Within the discipline of Developmental Biology, there exist several communities. The Society of Developmental Biology is responsible for the planning and presentation of seminars. There is an annual seminar featuring key speakers and the sharing of new discoveries made within the field. Regional meetings and conferences are also planned by this society. Featured on their website are links to various grant applications, recent publications, and collaborative resources for learning. This serves as a place for professionals within Developmental Biology to give and receive insights about recent innovations. Members of this community (website) can gain connections to the most pertinent resources and information in the field today.
In addition to The Society of Developmental Biology, there is a website titled: “The Node: the community site for developmental biologists.” This serves as a more informal means of communication for developmental biologists, however its origins are of a formal nature as, “The Node was launched in June 2010 by Development, a leading research journal in the field of developmental biology, and its publisher, The Company of Biologists, as a non-commercial information resource and community site for the developmental biology community.” The Node features publications of the most recent research articles and developments within this discipline.
A large portion of the communication between developmental biologists is through the publication and reading of research papers. Research papers can be found and read via scholarly journals, university library databases, large-scale databases, and most any website for Developmental Biology (e.g. The Node or The Society of Developmental Biology). Research papers serve as a form of communication as they are necessary when engaging in research of ones own. To receive merit and credibility, researchers must be up to date on current discoveries so as to be sure their own studies do not either repeat or utilize another’s research without complete understanding. There exists a constant cycle of citing past research in new research papers while also being cited by other research paper. Each paper serves as a new development while also references past ones. Each paper is connected to many other papers. Therefore, research forms a very broad chain of ideas and it becomes essential to remain in up-to-date on all research by reading and writing.
Communication conventions of the Developmental Biology discipline are conventional to that of the sciences. Because most communication takes place through the reading and writing of research papers, the standards of rhetorical are very professional. It can be expressed that scientific writing has its own language. This is because it can be assumed that those who read such papers have a very in-depth understanding of the vocabulary. For example, many proteins researched are largely familiar to developmental biologists allowing for a style of writing that does not include definition or summary of terms. In fact, many proteins and experimental techniques are abbreviated in research publications because it is expected that the reader is already informed of them.
Developmental Biology: The Information Paradigm 