So, You Want to Write About Science?

Some advice on how PhDs can get into science communication

Feb 23

Throughout high school and undergraduate, I binged popular science content. The Science Channel, Discovery Channel, and Nat Geo were my favorite to watch, I read popular science magazines like Psychology Today, and read tons of non-fiction books. These are all considered “popular science” – science that is written and presented in ways that the general interested public can digest, understand, and learn from.

Today, I still regularly watch documentaries, read tons of books, read lots of blogs, and follow amazing scientists on twitter. Great science content is everywhere. But as professionally trained scientists, we’re often discouraged from writing for popular audiences because we need to instead focus on writing for other scientists in the form of journal articles.

Scientists can make the best public communicators because we know our fields deeply. But this deep knowledge can also, paradoxically, make it difficult to write content in a way that is accessible to non specialists, focused on the most important information to share (while maintaining accuracy), and presented it in a way that our reader’s eyes won’t glaze over halfway through the first paragraph.

Many new scientists, such a PhD students, are nervous of how to get into popular communication of their work or field. Should I get on twitter? Isn’t twitter a cesspool of trolls? How do I write for popular magazines? Where do I start?

It can be daunting. When I first joined twitter in 2017 and wrote my first popular article later that year, I had no idea that eventually I would have a full-time communications career (I recently began a new role where I write public research reports, blog, op-eds, and run company twitter accounts full time!), but slowly I gained enough part time experience to make a full time career pivot.

Last week at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference I presented at a professional development session at the Evolutionary Psychology Pre-Conference about getting into science communications (often abbreviated and hash-tagged as “SciComm”) along with Anthropologist Dorsa Amir (who you should be following on twitter for her amazing anthro threads!).

Here are the five things I shared to PhDs on how to get started in science communications.

Start a Blog
Get Social
Know Your Audience (and Outlet)
Learn How to Pitch
Communicate One Point

Start a Blog

If you want to start writing for popular audiences and aren’t sure how to start, create a blog and start writing. There is no oversight to blog writing, you can just start! Blogs are helpful for those looking to get into popular writing for many reasons.

First, you can write about anything you want – it’s your blog. Second, you can practice and experiment with different writing styles (remember, popular writing is not formatted the same or takes the same approach as journal articles), topics, and titles, which allows you to get immediate feedback from readers (is the article getting views, are people sharing it on social, etc). Finally, it builds a good habit. Part of why I blog regularly on here and on my other books-only blog is to build a consistent habit and stay engaged with my readers.

Get Social

Having a social media presence isn’t necessary but it is hugely beneficial for science communications. Being where current conversations are allows you to get first hand knowledge of what is being talked about, and puts you in a better position to write about timely topics, or add your unique perspective on others’ work. Having a social account most importantly allows you to share out your own work which gets your ideas out to more people.

There is also something of a Mathew Effect that occurs as well – the more you’re on social sharing your work and perspectives, the more opportunities you will get to share your work and perspectives. The majority of my inbound requests for commentary, article pitches, and events have been the direct results of my twitter presence: “Hey Nicole, I saw your tweet on this topic. Would you be interested in writing a piece for us on it?” or “Hey Nicole, I see that you’re always giving advice on topic X. Would you like to come speak about it at this event?”

In short, social is a great way to get noticed.

Know Your Audience (and Outlet)

Your first thought when writing about a new idea should be, “who am I writing to?”. This concerns not only your audience (readers), but also the outlet that you’re writing for (which has its own audience). Just like when you’re writing a journal article and different journals have different expectations and formats, so too do different popular outlets.

Depending on what outlet I am writing for, my writing approach, structure, and content will differ. Writing for my blog is different than writing for Inside Higher Ed, which are both different than writing for Heterodox Academy. Formats differ, readers differ, and ideas differ.

Do your research on outlets and audiences if you’re aiming for a popular media outlet for your writing. What outlets are you reading? What do you notice about the content at each? What outlets are best aligned with your ideas?

Learn How to Pitch

If you’re “pitching” (emailing editors to ask them to publish your work) your writing to popular outlets, you need to learn how to do so effectively. Most outlets, like most journals, will get more submissions than they can publish, and “desk rejections” are common, so don’t take it personally. But, writing better pitches and ensuring your content is appropriate for the outlet (see above point) can help.

A pitch is usually an email or online form that you send to an editor or general submission inbox. Your pitch should get straight to the point – why should anyone care about what you’re writing? It starts with a good hook (I call it a problem frame – what makes your topic interesting? Something that will get readers to keep reading), followed by your clear, concise thesis or argument. Then perhaps a sentence or two expanding on your arguments. It’s a tight paragraph that an editor can quickly read and know if the article is worth pursuing. That’s it.

I usually attach a draft of my article to the email. But sometimes you may have just the idea and thesis, and will then draft the article after input from the editor (this is a bit more common for longer form online magazines).

A few notes on pitching. Pitching is a bit of trial and error to see what kinds of approaches get an editor’s attention. It’s important to build relationships with editors to increase your chances of getting published. Always submit to an editor directly over a general email or form if you have the editor’s direct email. If you haven’t heard back in two weeks, move on somewhere else.

Communicate One Point

We’re used to writing journal articles that are 10,000 words with hundreds of citations, and so many details that even we don’t want to read the damn thing once we’re done writing it.

Do the opposite for popular writing.

You want to make one clear point in simple language, and then provide additional context and examples to drive the point home. Unless you’re writing for long form magazines, most articles will be less than 1500 words (on the long end) and closer to 1000 on average. You only have space to make one point. If you find yourself making more points, the readers will be lost (because most won’t get far enough to read the second), and it will be hard to stay within word count.

Remember: You need to tell a story, not the whole story. Each article’s main point should be tweetable.

Hopefully this advice can help you get started with science communication and popular writing. Want to know more? Comment below on the topics you would like to see me write about.