Book Review: Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work by Dennis Meredith

Abstract

Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work. Dennis Meredith. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 357 pp. $35 pbk.Broader is one of the two key criteria for government agencies in selecting research proposals for funding. But deciding how to create that broader impact is a challenge for many academic researchers, because we are so preoccupied with designing research and with writing research articles that we seldom have the time to think about how to explain and publicize our research to target or wider audiences. Science writer Dennis Meredith's book is a handy reference to busy researchers to create the broader impact for their research work.Explaining Research is also an enjoyable read, not only because the author is a good writer, but because of his understanding of the psychology of his target readers: the researchers. He understands that many researchers, especially scientists and engineers, do not like to be under the spotlight, but they also take great pride in their work. Yet to get funding, get promotion, or establish the impact of the research, researchers need to know how to explain to lay audiences what their research is about, why it is newsworthy to media to gain media coverage and win the support of their peers in the field. To those who are actively seeking funding for their research, chapter 19, Persuade Administrators, Donors and Legislators, is a must-read. Meredith explains the common characteristics of these constituents and how to handle relationships with them.Meredith organizes his chapters by actions, and readers are urged to follow the series of actions he outlines to achieve success in explaining research. For example, in chapter 3, Give Compelling Talks, the suggested actions are (1) free yourself from text, (2) organize your talk to grab and inform, (3) make your talk memorable, (4) use engaging visuals, (5) practice produces power persuasion, (6) use good stagecraft, (7) manage questions, (8) give lay audiences what they want, and (9) synergies your effort.I especially like chapter 21, in which Meredith clearly shows the distinction and commonalities between journalists and academic researchers. He also warned us of a wrong expectation of the journalist to be knowledgeable and well prepared for the topic. Quoting from Sharon Dunwoody's study, he explains the accuracy for news articles is different from academic research because of differences between technical and communicative accuracy. …