Straight from the source: Producing expert-written analysis and commentary

At a time when scientists are under increasing pressure to communicate their work to the public and explain its value, it’s not always clear how to effectively get the word out.

Blogs often don’t have much reach, while social media doesn’t necessarily allow for nuance and in-depth discussion.

One option that’s becoming more popular is for researchers to communicate via science news sites written by scientists themselves. These sites, billed as expert-written analysis and commentary, invite scientists and other researchers to pitch story ideas built around an expert opinion. Readers get information “straight from the horse’s mouth” so to speak, and authors get the opportunity to reach a larger audience.

How should a researcher approach these outlets with an idea? How does their publication process work? Why is it worthwhile? I spoke with editors at The Conversation Canada and Massive Science to find out: Hannah Hoag, deputy editor and Energy and Environment editor at The Conversation Canada, and Dan Samorodnitsky, science editor for Massive Science.

The Conversation Canada, which launched in 2017, is the English Canadian edition of the nonprofit Australian website The Conversation. Their articles, which cover arts, business, culture and other topics in addition to science, are free to republish within certain guidelines, and the organization partners with many Canadian universities. Authors are not paid for their articles.

The American publication Massive Science, which launched in 2016, is a for-profit media company that focuses entirely on science and produces news and opinion pieces as well as sponsored content. Scientists pay a small fee to become members and are paid for their work beginning after their second article.

The Process

Typically, writing for a science news outlet begins with pitching them your idea. Both The Conversation Canada (The Conversation herein) and Massive Science accept pitches through forms or emails on their website (pitch The Conversation here and Massive Science here). Massive Science also maintains a forum—their preferred method of fielding pitches—where researchers can pitch publicly and receive editor feedback.

As Samorodnitsky explains, “writers can see the pitch process and editors’ responses in broad daylight,” making it a “more direct way to learn how to pitch and learn what editors are and aren’t interested in.”

As Hoag describes, for The Conversation’s pitching process: “We have a link on our main page that opens up a route to filing a pitch for us. It asks a few key questions to get potential authors to think about what their story is in a sentence or two, so that they’re very focussed and aren’t meandering too much. Then [writers can] offer a little bit more background about the story, really trying to drive home the ‘why does this matter’, ‘why is it important’, and ‘how is this different from other things that we’ve potentially read about or published.’”

From there, for both publications, the pitch is evaluated by the appropriate subject editor and accepted or not.

Samorodnitsky says that Massive Science looks for pitches with a strong hook, “whether it’s cool new research, strange science, or a deeply informed opinion from an expert that hasn’t gotten a lot of media attention.”

In addition to timely news stories, The Conversation is open to “evergreen” stories that aren’t necessarily linked to breaking news or events.

Hoag looks for articles related to trends that people are interested in but don’t fully understand the ramifications of, such as how artificial intelligence will affect jobs or issues around data and privacy. “And health and medicine type stories,” she adds, “People are always interested in anything to do with their health. Those don’t have to have a news hook.”

An important point to keep in mind when pitching is that editors are looking for stories, not topics.

“We do often get pitches that are a topic [rather than a story]. That doesn’t mean that the pitch is going to be rejected, it just means that there’s a bit of extra work [to be done],” Hoag explains. “So rather than just ‘High water levels on the Great Lakes’, you could phrase it as ‘This is a story about how the public response to high water levels on the Great Lakes is actually threatening us more,’ or something like that.”

Hoag suggests imagining how you would tell your story to people you know. “If you were sitting down with your friends or family you’d say, ‘This is a story about…’ and you could start the sentence that way. That may not be the way you actually pitch it but try to turn it into a single sentence that captures the key elements of what you want to write about.”

Once your pitch is accepted, it’s time to get writing. You’ll be given an assignment to write a certain number of words based on the story you outlined in your pitch.

For The Conversation, this runs around 800 words, whereas Massive Science usually aims for between 900 and 1200 words, unless there’s a compelling reason for a longer story.

Writers for Massive Science who have no previous experience writing for the public will be asked to do some exercises “that help them break their story down to key bullet points, a strong hook, and helps them identify an audience. An editor gives them feedback and then they write a draft with that guidance in mind,” Samorodnitsky explains. How long you’ll be given to write depends on who you’re writing for and what the story is.

“The deadline could be as short as a few hours [for breaking news] to several weeks for an evergreen story or one that’s tied to a more distant event or publication,” says Hoag. Samorodnitsky says that Massive Science tries to work with the writer’s schedule, but usually likes drafts to be done within a few days.

As with academic articles, any information you use to make your arguments should be backed up by linked sources. Once a draft is submitted to an editor, it gets edited for structure, clarity, and excess jargon, as well as having links checked to ensure they support the facts presented. Drafts may go through multiple rounds of revision before being approved.

Popular science writing moves a lot more quickly than academic publishing; turnaround times from fact-checking to publication can range from a single day to eight weeks depending on whether a topic is extremely timely or due to budget constraints on the editors.

Why Bother?

Aside from the typical push to get your science out there, you may be wondering why this whole process is worth the time it’ll take out of your already overburdened schedule.

The editors I spoke with gave a number of reasons why writing for them is worthwhile. The Conversation surveyed their writers to ask what benefits they gained from producing their articles.

“The most obvious one is it turns into media calls or even, in the best-case scenario, when you’re trying to move the policy needle, it can turn into a meeting with someone in government who’s responsible for that file.

But otherwise, some of the answers that we get back from authors are that it can lead to discussions with colleagues or with the public, it can lead to invitations to speak at conferences, or even contacts for additional research collaborations,” Hoag says, noting that nearly two-thirds of their respondents felt that the experience had been useful for their careers.

Samorodnitsky highlights the idea that “scientists often feel like their work and other’s work can be unintentionally misrepresented when it’s seen through someone else’s eyes. I think helping scientists speak with their own voices helps them frame their work in ways they feel comfortable with.”

He also notes that Massive Science’s writers have gone on to write books based on their articles, been interviewed by major media outlets, and have gone on to work as full-time science writers based on their portfolios there.

So, while it depends on what your goals are, there are a number of ways in which writing for a popular science outlet may prove worth your time.