In a nutshell: how to write a lay summary
2018๋ 11์ 26์ผ | 5๋ถ ์ฝ๊ธฐ
์ ์: Christopher Tancock
Why โtranslatingโ your research for a general audience can bring many benefits โ and how to do so
With thanks to Kristina Killgrove
Elsevier Authors' Update is pleased to present this article in support ofย PHD2Publishedย Academic Writing Month.ย ์ ํญ/์ฐฝ์์ ์ด๊ธฐ
You must be rather pleased with that newly-published article. After many long months, your hard work has paid off and that paper has now taken its place in the library of academic literature. Unfortunately, so have another 2.5 million articles just this year. How do you stand out amongst that enormous crowd and get attention? One way of doing this is to make your article as accessible as possible and a good way of achieving that aim is to prepare a lay summary.
What is a lay summary?
Though your colleagues and peers are probably able to get to grips with your article, the chances are that its content will be unintelligible to the average man or woman in the street. Whatโs more, researchers are increasingly tasked by their institutions and funders to outline the impact of their research for the general public and beyond their specific area of interest. If you can transform your article into something that the wider public can understand, youโve got yourself another readershipย ย - and one who is more likely to share what it is that youโve discovered/hypothesized/confirmed further. The key to doing this is in producing a lay summary.
A lay summary, or impact statement, is a very efficient way of conveying the essence of your article briefly and clearly. Fundamentally, what youโre aiming to produce is a short paragraph outlining the article content, aimed at non-specialists in the field and written in a way that they can easily understand. This element differentiates it from the abstract, which is designed with your subject peers in mind. The structure of a lay summary should answer the main questions of โwho/what/where/when/how many/why?โ (in essence, youโre trying to justify why someone should spend time in reading what youโve produced). Answering these questions in a concise manner will deliver all the details the reader needs. The most important part of it is a โsummary within a summaryโ: one final sentence which explains why the research is important, and what the article has concluded.
Whatโs the big deal?
Lay summaries are already commonly used by researchers in many subject areas, as they encourage and increase the possibility of collaboration, and some funding bodies even require them as part of their application procedure. Writing such summaries โ distilling your work into a โportableโ and maximally-accessible form can bring many benefits for your wider interactions with society at large. Among other things, theyโre great for use in press releases or when communicating with journalists. In short: this is a communications skill worth learning.
Here are some pointers on how to write a useful lay summary:
Predict and cover the โso what?โ factor โ justify your research.
Give some background and context to the research. What prompted you to do it?
Follow a logical order. This may not always coincide with a temporal order.
Explain the impact of the work โ what is going to change (especially in relation to wider society)?
Use succinct, short sentences โ and write in plain English. Imagine youโre talking to an undergraduate whoโs just stepped into your introductory class. Or, better still, pretend youโre trying to explain your article to a distant family member who works in retail/fashion/hospitality.
Avoid jargon unless absolutely necessary and explain it if you do have to keep it in.
Use first person and active voice (โwe agreedโ rather than โit was agreedโ).
Use positives not negative sentences: โYou will have repeat appointments at least once a fortnightโ, rather than โThe usual practice is not to schedule repeat appointments more frequently than once a fortnightโ
Images are very important โ try to include one if you can.
When you think youโre ready with your summary, ask a friendly non-academic to read it. Ask them if they understood it: the number of questions you get might dictate that further revision is needed!
Supporting lay summaries at Elsevier
Here at Elsevier weโve been exploring how we can support authors with writing, hosting and promoting lay summaries. Several of the journals we publish including:ย Epilepsy & Behavior Case Reportsย ์ ํญ/์ฐฝ์์ ์ด๊ธฐ,ย International Journal of Paleopathology,ย Journal of Archaeological Science: Reportsย ์ ํญ/์ฐฝ์์ ์ด๊ธฐandย Journal of Hepatologyย ์ ํญ/์ฐฝ์์ ์ด๊ธฐย now provide lay summaries for selected papers on their homepages. These are made freely available to readers. Note that different journals and subject areas might approach the same basic idea in various ways. For example, theย Materials Todayย group of journals has recently launched its โContributorโ project whereby early and mid-career researchers are encouraged to write โnews summariesโ of recent articles (which are then checked with the original author(s) for accuracy and published on theย Materials Today news pageย ์ ํญ/์ฐฝ์์ ์ด๊ธฐ). There might be similar initiatives in your community, so make sure you keep your ear to the ground and get involved if you can.
Looking to the future, weโre also in the process of experimenting with facilitating the submission of lay summaries during the submission process โ and aggregating them on a grander scale for authors to aid their discoverability. Stay tuned to hear more on our efforts in this regard.
In sum
Lay summaries can be a powerful tool to extend and broaden the impact of your research. Donโt forget that there are a number of other tools available to you as author โ check out ourย guide to โgetting noticedโย ์ ํญ/์ฐฝ์์ ์ด๊ธฐ, for example. Have a go at writing a summary for your next article and ask your editor if the journal in question is interested in participating in the lay summaries project. Enjoy making a splash with your next article!