Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work, 2nd Edition
- Length: 416 pages
- Edition: 2
- Language: English
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication Date: 2021-08-17
- ISBN-10: 019757131X
- ISBN-13: 9780197571316
- Sales Rank: #1942803 (See Top 100 Books)
Explaining Researchis the ultimate guide for scientists, engineers, and other professionals seeking to share their life’s work effectively with important lay and scientific audiences. It offers a multitude of practical communication tools and techniques for writing, giving talks, creating
visuals, using social media, and publicizing research advances.
Career success depends on more than conducting incisive experiments and publishing papers in top journals. Researchers must also know how to explain their work to key audiences, such as colleagues, potential collaborators, officers in funding agencies and from foundations, donors, institutional
leaders, corporate partners, students, legislators, journalists, and the general public.
Explaining Research is the most comprehensive guide for science and engineering communication. In this new edition, leading research communicator Dennis Meredith provides readers with the practical tools and techniques scientists and engineers need to reach their audiences effectively. The updated
and expanded chapters include a wealth of insights from leading science journalists and research communicators.
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Foreword to the Second Edition
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Explaining Your Research Is a Professional Necessity
Lay-level explanations advance your research
Media coverage can affect citations
Attention affects your funding
Communication tools are key to effective research, teaching
Science and engineering lack a culture of explanation
Meeting the demands of public science
You are a media outlet!
Explaining your work protects you professionally
But will you be pegged as a publicity hound?
Will explaining your work detract from your professional duties?
Part I Learning a New Communication Paradigm
1. Understand Your Audiences
They see you as a prestigious hero
Appreciate that they are need-to-knowers
They are not empty information buckets
Communicate within their values and theories
Limit their conceptual cargo
Tell them about the other side
You don’t have to be a super-scientist
Learn to speak lay language
Communicate with the active audience
Pop your perceptual and ego bubbles
2. Plan Your Research Communication Strategy
Decide on your tactical goal
Free yourself from suspicion and risk
Develop a “do-tell” strategy
Develop a strategy of synergy
Learn communication skills
Manage the trust portfolio
Use altmetrics to your advantage
Also (ugh!) market yourself
You are media!
Apply your communication strategy to your professional publications
Part II Effectively Reaching Your Peers
3. Give Compelling Talks
Free yourself from text
Organize your talk to grab and inform
Give your audiences what they want
Make your talk memorable
Optimize text slides
Use compelling visuals
Develop slide savvy
Create memorable models, demos, and pass-arounds
Use good stagecraft
Practice produces powerful persuasion
Manage questions
Synergize your effort
4. Develop Informative, Engaging Visuals
Invest in evergreen visuals for multiple uses
Create graphs and tables that reveal the data
Illustrate and animate your work
Consider creating VR or AR apps
5. Create Effective Poster Presentations
Create an accessible design
Tighten text, create grabber graphics
Positively present your poster
6. Write Clear Research Explanations
Use thrifty words
Make sentences sing
Write actively
Write for the “reading eye”
Proofrede, prufread, proofreed!
7. Build a Quality Website
Why a quality website?
Plan your website
Strategize your website
Get a memorable URL
Design a user-friendly website
Follow design principles
Write for the Web
Feature compelling content
Make your site a go-to resource
Be image conscious
Conduct usability testing
Keep your site fresh
Market your site
Part III Engaging Lay Audiences
8. Develop Your Lay-Level Research Communication Strategy
First, protect your publication
Learn your institution’s communication culture, policies
Tell your whole research story
Find popular “hooks”
Share your process and even failures
Fit into your institution’s mission . . . or not
Find out what your funding agency expects
Become an expert resource
Seek to “dominate the news space”
9. The Essential News Release
The many types of news releases
News releases have many uses
10. Craft Releases That Tell Your Research Story
Start early!
Write a clear, compelling headline
Grab with the lede
Place the nut graf high
Place the news peg high
Use an inverted pyramid organization
Make explanations concise
Include caveats about your findings
Offer a broader perspective
Properly credit participants
Credit funding sources
Make titles and affiliations unobtrusive
Offer “real” quotes
Avoid hype words
Attribute subjective statements
Be reader friendly with technical terms
Include comparative measures
Invent vivid metaphors, analogies, and descriptions
Make a clear conflict-of-interest statement
Produce compelling visuals
Explain the work comprehensively
Adapt the release for the Web
Create a media kit
11. Target Releases to Key Audiences
Remember the internal media
Target the trade media
Do not spam
Do not flack releases
Offer advice on distribution
Follow news release etiquette
Advertise your clippings
Heed these cautions!
12. Produce Effective Research Photography
Control your images
Hire a good photographer
Protect your photo rights
Prepare for the shoot
Ask questions first, shoot later
Understand the review process
Think Web
Know the ethics of Photoshopping
Produce personable people pics
Make the most of a studio shoot
Embed your photographer
Create online image galleries
Create 360-degree panoramas
13. Produce Informative Research Videos
Consider the entire video spectrum
Quality always counts
Check out the good, the bad, the ugly
Create informative technical videos
Make dynamic news videos
Avoid video news ethical pitfalls
Should you produce a lecture video?
Capture field research on video
Observe the basics
Write your script
Shoot your video
Edit your video
Create a Web video
Syndicate your video
14. Organize Dynamic Multimedia Presentations
15. Create E-Newsletters, Podcasts, Wikis, Social Networks, Blogs, and Webinars
Strategize your social media persona
Reach out with e-newsletters
Be a podcaster
Use wikis to share information
Become a social networker
Blog your research and expertise
Tweet your research with microblogging
Gather online with webinars and Web meetings
16. Write Popular Articles, Op-Eds, and Essays
Prepare yourself to write
Be a storyteller, not an “authority”
Understand the editorial process
Write op-eds and essays
Write feature articles
17. Author Popular Books
The pros of writing a book
The cons of writing a book
Do you have a marketable idea?
Write the book yourself or collaborate with a writer?
Train for a book
Find agents and publishers
Prepare a query letter and book proposal
Become a publicity hound
18. Become a Public Educator
Give public talks
Work with local schools
Mentor young people
Work with science centers
19. Persuade Administrators, Donors, and Legislators
Reach out to administrators
Cultivate donors and foundations
Lobby legislators
Part IV Explaining Your Research through the Media
20. Parse Publicity’s Pros and Cons
Benefits of working with the media
Possible pitfalls of working with the media
21. Understand Journalists
They appreciate your cooperation
They come in a broad spectrum
They work for their readers and viewers
They like to tell great stories
They prefer conclusions, not caveats
They work in a pressure cooker profession
They are “journal-ists”
They care deeply about accuracy
They may be an endangered species
They stink at statistics
They cover stories “in shallow”
They accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative (and seldom mess with Mr. In-between)
They are two-sided, even if one side is bunk
They limit covering the same topics
They need to do their own reporting
They need a news peg
They work on tight deadlines
They like visuals, multimedia
22. Meet Journalists’ Needs
Be willing and available to talk
Give the full story
Clear bureaucratic roadblocks
Consider communication training
Become a credible source
Make communication a two-way street
Pitch story ideas
Make (good) things happen to journalists
23. Prepare for Media Interviews
Understand your interview bill of rights
Decide who should do the talking
Do your interview homework
Do not triage the media
Prepare the reporter for your interview
When a reporter calls out of the blue
When dealing with the media you would rather not
24. Make the Interview Work for You
Check out the reporter
General interviewing strategies
Strategy for questions
Strategy for additional information
Strategy for style
Follow-up strategy
Giving radio and television interviews
Doing email interviews
Working with a narrative journalist
Participating in news conferences
25. Protect Yourself from Communication Traps
Monitor your reputation
Avoid being misquoted or misinterpreted
Do not get trapped on the record
Avoid a credit crunch
Guard against policy foot in mouth
Disclose corporate ties and other influences
Do not skew your perspective
Cope with a controversy/crisis
Do not tiptoe around a delicate story
Prepare for a hyperstory
26. Manage Media Relations at Scientific Meetings
Identify newsworthy papers
Notify the media
Organize a newsroom
Set embargoes on presentations
Plan and conduct news conferences
Arrange interviews and make experts available
27. Work with Your Public Information Officer
A sales rep PIO or a PIO/journalist?
PIOs in different institutions face different issues
How your PIO can help you
Get to know your PIO
How to help your PIO
Work with PIOs outside your institution
Understand embargoes, pro and con
28. Should You Be a Public Scientist?
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