Award-winning science communicator Anton Pottegård shares his three top tips

Professor Anton Pottegård from Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacy and Environmental Medicine has received this year’s Research Communication Award, presented by the Minister for Higher Education, Science and Digitalisation.

But what actually makes research communication good and effective? We asked Anton Pottegård to identify the three things that, in his experience, matter most.

1. Start with the goal – not the channel

Researchers are often told that they need to communicate their research. But according to Anton Pottegård, the first question should be: Why?

- If you communicate just for the sake of communicating, or to keep the university happy, you will not get very far. So the first thing we always ask is: What do we want to achieve with this article, this post or this press release?

The goal can vary considerably. The aim might be to draw attention to a solution to an important problem. It might be to put an entire field of research on the agenda, bring a researcher into a public debate, or encourage more people to read and cite a new scientific paper.

Only once the goal is clear does it make sense to choose the format and channel.

- Communication has much more impact when you know what you want to get out of it. That is essential if the communication is to succeed.

2. Put yourself out there

A photo of the researcher can be more effective on LinkedIn than a screenshot of a new research paper. It may sound obvious, but people follow people, Anton Pottegård points out.

- In more and more places, individuals are taking centre stage rather than organisations. Just look at newspapers, news services and Videnskab.dk. Increasingly, it is people and faces that we encounter first. I think we will see the same development at universities, where individual spokespeople will become more important in communication.

That does not mean researchers need to play a role. On the contrary, good communication requires finding an approach that suits who you are.

- You need to be yourself, know yourself and be curious about how you come across. If what you say does not fit with who you are or how you normally talk about the subject, it will not work.

3. Be patient – the benefits come over time

Good research communication takes time. You need to learn the language and techniques of the individual platforms. On social media, you also need to build an audience before your communication really starts to gain reach.

That is why the first attempts rarely produce major results.

- Communication is an investment. But the benefits will come, and they show up in several ways. Communication can actually also have an impact on the research itself.

When researchers communicate more widely, they come into contact with people other than those who read scientific papers. Those people can point to questions that researchers have yet to answer and show how the research findings look from their perspective.

- We learn more about the people the research is ultimately about, and that influences the questions we ask. It makes the work more enjoyable and has also had a positive effect on the success rate of our funding applications. We have become more relevant, and that is probably the greatest benefit of all.