"Research comms is not a nice-to-have, it's absolutely part of what every university needs. We cut at our peril."

Description

In 2022 the Science Media Centre published an insightful report on the changing role of science press officers at UK universities. In this episode of Research Unravelled Peter speaks with two people who were instrumental to the report's creation: Helen Jamison and Claire Bithell.

The conversation reveals the often invisible but critical role these professionals play in building trust in science through skilled diplomacy. As universities face financial pressures, Helen and Claire emphasize that research communication isn't merely a "nice-to-have" but an essential component of the research ecosystem requiring continued recognition and support.

Conversation

The below excerpt has been heavily condensed and edited from the original for the sake of brevity.

What prompted the creation of this report?

Helen: The report and the project essentially came out of lots of anecdotal conversations that we were having a couple of years ago. I was at the Science Media Centre, which is an independent press office for the big science and health issues that hit the headlines. Claire was at the Academy of Medical Sciences at the time. We've both got fairly long careers in science communication and research communication, and we were hearing from lots of our peers and colleagues that the job was really changing, that it was becoming more complicated.

We were starting to hear of people maybe thinking of leaving the field or finding it difficult to progress in their roles, but we didn't really have much concrete, solid evidence. Being from organisations where it's all about the evidence and the facts, we thought we should go away and collect some of that evidence ourselves. We really wanted to put a marker in the sand for reviewing and thinking about what the field looks like now compared with 10, 20 years ago, and all the big challenges and changes that we're all facing as a professional community.

What was most complex or surprising in your findings?

Claire: It was heartening and disheartening that some of the things we thought might be true were true. We tried very hard not to bias ourselves. A standout finding for me is that 83% of press officers had considered leaving their job in the previous five years, and 30% of those had thought about that often. I found that alarming because the sorts of skills you need to do good research communications – understanding uncertainty, being able to communicate risk, understanding the research infrastructure, understanding how to read a scientific paper – that knowledge and judgment is something you build up over many years.

If we were to sack all of our research comms people tomorrow, it would be really hard to get people back in the next day. It's like if you were building a nuclear power station and you sacked all your engineers, you wouldn't immediately have people. That knowledge is really important.

And what was heartening from the researchers is just how loved comms people are and how they'd like more of their comms people's time. Maybe researchers don't tell their comms people often enough that they appreciate them. When you're working in-house in research comms, it can just feel like everyone wants something from you, but maybe nobody appreciates you.

What makes research comms special compared to other communications roles?

Claire: There's this dual responsibility. You have a responsibility to your employer, which might be a university, to enhance and protect their reputation. But then you also have this broader responsibility for science – that's about public understanding, that's about policy makers understanding what science is about.

There's also a hidden role in research comms where you are training, coaching, and encouraging researchers. You're helping them navigate the public eye. You're moderating those people that are relatively enthusiastic to say their research paper is the be-all and end-all. And those latter parts of the job are probably the least visible, but the most skilful.

I think comms is 10% content generation, 90% diplomacy – moderating people around you, collaborating, working, and dealing with the environment you find yourself in. That takes a tremendous amount of resilience and energy and enthusiasm and joy.

How can research communicators better demonstrate their value?

Helen: That's a really good question, and a really difficult one. I think we've got to get better at doing our own PR. It's a very difficult thing to do because for many of us, selling ourselves in that way doesn't come naturally. We're much more used to doing it for other people. Also, we are extremely busy, and to be able to sell yourself properly takes time because you need to step back and tackle all those questions about how you evaluate and measure the impact of what you're doing.

It's particularly tricky when you're faced with colleagues who work on marketing and social media, where they might be able to demonstrate lots of clickthroughs or links with student recruitment. Whereas if you're a skilled research communicator who's kept your university off the front pages and managed some really difficult stories, at the end of that, you have nothing to show for it because you kept the story out.

Where we've seen things work well is where people consistently tell their peers, scientists, and senior managers what they did that week – the stories they put out, the things they kept out, and how this contributed to the reputation and public understanding of their organisation. We've got a great example of a university who took our report to their senior leadership and secured budget for an additional person to work as a media relations advocate to help them sell what they were doing to the rest of the university.

Is it the sole responsibility of research communicators to advocate for themselves?

Claire: I think it's a dual responsibility. Definitely science communicators and research communicators need to be arguing their own worth. As Helen said, we haven't got the track record of doing that, so we need to start now. But I also think senior leaders in science should be speaking up for this role.

We're in a very strange time in research universities. When organisations get really under pressure, they look at what is essential for their existence and what is a ‘nice-to-have.’ Part of our report was arguing that research comms is essential – it's not a nice-to-have, it's absolutely part of what every university needs.

Post-pandemic, some organisations cut staff, but very wise organisations gave their research comms teams more support. Those that did bolstered the reputation of their institution and the reputation of UK science at a critical time. We can never be complacent in the UK, and it's research comms people who are highlighting the public good and societal benefit of research that will be protective in the long term. We cut at our peril.

What’s next in the wake of the CROSPO report? How can people working in research comms get involved?

Helen: We are really looking to hear from people out there who care about this too, who want to get involved and help us make these arguments and develop what we might be able to do to support the field. Claire and I are basically doing this on top of our day jobs, but we know there are people who care about this in the way that we do.

Please watch out for things like our survey, which we’ll be rerunning soon. If we put together events over the next six months to get people back in a room and think about how we can turn what we've done so far into meaningful change, please join us. It's really hard to get systemic change in a field as complex as research communication, so what is it that we can actually do practically? How can we support each other? How can we share best practices? How can we help each other do our own PR? How can we have a unified voice on issues that matter to us as a professional community?