Keith’s note: Last night I subscribed to NASA Tech Briefs magazine. Within a few minutes I got 5 spam emails asking me if I wanted to subscribe to NASA Tech Briefs magazine – which is what I just did.
This publication has always perplexed me since NASA pays little or no attention to it. The NASA Office of the Chief Technologist web page makes no mention of this magazine – and NASA TechBriefs makes no mention of NASA OCT on its website. This seems to be a wasted opportunity: an overtly NASA-branded magazine about new technology and spinoffs that is ignored by NASA.
NASA Tech Briefs also seems to have not totally gotten the social media thing down yet. They have a Twitter account @NASATechBriefs – but the last time it tweeted was on 23 June 2011 – in fact there were only 10 tweets during the entire year of 2011. Gee, I would think that with all of NASA’s cool stuff that the magazine would have a little more than this to tweet about. Their Facebook page is inert.
– Why Does NASA Ignore NASA Tech Briefs?, earlier post
– Stealth “NASA” Future Technology Contest, earlier post
– Official NASA Publication Seeks Opinions On Gun Control, earlier post
Keith,
Thank you for bringing the NASA Tech Briefs circumstances to our attention. I’ve been a NASA Tech Brief subscriber since the 1st editions were published and have seen how the content has changed over the decades.
Now it’s clear why NASA Tech Briefs are so far away from what they used to be, disconnected from NASA and in to off-topics like gun control. While there are good things about Tech Briefs, they’ve unfortunately added a sleeze-factor to the publication.
The bottom line appears to be that the NASA name is being used by Mucchetti, Pramberger, Schnirring and the Tech Briefs Media Group to leverage the NASA brand name, without proper sanctions (although they do have a Disclaimer tucked in on a page) to amplify their subscription levels. Apparently this works for them, seeing as they claim 400,000 readers. But, we’re all being gamed in the process. Aren’t we all sick of being gamed?
I want to strongly underscore what npng has written. NASA Tech Briefs have changed a lot over the years. Still interesting, but I have to wonder what exactly they have to do with NASA anymore. This is a publication that, as you say Keith, has no evident connection to NASA except for the name. I believe it used to be a joint venture between NASA and the Tech Briefs media group, but it isn’t clear that’s the case anymore. It takes paid advertising (which a NASA publication would certainly not), so it can’t be a NASA publication. In fact, the disclaimer explicitly admits that. But yet they use an official NASA logo. Not clear how they can get away with that.
This all being the case, it makes some sense that NASA takes a hands-off attitude towards it.
Hallie,
NASA Tech Briefs has been published as a partnership between NASA and Tech Briefs Media Group (TBMG) since 1985. Since that time, the magazine has accepted advertising because that is how it is supported. Not a single penny of taxpayer money goes towards the publication; it it self-supporting and has been for nearly three decades. Before TBMG became involved, the magazine had a small circulation (with a waiting list of engineers who wanted to receive it but couldn’t because of a govt budget ceiling) and was only published quarterly. Today, it is published monthly in both print and digital formats and is the largest-circulation design engineering magazine, with a primary subscriber base of 190,000 and a total readership surpassing 400,000. Its primary mission has remained the same since day one: to report on new technologies and innovations coming out of the NASA field centers and its contractors & partners that could be applied by engineers and entrepreneurs to develop new and better commerical products in a wide range of fields. It also serves to expand knowledge in the engineering field and in some cases helps NASA identify potential partners to meet its mission requirements.
If you are going to be allowed to use the official NASA logo then you really need to make the magazine and website more relevant to what NASA does. Right now space technology is all but invisible on your site.
If you go to the “Tech Briefs” section of the Web site you will find many articles on space technologies. But again, the primary focus is on technology that has potential use here on Earth, in not only the aerospace industry but also medical, automotive, electronics, etc.
When you file New Technology Reports at a center, some subset is selected to be published in NTB. It’s not real clear how that selection process works (I’ve never really asked), but being selected does result in a small cash payment from NASA (Inventions and Contributions Board, I believe) to the inventors/technologists who were on the report.
And, the content of NTB has changed somewhat since the 1980s. I remember all those articles about *alinement* jigs and fixtures to *aline* things (some sort of odd improved NASA spelling of align, I figured. It’s also changed from a thickish non-glossy stock to a thinner glossy stock, but as I recall, it’s always had ads in it of some sort. And the whole idea of the short abstract and then you can write or ask for the TSB (Supporting docs) has been there.
Of course, these days, since NASA does space, and space is covered by ITAR and other export laws, the TSB may not have a lot of useful content. But at least it has the names of the folks who did the work, so you can always email or call them.