From lab to headlines: the role of press releases in science communication
Paper Title: The coverage of basic and applied research in press releases on EurekAlert!
Author(s) and Year: Jingwen Zhang, Marina Joubert, Jonathan Dudek and Rodrigo Costas, 2024
Journal: JCOM – Journal of Science Communication (open access)
TL;DR: Press releases are important communication tools that “translate” scientific research for a wider audience and are meant to catch the media’s attention, but their overall readability is not very high. Although different research fields focus more on either basic or applied science, and applied research is expected to be more attractive to the media, press releases on EurekAlert! cover both categories equally.
Why I chose this paper: I have written some academic press releases myself and been in meetings where we discussed whether a specific scientific article was worth promoting. I am therefore interested in the delicate balance between trying to catch the media and public’s attention and accurately reflecting the institution’s work, and in whether press releases actually make the research more accessible.
Have you read the news? About that newly discovered star, or perhaps about a new, promising cancer therapy? And have you ever wondered how the journalist who wrote those articles first heard about the topic?
Often, the answer is a press release — a text issued by an institution to highlight its research. Press releases are typically written by expert science communicators, called public information or media relation officers, in just the right way to catch a journalist’s eye. The main platform hosting these press releases is EurekAlert!, and browsing it can give you a pretty good idea of the current research landscape.
The Background
Institutions that perform or fund research invest in this media relations work for several reasons — to inform policymakers and the public about scientific advances and justify public spending on research, but also to build and maintain their reputation. To achieve all of these goals, press releases should make the science understandable and accessible to non-experts, while at the same time maintaining scientific accuracy and making the topic newsworthy — a fine line to tread.
But not all research is created equal. Scientific output is typically classified as “basic research” — performed for the sake of advancing knowledge itself, like the exploration of our Universe through astrophysics — or “applied research” — aiming for practical applications, like medical therapy. The latter is typically easier to relate to everyday life, making it attractive to the media, and we could therefore expect it to be heavily featured in press releases. On the other hand, policymakers want the public to have a better understanding of where and how basic research is done and why it is important. But the communication of basic research has received far less attention in science communication journals than applied research.
The authors of this study wanted to know if there are differences in how and how often these two types of research are shared in institutional press releases. To reflect the role of press releases in adapting the source text and making it accessible for a wider audience, they also compared the wording and readability of press releases and the source papers.
The Methods
The authors looked at 116,777 press releases published on EurekAlert! between 2015 and 2022 and collected the titles, abstracts, journal names, and author affiliations of the corresponding research papers. They then classified the papers and releases into broad research fields — for example, “mathematics and computer science” or “social sciences and humanities” — and as either “basic research” or “applied research”, adapting a previously published classification.
To look at press release wording, they tested the similarity between the titles of the press release and its corresponding research article by using a vector space model, which represents and compares texts according to the presence and frequency of certain terms. Finally, they compared the readability of a press release’s full text versus the corresponding paper’s abstract using the Flesch Reading Ease Score, based on a text’s number of words per sentence and syllables per word.
The Results
The team found that, contrary to their expectations, more than half of the press releases published on EurekAlert! by 2022 were based on basic research papers, although the proportion varied across research fields and issuing institutions. For example, press releases in the life and earth sciences clearly focused on applied research, while hospitals generally highlighted applied research studies.
A low similarity score between the titles of academic press releases and those of the corresponding research articles showed that press releases typically have adapted or rewritten titles. This was more pronounced for basic research press releases, suggesting these require more “translation” to make them accessible and appealing.
While there were some differences in the readability scores of paper abstracts depending on the research field, press releases were more readable than their source articles in every field. Nevertheless, the average readability scores of press releases in all fields remained below 50, indicating a reading level appropriate for a high school to college educational background.
The Impact
Contrary to a previous report showing that only 25.9% of global scientific output corresponds to basic research, this study shows a similar number of press releases for basic and applied research, suggesting the issuing institutions prioritise highlighting basic research results. However, the study does not fully represent the global research landscape, since it only looks at one subset of press releases published on one platform, and the binary classification of research as either “basic” or “applied” might leave out interdisciplinary studies.
The study also highlights the crucial role of the public information or media relations officers who write these press releases — they “translate” scientific articles, making research findings more accessible to a broader audience. However, as the readability results suggest, this knowledge is still not universally accessible and might be challenging for non-specialist audiences. And ultimately, the press releases’ effectiveness in reaching the public still depends on them being reported on by media outlets and, by selecting which journal articles to promote to the media, public information officers can be seen as gatekeepers of science news. Therefore, studying their selection criteria and processes could be important.
Written by Elena Reiriz Martínez
Edited by Paula Buchanan and Madeline Fisher
Featured image credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay