(11 May 2021) In a survey conducted by the United Kingdom’s Emerald Publishing, researchers say they’re not satisfied with how academic publishing presents their work to a world that needs to understand it.
It’s hard to think of a time in recent memory when so many have questioned so much scientific research. Almost any guidance from public health scientists today triggers questions and challenges from citizens exhausted by the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. People who don’t know an mRNA vaccine from a shot of vodka are in researchers’ faces, while government health services are continually assailed for changing the protocols and contradicting their own precautions.
So it’s an interesting time for the United Kingdom’s Emerald Publishing—a scholarly publisher working in health care and other fields—to have issued today (May 11) the results of a survey looking at researchers’ views of how academic research is currently presented and what it might take to boost its usability.
A total 1,500 academics in an international pool drawn from more than 100 countries were queried for this study, which is of importance to both researchers themselves, of course, and to consumers of research literature.
- The researchers, needless to say, want their work to be accessible as well as discoverable.
- Users—as those COVID-weary mask-wearers demonstrate—want science to produce its best work in an intelligible way.
Read the full report from Publishing Perspectives here.
Read the full Emerald report, “Closing the impact gap”.
