HOW TO COMMUNICATE SCIENCE TO
SOCIETY:
Practical Strategies and Tools for Researchers
Ngnaoussi Elongué Cédric Christian
Research & Knowledge Management Consultant
hello@christianelongue.com
+233(0)550157572

CONTENT AND OUTCOMES
YOU WILL BE ABLE TO…
WE WILL DISCUSS…
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 Knowledge curation and
sharing as a research process.
 Various ways to conduct and
communicate research
effectively to relevant
stakeholders
 How to increase the visibility
and impact of your research
work
• Collaborate effectively in curating
and producing evidenced-based and
action-oriented research products
• Leverage technology tools to share
research results effectively and
collaborate with practitioners.
• Strengthen DAAD Alumni’s
community of practice by sharing best
practices, knowledge and ideas in
action-oriented research that will
contribute to development in Ghana

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
Currently, investments in research and development in
Africa are about 0.6% of the global total of R&D
investment, significantly lower than other regions.
More investment in adaptive knowledge/research
(i.e. production, investment and dissemination that
responds to emerging challenges and opportunities) could
prepare the continent to better handle issues like post-
COVID reconstruction, risk preparedness and further
development.
Joanes Atela, in Improving Africa’s Knowledge Systems

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
1. From Research Design
to Content Creation

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Preliminary:
What is research & how is it relevant to your work?
 Any gathering of data, information and facts for the advancement of Knowledge
 (M. Shuttleworth)
 Process of finding solutions to problem after thorough study and analysis of the situational
factors
 Systematic process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting information to increase
understanding of a phenomenon.
 Research helps to improve writing skills, facilitate learning and decision making,
develop critical thinking and analytical skills and contribute to the growth of
businesses through insights

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What types of research have you mainly been engaged in ?
What tools do you regularly use to search, collect, curate and share
information?
Are these tools effective? Why ?
Let’s brainstorm

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Name few types of research & data collection tools

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General research process

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
2. From Content Curation to
the knowledge sharer
(Curating and sharing
knowledge resources –
Identifying and Reaching the
right audience)

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TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE

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KNOWLEDGE CURATION TECHNIQUE & TOOL

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
3. The Researcher as a
Knowledge Sharer
« A guitar can’t play a
wrong note. So the
effectiveness of any tool
depends on the user. The
quality of any research
depends on the
researcher. »
Christian Elongué

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Qualities of a good researcher
 Humility
 Curiosity
 Well-informed
 Logical thinking
 Non-judgmental
 Attentive to details
 Creative and innovative
 Communication (written & verbal)
 Having patience and perseverance
 Priotize truth beyond personal ideas
 Complete Commitment to Research Area

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Researchers Challenges
 What are the biggest challenges that you encounter when
conducting research? (Select 3 max answers)
 Go to: https://www.menti.com/fc9xrvv218
 The voting code 6732 9862

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
“One of the foremost strategies [to address knowledge
imbalanced would be the packaging of African knowledge
products in such a way that they are available and accessible
on the internet.
There is no doubt that Africans are producing lots of
knowledge in their informal conversation as in the formal
engagements of varying types. This knowledge is being
produced daily in villages and urban spaces, by African
government officials and businesses, by students and
researchers.
Traditional healers are also applying indigenous knowledge
to offer cures for COVID-19. Thus, the problem from an
African perspective is less that of knowledge production and
more one of the gathering, packaging and dissemination of
the knowledge.”
BOB WEKESA

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
Taking advantage of new media
« Research not used is still research undone », Christian Elongué

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1. Knowing the audience:What platforms do they use? (Peer-reviewed reports, podcasts,
summary reports, blog posts)
2. Define your goal: Are you imparting knowledge, raising awareness, changing policies?
3. Selecting proper channel
• Student related outlets like term papers, theses, and dissertations.
• Professional academician’s publication of research articles in professional journal, books,
journal, books, reports to funders, conference presentations.
4. Developing an effective plan for writing a research report
• Decide on authorship & content
• Careful selection of a platform for publication
• Preparing outline of report
Key steps for Communicating research

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Knowing your audience

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Summary of promoting techniques

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
Saturday 29th January
RESEARCH
DISSEMINATION
STRATEGIES & TOOLS
(What tools and skills in communicating are most
effective in creating impact?)

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Imagine your manuscript has been published by a journal. What will
you do to ensure it’s accessible, visible and used widely?
What are some of the tools and techniques you used to disseminate
your research results ?
Has your research work ever been featured by media? If yes, how did
it happen?
Could you name three academic platforms and digital apps for
researchers?
Let’s brainstorm 

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 Put together a strategy
• Which researchers and other audiences will be interested in your research, the
disciplines they work in, and where they can be found?
• Next, think about the most suitable channels
 Provide a lay summary
• A lay summary is a short account of a paper written in clear, non-scientific language.
• Post it to relevashort video nt online discussion groups and forums.
 Put together a video summarising your paper/work and sharing it via websites
such as Wesharescience.com or https://5minofscience.com/members/elongue/
 Make your data available
• Publishing an article doesn’t tell the full story of your research. You can make images,
files and other outputs associated with it available through a digital repository such
as Figshare.
• When you upload your research to a repository they will give it a unique identifier. This
makes citing your research easier, as well as tracking online attention with services such
Tips for promoting your paper online

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 Post on social media
• There is an art and a science to using social media so brush up on your skills with the Researcher Academy module “social media for researchers”.
 Start a blog
• Or contact some established bloggers that are writing about your subject area (easily identifiable via the Altmetric details pages for other publications in your field), or anyone with a
big followership.
 Link out from your email signature and profiles
• It might seem obvious but adding a link to your work to your email signature is a must! By doing this you are ensuring that your contacts are kept up to date with your latest research.
 Register for an ORCID ID so that you have a unique identifier which will tie you to your work and distinguish you from other researchers. It’s easy, free and will
come in useful for any manuscript or grant submissions.
 Make your research open
• Scopus: With a Scopus profile, you can get credit for your work and explore article metrics to quantify your impact. Author profiles on Scopus are linked to all publications
through ORCID.
 Pitch your research to media
• There is an online training course Media skills for researchers launched by SciDev.Net
 Track the results of your efforts!
• PlumX Metrics: Gain insights into the ways people interact with your research output online, showing you a detailed picture of your impact. Find out more about PlumX Metrics.
• Mendeley Impact: Enjoy a unique, connected view of how your published articles are performing in terms of citations, how many Mendeley users have read your articles, views of the
articles you have published in an Elsevier publication, your h-index and media mentions.
• Newsflo: Measure your societal impact by uncovering relevant mentions of your research across tens of thousands of mass media outlets around the world. Newsflo gives you a way
to measure the wider impact of your work by tracking and analyzing its media coverage. Find out more about Newsflo.
 Find out the impact of your promotional efforts by using stats provided on publisher websites, such as Altmetric badges, and by using tools like the Altmetric
Tips for promoting your paper online (Con’t)

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Increasing your paper visibility

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 Your ability to generate interest in a new paper is a function of the quality and
novelty of your research and the number of people you can directly inform about
your work
 Your personal audience is a collection of colleagues, followers and connections
who have previously shown an interest in what you do.
 To expand your personal audience, you must:
 Select a range of online channels that you can, and want to, access.
 Create interesting content relating to your research area on those channels on an ongoing
basis.
 At the right time, promote your latest paper to this audience.
 As your audience grows, your capacity to gain greater coverage and achieve
more impact with your research grows with it.
How to build your personal audience as a
researcher?

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How to build your personal audience as a
researcher?
 Explore relevant publishing channels
• Grant funder websites
• Your home institution and/or departmental
website
• The websites of professional memberships
and associations you belong to
• The personal blogs of your partners and
collaborators
• The website or blog of a company involved in
similar research
• Industry websites and the blogs of
commentators in your field
• Project websites for collaborations you’re
involved in
• Have a personal strategy for social
media
• Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
• SlideShare, ResearchGate,
Academia
• Mendeley, Medium, YouTube
• Instagram, SnapChat, Pinterest
• Tiktok

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How to build your personal audience as a
researcher?
• Create your Own Website (Portfolio,
blogging...)
• People who hear you speak at a
conference, see a quote you provided in a
news piece or remember your name from a
citation or journal article, are often likely to
search for your personal website in order to
find out more.
• So ensure that you provide them with a
quality site where the information is clear
and consistent and is kept up to date as
much as possible.
 Few approaches to maximise your website
• Embed your Twitter feed
• Embed your LinkedIn badge
• Embed your institution’s ResearchGate
activity
• Embed, link to, or maintain a publications
list to demonstrate your activity and provide the
overall context for each new piece of work. Keep it in
reverse chronological order
• Short pieces linking to other content
• Every time you produce a new article, get a quote in
the press or have your work featured on other
websites, this is an opportunity to easily create a
piece of content for your own website.
• This only needs to be a couple of paragraphs and a
link to the original to be of value and you can use
simple tools like Google Alerts to automatically track
new mentions of your name or research area on the
web.

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Self archiving to increase accessibility
 Process of uploading your paper on open access platforms.
 PubMed for biomedical studies; RePEc for economics;
& arXiv for physics, mathematics, and computer science.
 Social networking sites for researchers, like ResearchGate
or academia.edu and MyScienceWork
 The free tool ImpactStory provides information on papers,
blog posts, social media accounts and other sources of
data.
 Selected open access platform:
https://www.elsevier.com/open-access/open-access-
journals
 DOI for papers; ORCID (open researcher and contributor ID) for
authors
• Just as each document can be uniquely identified by its
DOI, the document object identifier, or a book can be
uniquely identified by its ISBN (International Standard Book
Number), so a researcher can be uniquely identified by her
or his ORCID

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 1. Shorten your words: Long words are harder to read.
 2. Use simple and short sentences: Scientists’ long sentences are hard to read and long paragraphs
are agonizing to digest. Keep your sentences at no more than 25 words long.
 3. Throw out jargon
 4. Introduce new terms: Only use terms that are essential to your story. Introduce them and explain
what they mean with simple language.
 5. Make it human: People connect with stories and the experiences of other people. For example, use
the phrase “people with multiple sclerosis” instead of “multiple sclerosis patients.”
 6. Use the first person: Scientists often write in third person (objectivity). But difficult time connecting
with the third person. Instead, use first person.
 7. Avoid passive voice (hot topic): Many believe passive voice gives a formal tone and objectivity.
But to a general reader, passive voice sounds abstract and stuffy. Better use active voice, more direct,
and compelling.
 8. Talk to your reader: Think about how you would describe your work to your neighbor and write in a
similar style.
 9. Ask a non-expert to read your writing
Advices when communicating research to the public

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
RESEARCHER’s
ULTIMATE
TOOLBOX

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JOURNAL FINDER TOOLS
 One of the common rejection factors of
research journals is that the subject of the
research is not within those contemplated by
the journal. The journal search engines help
researchers to choose the best suitable journal
for publishing their research.
 These tools are very useful to avoid getting
involved in a manuscript submission process
that would be wrong from the beginning.
 If you are a DAAD alumni active in scientific
publications, the two effective and reliable
journal finder tools are Enago Open Access
Journal Finder (Enago OAJF) and Elsevier Journal
Finder (Elsevier JF).
 1. Enago’s Open Access Journal Finder
 Enago’s OAJF is a freely available tool that protects
you from falling prey to predatory publishers. It solves
issues such as journal legitimacy and reports article
processing fees through a journal index validated and
issued by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). It
allows you to find pre-screened and quality journals in the
public domain. Enago’s exclusive search algorithm allows
you to compile a concise list of journals related to your
research work.
 2. Elsevier Journal Finder
 Elsevier Journal Finder allows you to enter the title
and abstract of your article to easily find journals that are
most likely suitable for your publication. It uses intelligent
search technology and vocabularies specific to the
corresponding research field to match your article to
scientific journals.

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Plagiarism Checkers
 Enago’s plagiarism checker is a
unique tool for quick,
comprehensive, and dependable
plagiarism checking, especially for
research.
 Duplichecker offers a free version for
texts of up to 1000 words and is
available in paid versions for word
count above 1000.
 Plagiarism Checker: Free | Accurate
with Percentage
 Plagiarism Checker - No 1 Free
plagiarism Detector
 Plagiarism Checker – Prepostseo
(1500 words free)

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Grammar Checker Tools
 After using a few grammar checkers and
consulting with content writers, I compiled a list
of the best grammar checker tools that I could
find on the web.

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Reference Management Tools

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Project Management & Collaboration Tools

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KM & Research tools

KEY TAKE-AWAYS
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© IFC 2018 All rights reserved
Final Remark
 FINAL REMARKS

© IFC 2018 All rights reserved

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CONTACT INFORMATION
o Ngnaoussi Elongue Cedric Christian
o LinkedIn Facebook Twitter
o hello@christianelongue.com
o www.christianelongue.com
o Tel: 0550157572 (WA)