through this active cooperaation with journalists, you are able to gain insight into journalistic trends (= the interests of consumers). This in turn gives you market research free of cost - ideal for specific public relations work aimed at target groups and current demand.

3. You have something to announce: the idw Calendar

By means of our idw Calendar serving the scientific and scholarly world, you are in a position to publicize your upcoming special events and their dates and details.

You simply fill out a WWW form, entering your events and their scheduled dates - from press conference to symposium, from lecture series to university party. As with the press releases, all users can do their own personal search among the many thousands of entries, according to their topical and regional preferences - and then have it all sent to them regularly by email.

4. Show your strength(s): Address Book and Kiosk at idw

Many journalists call idw "the display window of science and scholarship" in the German-speaking areas of the world.

Be found by those who are looking for you: in our idw Address Book, all associated member institutions have entered their up-to-date contact data, including names of relevant people and their positions, postal address, telephone and fax numbers, email addresses, links to central internet websites, and so on. This database is used intensively by journalists in the course of their research, and so they land directly on you, so to speak...

The idw Kiosk is the ideal platform for institutions from the world of science and scholarship to present themselves on the internet. In this collection of links, you will find the links to research catalogs, trade journals, university magazines, and much more as well.

Getting in touch with the idw team

If you have questions or are interested in an associated membership, please contact us via service@idw-online.de or via ContactForm
or idw-Team. - alternatively, you can give us a call, too, of course!

In regard to technical problems or queries, please get in touch with the idw staff at the Technical University of Clausthal. For all other questions, the staff in Bayreuth or in Bochum will be glad to be of assistance to you.

Information on membership in Informationsdienst Wissenschaft e. V.

A mirror of research: what your colleagues think of idw

Would you like to know whether idw could be useful for your press and public relations work? Would you like to have an assessment that might be of help to you? Then just ask your colleagues! Go to idw-AddressBook and you will surely find colleagues near you who are ready and willing to report on their experience with idw.

Here are a few opinions:

Franz Miller, head of the press department, Frauenhofer-Gesellschaft, Munich:
"The idw is an instrument par excellence for fast communication between the world of science and scholarship and the media. Contacts to journalists have been gained whom we had not reached previously. Moreover, the inquiries from journalists give us important tips and information regarding the trend topics of the moment for the media. And lastly, the idw is a good mirror, reflecting as it does what is going on in German research. For this reason, many of our institutes make use of Informationsdienst Wissenschaft as an enrichment of their own communication with media."

Dr. Edmund von Pechmann, press spokesman, University of Greifswald:
"(Finding) Informationsdienst Wissenschaft is a stroke of luck!"

Ralf-Michael Weimar, Press Department, Ministry of Arts and Sciences and Research of North Rhein-Westphalia, Düsseldorf:
"The idw is a great help and meanwhile a permanent part of our press and public relations work. With Informationsdienst Wissenschaft, it is possible for us to inform those having a particular interest in certain topics, in addition to the usual channels of distribution. And, as one can see from the reactions, this service is met with great approval. I would especially like to emphasize the friendly, competent and always helpful manner in which you, the idw team, have always given me fast and uncomplicated assistance with small problems. In short, we cannot and will not do without Informationsdienst Wissenschaft in future!"