Balancing research excellence and media impact: a multistage approach

The communication of research in an electronic age presents numerous opportunities to engage with the general public and/or industry that might directly benefit from new findings.The use of social media outlets typically has a narrative of better enabling connection between people, independent of distance or socio-economic factors.Recent USA-based research suggests that despite drops in the frequency of people who trust elected officials or the media to act in the best interests of the public, there remains a constant and considerably higher confidence in scientists.This suggests that direct communication from scientists can enable better public outreach on important issues.Drawing on several well-known historical examples of how high impactful science has been previously conducted and communicated, we provide a model of how combining quality peer review and a multi-stage communication strategy enables effective and constructive communication.Key to this is a capacity to engage with skilled journalists and the general public via several platforms to explain findings in an unambiguous fashion that enables translating the complexity required in a scientific journal into a digestible accurate representation.This model of research communication can enable end users to evaluate, process and apply information without filters that may intentionally bias findings.