Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

The original idea of idw was to provide experts for journalists. Using the American ProfNet as example, the press officers of University of Bayreuth, Ruhr University Bochum and Clausthal University of Technology (TUC), in collaboration with the Computing Centre of TUC, developed a concept for a German language network, by means of the new media. The concept was technically implemented by the staff of the Computing Centre of the Clausthal University of Technology. A total of eleven staff members in Bayreuth, Bochum and Clausthal are responsible for software development of the idw user interface, user support and content editorial.

The information in idw can be accessed free of charge - either directly on idw’s www pages, or by using an individually configurable RSS feed or as an e-mail subscriber. Any user can request the information covering the topics and regions which interest him. All idw services can be used free of cost - the current news ticker, the news app, the science calendar, research in the archive (which contains more than 480,000 press releases), and the list of institutions linked to idw. idw also provides journalists with instruments for contacting experts, and maintains a database with science photos.

The members' press offices have various possibilities of communicating with journalists. Membership is only offered to German or foreign institutions which perform research or teaching, or which support science or are active in science in some other way.

In November 2022, idw opened a Mastodon instance, wisskomm.social, named after science communication (Wissenschaftskommunikation).