Later this month, The Conversation Canada will celebrate its seventh anniversary. Since we launched, almost 7,500 authors have provided readers with expert-based news analyses and explanatory journalism.

In the vernacular of academia, researchers who explain their work and expertise outside of the walls of a university are doing “public scholarship.” The Conversation is one of the largest platforms for public scholarship in the world. Together, we work with academics to provide the public with articles that can help people make informed decisions. And for the most part, our readers appreciate the knowledge they gain from our stories.

But then there are the trolls.

We know from our author surveys that more than a quarter of our authors receive “toxic comments” from people after writing for The Conversation. Abuse from a minority of readers is something that infects all media sites and it has grown worse as our society becomes increasingly polarized. For some of our authors, the abuse gets to the point that they have said they won’t write for us again.

What can be done to mitigate the impacts of online abuse? That will be the subject of a presentation that I’ll be part of this Friday at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the largest gathering of academics in Canada being held this year at McGill University. I’ll be on stage with four academics who research the issue of online harassment: Jaigris Hodson of Royal Roads University, Sibo Chen of Toronto Metropolitan University, Chris Tenove of the University of British Columbia and Victoria O’Meara of the University of Leicester.

I know many of our newsletter subscribers may be attending Congress and if so, I hope you can join our session. For those of you who aren’t academics, I wanted to leave you with a selection of some really great reads for your weekend pleasure. The scope and depth of the stories we produce in conjunction with academics – both in Canada and around the world – makes for interesting and informative journalism.

Have a great weekend and we’ll be back in your Inbox on Monday.