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FEATURES << Publication Planning 2.0
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Publication Planning 2.0
Published 11 September 2008, written by Matt McKay
Publication should only be the first stage in ensuring maximum impact for your research. Matt McKay suggests that implementation of communication strategies and Web 2.0 technologies can bring significant additional benefits post-publication.
There is an increasing need for publication planners to not only consider the integration of science with marketing, but also to capitalise on the ever-growing number of communication channels which can be utilised to publicise research post publication.
We are no longer confined to working with traditional print media, and have to take into account the whole gamut of tools that the Internet has to offer. Scientists are forming virtual communities where issues are discussed and knowledge exchanged, embracing blogs, mashups, podcasts, RSS feeds, social networks, widgets and wikis. In order to reach these groupings with our research, we too have to be prepared to adopt and adapt these new channels.
The growth of the Internet continues unabated. This means that not only has the potential reach of your publications been broadened dramatically, but also the tools at hand to assist you have become increasingly sophisticated. If you fail to use these tools to communicate your research, you will invariably be missing out on crucial sections of your target audiences and thus limiting the number of views and citations the publications will generate.
Publication planners and marketers often work in conjunction on publication strategies, and involving communication specialists in this mix will also pay dividends. By integrating Web 2.0 technologies into your publication strategies and capitalising on blogs, forums and social networking channels, you will ensure a much greater number of views of your research than by relying on a print journal alone. Printed materials only offer a one-way communication for your research. Becoming actively involved online will raise the profile of your authors and further highlight any companies or products referenced in the article. It will also allow you to engage in real dialogue with your audiences, gaining useful contacts and valuable feedback. This may give your clients access to potential customers, the ability to educate existing customers and valuable feedback on their products and campaigns – all in real time. These factors might positively influence your clients, and thus generate further opportunities for you as publication planner.
Maximising your publication planning online will help you to proactively manage your reputation and that of your clients. Sending the right messages to the right audiences has never been more important, but building wider involvements, and winning over scientific communities to your cause, can help you create a stockpile of goodwill within the industry.
Editorial Boards of journals ensure that all published research is thoroughly peer-reviewed and are often leading and well respected figures in their fields. Through partnership with publishers, key opinion leaders can be reached and influenced. If an Editorial Board member is excited and talking about your publication, then rest assured, he/she will tell others about your authors and the article too; this will improve the reputation of the article and authors and may well generate many more article views.
Planners, and to a certain extent Medical Communication agencies, often become unstuck in terms of how they communicate their messages. The language in your communications must not be the same as that used in a scientific paper. The audiences will often be inherently different, and whilst other scientists and researchers will understand the intricacies of your research, not everyone will. Even if you are sending details of your research to a science journalist, you should communicate it in simple terms and then let the journalist make their own judgements based on details contained in the actual manuscript.
Any information (scientific or not) must be precise and distinguish speculation from proven results. ‘Bad science’ is a particularly hot topic for blogs and discussion forums. If your messages are inaccurate, whilst you will get noticed, it will not be for the right reasons. Declaring conflicts of interest and full results from trials is good ethical marketing, but it is also crucial for building trust both with journalists and with the potential audiences for your research.
Care should be taken to provide information on your research to the right people and in the right form. You should not seek to overtly push a product or company in any media work you conduct. Simply provide the facts to journalists, blog writers and forum moderators and let them interpret the research. You will find that they will include the references you are after, but without you having to blatantly ‘sell’ to either doctors or consumers.
For publication planning, online is the future. Traditional journal subscriptions are dropping and there is increasing evidence that these channels are losing their effectiveness in reaching out to the entire market. The landscape of scientific publishing as a whole is changing; the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health in the USA have both put an increased emphasis on the importance of open access publishing as an essential channel for the rapid and efficient communication of research findings.
Online communication is the future of the industry. It will be a key route for you to reach your target audiences and maximise the potential of your publication planning.
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How to disseminate your research
1) Identify an interesting research article which you deem to be newsworthy (timely, interesting, unique, controversial etc) and write a short press release about it. Your press release should contain just the facts about the article and should be written in a fluid, basic style so that it is easy to digest. It should highlight the key conclusions of the research article, as well as provide some additional comment/opinion from a member of the research team.
2) Decide on your contacts for dissemination – this could be other scientific journals who run news services, national papers, blog owners/writers or even TV channels. Make sure your list is expansive, there is no point in limiting your potential audience, but likewise, make sure that the people you’re choosing to send it to will be interested to hear it. For instance, it would be a waste to send a release about breast cancer to a contact who specialises in retrovirology.
3) Contact your selected audience and ‘pitch’ the story to them, telling them why they should be interested in the research and who potentially they can talk to about further questions and quotes. Whilst you’re talking to your contact be sure to gain more information about them (email address etc). This information can be used in the future to build up a larger media database.
4) If your story is of interest, your contacts will run with it and you will soon see details of your article published across the various channels which you have ‘pitched’ it to. Be sure to track these story ‘pickups’ so that you know where you’ve received coverage.
5) Coverage will often self propagate, so you will find that stories disseminate around the web very quickly, with one channel stealing from another. Thus, getting a story onto the BBC is a surefire way of picking up a whole handful of other stories elsewhere on the web. The more topical or controversial your research, the more likely it is that others will choose to write about it and disseminate it further.
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About the author
Matt McKay (matthew.mckay@biomedcentral.com) is Head of Public Relations for the open access publisher, BioMed Central (www.biomedcentral.com). He has spent the last 10 years working across marketing communications. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and currently sits on their Marketing Communications Group Committee.
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Feedback: Do you have any comments about this article? Contact the Publisher, Peter Llewellyn.
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