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Benefits of science communication – for the scientist – part II

6 Comments October 5, 2012 Bjerglund

How can communicating your research benefit you as a researcher? This was the theme of module 3 of the Public Health Science Communication Course and also a question raised on this blog in a previous post. To my surprise finding good literature on this topic was not easy, but thanks to the help of you readers (thank you for all your tips) and the students in the class we did manage to come up with a list of benefits which I’d like to share here. Some might disagree with them, but I guess it all depends on who you are as a researcher, what you’re conducting research in, and on where and how you’re doing it. Anyway, here’s the list, divided into benefits for the researcher and benefits for science. Please do add to the list or voice your disagreement in the comments section.

What is in for the researcher/scientist?

  1. Cash! – The premises for doing most research is cash – at least if you want to make a living on it. Most grant proposals include a section asking how you plan to disseminate your findings. By living up to this (and by explaining what your research is about) you can make sure for example that a pay check comes your way every month, that you can go to that awesome conference in Hawaii, that you can get a new laptop and the latest version of SPSS.
  2. Personal satisfaction – Hairdressers like to be complimented for their talents with a pair of scissors. Students like to get good grades, actors like to get good reviews and have good ratings. Scientists are no different. Finding that a wide audience is interested in/bothers to learn/listen/read about your work can be energizing, especially if your work is usually only of interest to a few scientists. It can also help establish your name as an important expert or resource person in your particular field – which can also be personally satisfying.
  3. Career development – Communicating can impact positively on your career. It’s evidence of your work, skills and accomplishments! And it can help show that you have an understanding of the role of your research contribution plays in the context of society.
  4. Make your name known – The more you communicate the likelier it is that your name will become familiar to other scientists, including those in different fields of study, potentially helping with career advancement. It my also increase your chances of getting funding, as your name is known and funders can read some of your work (e.g. by Googling you). All of this is of course under the condition that what you are known for is your high quality research!
  5. Get to know your ‘enemies’ – your enemies or competitors may one day end up as your future partners in research. By communicating (which opposed to disseminating is an two-way process) you may get in closer contact with your colleagues, competing institutions, stakeholders etc. It gives you a feel for the movements and trends in the field or industry and it may provide good background knowledge for if you end up competing for the same position/funds etc.
  6. Networks! – Communicating makes your network grow. Networks are important when you’re looking for your next job, need recommendations, are crowd sourcing ideas, seek support (financially or academically), or help to spread your findings even further. Invitations to be part of a new or emerging research project is a potential outcome. Very often, these take the form of interinstitutional and/or interdisciplinary grant proposals. (Words like “interinstitutional” and “interdisciplinary” are increasingly popular with the folks who review grant proposals these days).
  7. Keeping track and keeping motivated – By communicating you are indirectly keeping track of what you are doing. It makes it possible to refer back to different stages of the research and learn from your research process. Communicating along they way can also keep your motivation going and see that you are actually moving forward…
  8. Make your research meaningful to the world – communicating what you do can help you to see the relevance of what you do to society. When it boils down to it most of us like to feel that our time is meaningfully spent.
  9. Help shape your personal identity as a researcher – by communicating you are almost automatically provoked to reflect upon your work and your role as a scientist. Are you truly communicating (dialogue-based) and not just disseminating this benefit may be even stronger. It may also help you focus on what exactly is the core of your research.
  10. Become a better communicator – the more you communicate the better you get at it. It’s a simple as that.

What is in for science?

  1. Feedback – Feedback is an essential component of almost every discipline, whether you’re learning to ice skate, write music or teach Spanish. If taken seriously and responded to this feedback may improve the outcome of your work. Research is no different. By communicating it, the world becomes aware of the project’s existence and can offer advice and inputs, share experiences and give suggestions for improving and validating the research.
  2. Cash – The premise for most research is money. Grant proposals often include a section asking how you plan to disseminate your findings. By living up to this (and by explaining what your research is about in the actual proposal) you can make sure that a) the project becomes reality, b) the necessary staff can be hired, c) the necessary IT/lab equipment is available, c) That your research funding may be followed up by a new round of funding.
  3. Crowd sourcing and validating – Several minds contribute better than just one. By communicating, asking questions, collecting experiences and information from your network research be improved with new incorporating new perspectives, ideas, confirmations etc. Getting inputs from the surroundings may also help qualify and validate the research and prepare it to potential critic.
  4. Increased impact – Communicating through different channels increases the likelihood of the research being found and used in real life.
  5. Contribute to a positive image of science – By communicating research, documenting the outcome of the investments in science and being transparent about how money is spent something is fed back to the contributors, which makes them feel that they got something out of their investment (of time or resources) and makes them feel investing in science is worth while. In addition, it can help to make clear how science contributes to society. All of this of course requires that the research done is of high quality and have followed good research practices.
  6. Transfer of knowledge – You may get a better job, you may go on maternity leave or realize that you always wanted to be a R&B singer. Having communicated what you did makes your contribution remain also after you have left and lets other learn from your experiences – in the end contributing to science.

Science communication – what’s in it for the scientist? what’s in it for science?

11 Comments September 16, 2012 Bjerglund

Communicating science is so often focused on transferring knowledge from experts to members of the public. More and more often it is also associate with engaging and communicating with the public. But still with a focus on what the public or the common man gets out of this. But what’s in it for the scientist? How can science communication benefit the researcher personally? Is it just a waste of time and a burden?

These questions are key to module 3 of the course Public Health Science Communication. In preparing for the module, I was surprised of how difficult it was to find literature that focuses specifically on this topic. It is mentioned as a component of science communication but little research put it at the center – at least as far I have been able to find out…

For the course I have included four texts that all  touches upon the topic, but doesn’t have it as the main focus:

  • Interaction with the mass media – Peters HP, Brossard D, de Cheveigné S, Dunwoody S, Kallfass M, Miller S, Tsuchida S. Science 11 July 2008: Vol. 321 no. 5886 pp. 204-205
  • Social media is more than simply a marketing tool for academic researchby Amanda Alampi. The Guardian, highereducation network. 24 July 2012
  • The Verdict:Is blogging and tweeting about research papers worth it? by Melissa Terras. LSE blog: impact of social sciences. 19 April 2012
  • Academic staff and public communication: a survey of popular science publishing across 13 countries – by Peter Bentley and Svein Kyvik. Public Understanding of Science, January 2011 vol. 20 no. 1 48-63

I have later on come across the two articles below, which focus on the costs and benefits of research communication. Both, however, put most attention on the costs and the potential benefits of alternative models for scholarly publishing (e.g. open access) and focuses on to a lesser extend on the benefits of the actual communication of science.

Research communication costs in Australia, Emerging opportunities and benefits

Costs and benefits of Research communication: The Dutch Situation (click here for the summary version)

What’s in it for you?

Therefore: In preparation for the course it would be great to receive some inputs from you people out there on how communicating your science has helped YOU. What have the benefits been for YOU? Do they out-weigh any potential disadvantages? If your research could talk – what would it say it got out of you communicating?

Hints to blog posts, book chapters, articles, podcast etc. focusing on this or just your own testimonials will be highly treasured! And will of course be fed back through this blog.


An interesting union: Wikipedia + journal articles

4 Comments May 29, 2012 Bjerglund

Scientists and researchers who still haven’t considered Wikipedia to be relevant for their academic career or who perhaps disregard Wikipedia for scientific purposes all together, might have to reconsider their point of view. At least they will have to get used to the fact that social media is sneaking its way into the other-wise so stable and non-surprising world of peer-reviewed journals.

The Open Access journal PLoS have taken on the task of making science available for everyone to read. In their endeavor to achieve this they have now gone to a new level, and are trying out the combination: peer-reviewed articles + Wikipedia. By mixing the two together, PLoS hopes to meet a new level of interaction between publishers, researchers and the public.

The guinea pig for this experiment is the journal PLoS Computational Biology.

By introducing so-called “Topic Pages”, which are a new article type building on the style of a Wikipedia article, PLoS makes peer-reviewed articles which are published in PLoS Computational Biology available on Wikipedia. The benefits of these Wikipedia style articles are 1) that they will help fill a gap in Wikipedia’s computational biology content; and 2) that the articles will be subject to ongoing review of wikipedians.

A third advantage, highlighted by Bonnie Swoger in a blog post in Scientific American, is that it may play an important role in convincing scientists to take an active role in adding content to Wikipedia, and in using social media for science communication in general. Bonnie Swoger points out that due to the organisation of universities and other research institutions, using time editing Wikipedia, being on Twitter etc. means less time for lab work, field work and scholarly writing. All of which is what matters in an academic career. Scientists therefor refrain from social media (or at least use it as an excuse). The trick of PLoS’ Topics Pages, which turns peer-reviewed articles into Wikipedia entries, makes it possible for researchers not only to produce original published articles, but also to contribute to public knowledge available on Wikipedia, and thereby potentially reaching much wider audiences.

It will be interesting to see how this new concept works out. I could definitely see it as something useful also in public health related research, which due to its public nature is probably even more likely to be found via Wikipedia than topics within computational biology are.

For an example of Topic Pages take a look at the article Circular permutation in protein in the Wikipedia format and the same article in a regular journal format. Both were published in Wikipedia and PLoS Computational Biology at the end of March this year.

Read more about PLoS reflections on the Journal-Wikipedia alliance in this editorial.


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