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Science experiments in accessibility
Michael Kenward
Tuesday, 13 November 2007 19:43 UTC
I hope I am allowed to draw attention to an experiment that Science has just started.
They are trying to tear down the barriers between disciplines by commissioning one-page summaries of papers.
The idea is to write something that people in other disciplines can read and understand.
As I explain in a bit more detail in my blog, I like the idea. If it catches on there could be some openings for the science writers and editors who would inevitably have to help out the researchers, few of whom have the skills needed to write across disciplines.
The one page summaries could also be invaluable to science writers. “The one-page summary is intended to make clear what the investigators did, how it was done, what the result was, and its significance.”
Anyone else who wants to encourage them to continue with the experiment can visit the page that Science has set up for readers to respond.
Updated 13 November 2007 19:44 UTC
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It is an interesting experiment. At this stage, Science is only trying this for a few weeks, and only for Research Articles, of which they publish only very few (one or two, I think?) a week. Then they are going to seek reader feedback. It will be interesting to see how useful readers find this along with the other summaries that are provided — editors’ summaries and Perspectives. In the light of these additional summaries, your view that this new “author summary” could be an opportunity for science writers is quite stimulating! I suppose one factor is how much in-house development and editing is available at Science to help the authors to create the summary. (I assume that the journal would not require the authors to write two pages of summary at submission, given the number of manuscripts that are declined, it seems to be putting the authors to quite a bit of work.)
There is indeed a lot of summarising that goes on in many journals — at Nature, the journal I know as I am one of its editors, we have our “this issue” page (one-paragraph editors’ summaries) and News and Views on selected articles, as well as our press release that is sent out to journalists to help their coverage – created with help from the journal editors. We also have an author page each week in which the authors of two or three papers in the issue describe how the paper came about. We’ve been running this popular page for a couple of years now, but it is written by an editor who has interviewed the author, rather than directly by the author him or herself. And we produce a weekly (free) podcast featuring authors from several papers in the issue, explaining more about the research (often in conversation with the editor who handled the mansucript).
It will be interesting to see which emerge as the most useful and popular forms of summary – and how external science writers can help authors, compared with journal staff (ms handling editors, subeditors of the ms itself, N&V authors, on-staff science journalists and the press office).
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All PloS ONE papers also have very accessible lay summaries to accompany each paper. Not sure who writes these though.
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Yes, many general journals do this — well, Nature has editors’ summaries linked to the paper on the table of contents and from the paper itself online, and Science does something similar.
One of my questions is: how useful would readers find authors’ summaries in addition to these editors’ summaries, plus any other comments the journal publishes (eg News and Views in Nature, Perspectives in Science)? -
Really useful, Maxine. It’s bad enough keeping up with, say, immunology (and I’m a biologist of sorts), but physics etc., no chance.
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But, Richard, for (say in your case) a physics paper, would you prefer to read a one-paragraph editor summary, a one-page author summary, read an independent scientist’s News and Views article on the work, or listen to a podcast (conversation with author and editor/journalist) or would you read/listen to all? I am curious to know whether readers want all of these summaries (as well as whatever is in the media and otherwise on the internet) or just some (and if some, which is the most useful). Time is short as well, so it is a balancing act.
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I would be interested in reading a one page author summary but this summary would have to be easily understood independently of the readers field of interest.
AND I think that podcasts would be brilliant side-kicks to any paper!
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I tend not to have time for podcasts (at least, not until I get myself an iPod again) (ooh. I could listen to them while at the cell hood or on the microscaope. Cool). I’m not too enamoured with the editor summaries; I find them too brief. The one-page author (or press office. . . someone who can actually write and get it right would be good) summary AND the independent N&V appeal to me.
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‘Easily understood independently of the readers field of interest’… People are learning the same things until they leave high school, at least in my country. So the one-page summary has to interpret the most cutting edge research with high-school knowledge? Yes, there are excellent example of this but it is still very difficult to achieve.
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You don’t need an iPod/MP3 player for a podcast, you can listen to it from a computer terminal — if there is one in the microscope room ;-).
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No offsite network access in the confocal room, and no computer in the cell hood!
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