Communicating your research

Working out how best to communicate your research findings to the media and the general public can be daunting. If you’ve got an interesting research finding or just had a paper accepted that you think might be of interest to the general public, but haven’t had much experience dealing with the press or public before – the Press Gang is here to help.

Please just get in touch with a Press Gang representative at your Institute or Centre – and we can talk to you about options and then work with you throughout the process that follows.

We have close contacts with the University Press Office. One excellent route to publicising your findings is through a press release. We can help by initially discussing whether your story is likely to be suitable for a press release and then, if it is, putting you in touch with a press officer who you can work with to produce a press release. The press office would circulate the release to the media at an appropriate point (e.g. to coincide with the publication of your paper) and then, hopefully, your story will go on to get some coverage in the press. In the past, many SBS press releases have gone onto appear across a range of media, including the science and newspaper websites, in press in daily newspapers and on radio and television news broadcasts. If you’d like some more in-depth guidance regarding preparing a press release, we have prepared a short document which you can read by clicking here. (Alternatively click here to download as PDF).

One thing to keep in mind is that the sooner you contact us about a story, the better. Ideally, we would like to hear as soon as you have formal acceptance your paper will be published.

We can also help disseminate your research findings through internal media – the School and University websites, the School’s science podcast (BioPOD) and publications produced by the University. And we can put you in touch with other organisations involved with public outreach and engagement activities – see our links page for more information.