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Addgene Executive director, Joanne Kamens, recently participated in a Reddit AMA (short for “Ask Me Anything”) on r/Science. You can see some of Joanne’s comments on the AMA process below, but we also wanted to share some thoughts on why we decided to do an AMA in the first place and give you some reasons why you should consider using Reddit to share your science. While Reddit isn’t for everyone, particularly if you’re more interested in selling a product than communicating your ideas with people or discussing science, it is a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader and have real conversations with other scientists.

Researchers in developing countries often find themselves on the front lines of emerging global challenges. However, these same researchers face significant barriers to scientific discovery and career development. They are working with limited resources but limitless potential. We see it as part of our mission to enable all researchers and are proud to announce that we are teaming up with Seeding Labs to better serve those in developing countries.

Have you ever been reading a paper and thought to yourself, “Oh! This plasmid would be perfect for my next experiment!” but were unable to find the plasmid at Addgene? Well, we’re here to help with our Suggest a Plasmid Campaign.

With many interesting articles coming out in a myriad of journals every week, it can sometimes be difficult for great work to gain prominence among all the noise. Scientists have a variety of metrics they can use to evaluate the impact of their work (H-index for instance), but these rely upon other researchers being able to find their publications in the first place. As a curator of the thousands of amazing plasmid technologies contributed by our depositors, Addgene strives to make it easier for you to find the plasmids and publications relevant to your research interests. We do this by promoting citation, supporting sophisticated search, and curating plasmid collections.

Having never been to China myself, I was pleased to be able to participate when the organizers of the Canton Nucleic Acids Forum (CNAF) 2015 conference invited me to attend and speak about Addgene’s experience helping scientists share plasmids, especially those of the CRISPR variety (see slides from my talk below). Largely organized by Dmitry Samarsky, and a very welcoming team from China’s Ribobio, the illustrious speaker list attracted a host of sponsors based all over the world. With three Nobel Prize winners, one NIH Director and a co-founder of BGI-China presenting, it’s no wonder it was attended by over 300 Chinese scientists eager to hear current findings in nucleic acid science. I was delighted to see that the majority of attendees were scientists still working at the bench. It was a fantastic opportunity to talk to so many scientists who were potential Addgene requestors and depositors. China is in one of the top 10 countries in number of plasmid requests from Addgene.

Check out Joanne's Reddit AMA