campusreview . com . au industry & research around the United Nations sustainable development goals , but largely around the world ’ s biggest or most pressing problems and how to address them .
That also aligns very closely with the research work carried out in universities . Most university research is about trying to address a problem of some kind , and then find a way to mitigate it .
The example I always give is the Petri dish approach towards solving a problem . So if you take COVID when that virus first came , nobody quite knew what its breakdown was in terms of its protein makeup . So the first thing you have to do is carry out genomic sequencing , and once you understand the make-up of the COVID virus , you can then start building the vaccine that we now have .
One of the key ones , AstraZeneca , was developed at Oxford university , so that kind of scientific method or approach is what we want to bring to addressing the world ’ s biggest problems , be they climate , food , water , energy , and so on : utilising that scientific method approach to both address the problem and then understand what research is being carried out to mitigate the problem .
The second difference is I don ’ t want to address a national or an Australian agenda . What we want to try and provide is borderless information . That means taking a global approach to seeing how each of those problems render in different parts of the world .
What might be a problem in Australia because of our economic development status and also our geography and climate , might be quite different in , say , Africa or South America or elsewhere . So it ’ s trying to take a more global or nuanced approach towards these problems , rather than seeing everything through a country perspective . Rather than launching a destination website and having to heavily market that site to attract readers we want to instead be a supplier or a wholesaler of content to other people ’ s websites , which means that we ’ re going to operate more like a wire agency , so sort of a ‘ research Reuters ’ for the world .
We tap into universities in 190 countries and approach them and ask if they will help us address the world ’ s pressing problems . We then have professional editors who will curate and produce that content into understandable , translated language , which can be widely understood , then package it up and push it out as widely as we can .
What will 360info offer readers ? Will it still have journalistic rigour ? We don ’ t sell on content or promote content to readers , our end users are desk editors around the world . So we have a tie-up with , for example , the Press Trust of India , which is based in Delhi , with the Asia Broadcasting Union based in Kuala Lumpur , with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong , the Jakarta Globe , and so on .
They register to get our content . They can then look at it and choose what they want , and they can either use the entire package that we might put out on , say , energy or they can use two or three elements from it . And they can actually edit it down to suit their requirements . Their responsibility is to market that content to an audience .
So that means we are not really concerned about how many clicks every story gets . It ’ s not a popularity contest in terms of putting forward stories that readers may like ; what we ’ re actually trying to do is put out content that we think is serious , is factual , addresses world problems , and our end users , which means all the other publications and broadcasters , can choose what they think is appropriate for their audience .
Our producers and editors will be translating everything into plain language as it were , but we ’ ve adopted The Economist and Reuters style guides , so it ’ ll be written in that kind of tone and language , which is simplified for a large audience . But it isn ’ t a tabloid audience as such .
We are going to be working with researchers to ensure that the ideas are made both intelligible and understandable , but that they remain true to the research . Every single author , once they have had their content edited and checked , will have it sent back to them for final approval because the content goes out under their name , and they need to approve of any changes that are made . It must remain true to their research .
Will the research be sourced or conducted exclusively by Monash , or are other universities across the world involved ? The vice chancellor , Margaret Gardner , who ’ s made this project possible , is very clear that this is an independent public service as it were , which is hosted at Monash University and initially funded by it .
But we are working with universities , both across Australia , across the Pacific and globally . Our initial focus will be on India
The real value of this service is to better demonstrate the excellent work that is carried out within universities .
and Southeast Asia , the Pacific and Australia . One of the great things about Monash is it also has overseas campuses in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur , and we will be working with colleagues in both those cities as well .
What are your hopes for the 360info service in the future ? We are going to spend the best part of the first year testing and developing our service just to make sure that it ’ s operating in the way that our customers want , who are publishers and broadcasters worldwide .
We ’ re also pushing our content out to a number of UN agencies , including the UNESCO network , the UN SDSN network , the UNDP network , and also to other multilateral organisations like the OECD , World Economic Forum and Asian Development Banks , plus into secondary schools , because we think this content will be very useful for students doing project work on issues such as global famine or poverty .
We ’ re looking at building hubs around the world who will work with us as one team as a global newsroom . We want to develop those offshore hubs so that they can contact researchers in their region , in their time zones and make sure we ’ re distributing our content widely across Europe , North America , Latin America and Africa , which are not our original areas of focus .
We do want to develop partnerships into Europe , North America , and elsewhere in time , and particularly into Africa and Latin America , which is very difficult to get into . We think once we ’ ve got some runs on the board , we ’ ll have a better chance at finding ways to get into those markets as well . I think that will take the best part of three years to develop .
We think the real value of this service is to better demonstrate to the wider community the excellent work that is carried out within universities , which is about addressing society ’ s problems and offering practical solutions as to how we can address those problems . I think it is going to be a great way of just showing the value of universities and the research that ’ s carried out within them . ■
21