Five reasons for faculty to write for The Conversation
Last year, graduate student Jack McBride and I co-authored a peer-reviewed scientific journal article based on his thesis work as an Anthropology graduate student at Western.
After the paper was published, we decided to pitch an article based on our research to The Conversation, a non-profit news organization publishing research-based news, analysis and explanatory pieces for a general audience, written by scientists and other scholars with expertise in just about every subject that’s taught in universities, from policy and economics to science, health and ethics.
The Conversation is also a tip sheet for thousands of journalists around the world. Since publication, more than 95,500 readers have learned about our work through this outlet, and the story has been picked up by national and international media outlets, including USA Today, Seattle P-I, San Francisco Chronicle and others.
As I see it, there are five key reasons to write a piece for a general audience outlet like The Conversation.
1. Science Communication
As scholars, we have committed ourselves to education and research. This commitment extends beyond the institution and into society more broadly. We have a fundamental responsibility to promote science by guaranteeing that as many people as possible learn about our scholarship, particularly in a time when trust in science and higher education is under attack by anti-intellectual government policies that flagrantly ignore well-researched data and contemporary scholarly theory. The broader impacts of our work must include education for all, and the dissemination of knowledge and information to facilitate informed citizenship and social engagement. Writing public-facing articles is a core method for communicating science to a broad audience.
2. Promote Your Research
Writing popular research-based articles allows you to promote your work in ways that are not possible through academic publishing alone. We all know the feeling: You spent three years collecting and analyzing data, plus another one writing the paper, and it sat in the peer-review process for a year. Five years after you started your project, the findings are published in a top journal in your subdiscipline; now you sit back and wait for the 29 other people in your field of study to read about your findings. The reach of academic publishing is highly specific but limited. In contrast, popular science articles have broad but general reach. Combining these two methods of getting the word out about your scholarship will dramatically extend your impact. And if we want to move science forward, we need to make sure that the science that gets done is recognized and incorporated into disciplinary conversations!
3. Improve Your Pedagogy
We spend much of our time in the classroom experimenting with different ways of communicating core concepts to students. Writing a piece for a general audience can force you to consider the impacts of your work for different communities. Why should someone outside your field find your research novel or interesting? And how will it impact their lives? We practice these skills often in grant-writing. Popular science writing is another outlet for workshopping communication of scholarly value. These skills can then be brought back into the classroom. And the article can make a great assigned reading!
4. Professional Development
There are many professional benefits to writing articles for outlets like The Conversation. Science communication is an essential part of service, which is a requirement for tenure track professor jobs, as well as an important line on the CV of anyone in education. These general-audience pieces also count as non-peer-reviewed publications for the CV. The press that results from pieces like these can also be added to their own section on a CV. Even if your CV is chock-full of publications, service, and press, co-publishing with an early career researcher, like a graduate student, can provide them an invaluable advantage as they navigate the academy. (My coauthor Jack McBride is continuing his graduate studies at Yale University.)
5. Build A Platform
Quite impactfully in my life, writing pieces for The Conversation has allowed me to build a platform that I have utilized to promote my career goals. I wrote my first piece in 2023 following publication of a high-profile scientific study in PNAS. That piece brought in more than 35,000 readers and was translated into French. I was immediately approached by podcasters and science journalists who wanted to interview me about my work. Leveraging this platform, I wrote a non-fiction book proposal about my research and secured a book deal with a major publisher. This step into popular publishing was only possible because I had evidence of broad public interest in my topic, and the skills to talk about the value of my research to a general audience. I can’t say I owe it all to my science communication article, but it certainly helped!