Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We had a workshop for postgraduate research students at Cumberland Lodge recently this
Autumn, and one of the things we were discussing with the student group was the importance
of reaching different audiences when you are publishing your research and the importance
of adjusting how you write to communicate to those different kinds of, what academics
increasingly refer to these days as research users. Because different research users will
expect different forms of communication and certainly many of them will not be used to,
and may not find it very easy to access, some of the more complicated academic research,
in particular that students are producing for their PhDs or for academic journal articles.
So, when you are writing for those different audiences you need to think about both the
form and the style of the writing that you do. Partly it is about style, itís about
the language that you use, itís about not including complicated referencing, about not
discussing your methodology, most research users arent really interested in how you found
your research findings, they are mainly interested in what you found, and avoiding obtuse, theoretical
language and complex concepts. Its about focusing rather on the relevance on the topicality
and in particular upon the way in which your research can help to inform what policy makers
and what practitioners are encountering in their regular, everyday workplace activities.
Its about style, but itís also about the form and content of what you do. I was once
talking to one of the Government Social Science advisors who said that when he was talking
to policy makers, they said that what they really wanted was research producing to them
in what they called a 1-4-20 format. They want a one-page summary, which captures all
the key points and can be read quickly by almost anybody. They want a four-page, kind
of executive summary which gives you the structure, explains about the research and summarises
the main findings but still no more than four pages, so it can be read by an informed reader
in five or ten minutes. And then a longer piece twenty pages which is more like a research
article, which allows you to go into some depth, explaining what you found, how you
found it and why its important. And when you are writing for a research user audience,
policy makers and practitioners, itís important to think about that format and to try and
write to that format. Write a twenty-page piece, write a four-page piece and then write
a one-page summary. Its something we have tried to capture in
our third sector research centre publishing policy, and for most of our publications we
ask our researchers to produce a working paper around twenty pages long, a briefing paper
four pages long, and an abstract less than a page, usually only a paragraph, which summarises
their key arguments. Its a discipline that our researchers sometimes find challenging,
but manage to work to, and itís something that I think that all people who are wanting
to translate academic research findings into something which is accessible to different
audiences, need to consider. So think about the 1-4-20 format when you are writing. Think
about who is going to read your research and how easily they will be able to understand
what you are saying. It can be a good idea to ask colleagues, or even friends, perhaps
better friends than colleagues, to read something that you have written, to see whether they
find it accessible, whether they can understand what you are saying, and whether they are
getting the main message because for many people it will be the main message that they
are interested in and they need to see that and hear it quite easily. So, what you say
matters but also, so does how you say it and when you are writing, think about the form
and the content, think about the form and the style of what you are writing, as well
as the content.