(10 Mar 2022) Publishing the outcomes of scientific research is essential to helping clinicians, researchers, caregivers, and patients learn about key developments in medical treatments and care. But many scientific journals only publish jargon-heavy, technical information that most non-specialist readers must work hard at to understand, especially when it comes to working through scientific complexities and heavy data analysis.
Joanne Walker, Head of Publishing Solutions at the Future Science Group (FSG), explains why FSG embraces this idea and how plain language summaries (PLS) are adopted in their journals.
“At the Future Science Group, we are recognizing the need to make technical scientific and medical information accessibility to a wider audience and offer several options for peer-reviewed PLS within our journals. All authors can feature a PLS alongside their article. These are written by the authors and appear immediately underneath the main abstract, in front of any paywall (if applicable). Authors can also feature a more in-depth, visual PLS as supplementary material alongside their article. Finally, unique to our group, our journals are now publishing PLS as a new article type – called Plain Language Summary of Publication articles, also known as PLSPs.”
Find out more from the original article here.
