The scientific community is no stranger to press releases, at least at their formal level. Scientific projects are often accompanied by clauses referring to a press release at their opening and closing, but when written as a formality, they have - at best - no impact, and at worst they drive the press away from the subject altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Press releases are often written in a thick and unintelligible way, in the name of European rules or imposed by project funders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result is that that press release is published as an advertisement, i.e. in paid space, or is picked up by too few publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are the most common mistakes in project press releases:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Institutional requirements, even for the most bureaucratic research projects, should not affect the message of the press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first rule of a successful press release is to be about an interesting topic, at least from the journalist's point of view. And what is interesting depends on one factor: the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What does interesting mean? I've written about it on another occasion: How to determine whether a new science finding is \"interesting\"<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you need support to promote a research project, feel free to contact me<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo by Jodie Walton<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Every month, I send a newsletter about Science & Communication<\/a>with articles on how research can be better promoted in Romania. Includes what I write here on the blog, but also recent articles in other languages that I recommend and comment on. <\/p>\n
You can subscribe here.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n