Really Communicating Real Impact Is Not Quite What You Think It Is

Dec 18, 2023

Really Communicating Real Impact Is Not Quite What You Think It Is

A Discussion with Cristiano Matricardi of "Nature Communications"

Cristiano Matricardi

Hosted by Daniel Shea

Summary

Listen to this interview of Cristiano Matricardi, Senior Editor at Nature Communications. We talk about just how closely tied are the research and the communication of the research.

Cristiano Matricardi : "From my perspective, that is, as a professional editor, as someone who reads above 500 new submissions a year plus all the papers for due diligence — from my perspective, I see that too many of the submissions are trying to create good narratives to sell the work better — which is okay, sure, but we need to focus on results, and we need to ask just: 'What do you want to do with this paper? What's your reason for attempting to publish it? Is that reason to gratify or oblige the editors? Or is your reason to transfer a concept to your fellow scientists?' Because if you want really to transfer a concept to your fellow scientists, then you need to structure your narrative in a way that they'll be receptive to and in a way that will prove useful for them, that is, useful for these working scientists and not useful for just readers of journals."

Of Interest:

Cristiano's podcast: On Your Wavelength
How Norway is rethinking impact for scientists: NOR-CAM
And how the EU is too: CoARA
Nature Communications offer ECRs both training and mentoring in scholarly peer review: Open Reviewers

Your Host

Daniel Shea

I am committed to helping scientists write at their best. To this end, I founded the Graduate Communication Services, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. Here I work in the unique role of textician. Want to know more? Contact me at daniel.shea@kit.edu

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