Hi, I'm Casey, andI I'm a professor. This is what I hope is the first in a series of videos
about something that I care a lot about, which is public scholarship People might give you
different definitions of what public scholarship is. Essentially I'm talking about anything that
is communicating your academic, scientific, scholarly work beyond your academic community.
This might include anything from writing op-eds or blogging to talking to policymakers or advocates
or tweeting. One way we often rely on getting the word out about science to the general public is
journalists and honestly if a journalist can write about your work in an accessible way there's no
reason that you can't do that too. I'm hoping to do some videos about really specific things like
how to write a blog post that is an accessible version of a published paper, how to write and
pitch an op-ed, how to tweet as an academic, and reasons why you might want or not want to do that.
But right now I just want to talk about my basic philosophy for why public scholarship is important
and how it benefits you in terms of your career. So first of all in a broad sense informing the
general public about research about science has benefits to the world. In fact I would argue that
we have some obligation as scientists, especially if you're at a publicly funded university,
to make your research accessible to the people who are paying for that research.
And if you are studying a particular community or group of people,
making the findings of that research accessible to them or even research that just impacts people.
My hope is that if you're watching this and you are a researcher part of your goal with your
research is to have an impact on the world outside of just academia. This is a way to do that,
and the more people who see your work the more likely it is to be impactful. Unfortunately a
lot of scientific publications are behind paywalls and I could go on and on about open access and how
important it is because rah-rah open access. That's a whole different video. But if your
publications are behind paywalls then for example writing a blog post that is an accessible version
of that paper is good not only because more people will be able to understand it and more people
might come across it, but also it means that it's not behind a paywall. Now you might be thinking
that your research area is just not interesting to people beyond your immediate academic community.
I'm not going to judge whether that's true or not though I will say that a lot of things, there's
really a nugget of something interesting even if it doesn't seem so at first glance. However
there are benefits to public scholarship even in your academic community. For one, being able
to communicate your work in an accessible way is actually an extremely valuable skill, and honestly
something that a lot of scientists don't have. I mean scholars in a particular discipline need
to be able to talk to not only people in their immediate discipline but also people who are in
adjacent disciplines or other areas of research where there might be some connection. This means
you need to learn to explain yourself without jargon. I also personally find that for example
writing a blog post about a paper is a really really good way to organize the story of that
paper such that it translates into a presentation really well. Also we would like to imagine that
we have all the time in the world to read and keep up on the latest literature in our field.
We don't. I don't. I wish I did. I'm guessing that you don't either. So it's actually true that
other people in your discipline might be more likely to read a blog post or a Twitter thread
than an entire paper. Of course that also means that they might read that blog post
to remember it and then later when they think about that idea again go read the entire paper
and then be more likely to cite it. So yes, you can also be selfish and think about how
talking about your work more publicly might lead to more citations. You never know. I mean you
can certainly make the argument that blogging, tweeting, writing op-eds will not get you tenure
or won't get you a job if you are a PhD student right now. Technically probably true,
you don't go up for tenure on tweeting. I kind of wish you could go up on tweeting.
But the actual way to think about this is that public scholarship alone will not get you
tenure. However you can think about it as a way of supplementing and especially amplifying your work.
Again people in your field might be more likely to read a blog post and remember the basics of your
research than to read an entire paper. So blogging for example can't replace the research that you
need to do to be successful in your career and it shouldn't replace writing papers that will be
published. However if you're able to it can be a really nice supplement. And now I hope you're
thinking about this in terms of, well if it's extra then how am I going to have time to do that?
So completely valid. And I will say then that if you are in a department where you know for certain
that they do not value or even actively look down upon public scholarship your decision space
here is a little bit different. For me personally I consider the practice of for example writing
a blog post about a published paper to be part of the time that I am spending on research and
would otherwise be doing something else. And again it helps me towards presentations, it
helps me towards communicating the work. I don't necessarily think that you should for example
start a YouTube channel if you don't have the time and you know that that time would be much better
spent working on something that's more directly related to metrics of success. That said, again
I do think that there are some benefits in terms of communication etc that are helpful even if
it is not a direct impact on your career. Another really legitimate concern is maybe especially
depending on the kind of research you do and who you are you might not want to draw a lot of
attention to yourself. One very good reason to not want to be a highly public intellectual is because
there's a possibility of harassment. This is a legitimate risk and you are the only one who can
make the decision about how to weigh that. I will however link down below to a resource about how
researchers and public scholars can help protect themselves from harassment. Another concern you
might have is that you honestly have no idea how to write for a public audience. I mean honestly
we're often not really taught that kind of thing in graduate school for example.
But just how you once learned how to write the basic structure of an academic paper
this is something that you can learn as well. And of course practice makes perfect
so write some blog posts first that you know not a lot of people will likely read and then eventually
you'll get better at it and you can write op-eds. Plus again even if no one reads it getting better
at the skill getting better at communicating your ideas is going to make your writing in
general better. And also your storytelling which can be really helpful for things like
talking to someone else at a conference or doing a presentation about your work. So again
there are lots of different ways that you can do this. I often consider a very easy way to start
to be once you have published a paper writing an accessible, say, five to eight hundred word
blog post that describes your findings and why this is important and why it is interesting
to people beyond just your academic community. I'll link down below to a blog post that I
wrote about how to blog a paper. I might also do a video specifically on how to do that. Other things
that you might consider are twitter threads about the findings of your most recent paper
or another thing that public scholars often do is tie what they know to something that's happening
in the world. I often have twitter threads that start with the news article and then go through
something that I have to say about this that is based on my research. And it doesn't necessarily
always have to be a specific paper. Try not to get caught up on oh no one's reading this, I don't
have any twitter followers, my blog isn't getting any hits. First of all everyone starts somewhere.
I mean I definitely had maybe one or two hundred twitter followers during most of my PhD.
And not a lot of people were reading my blog posts either but it was good practice and also this is
the kind of thing that builds over time. Just like this YouTube channel. I don't have that many
subscribers, I don't know what it'll look like in a year but I do think that some of the people who
are watching this are getting something out of it and that's why I'm doing it. Now what I'd really
like to know as I start on the series of videos about public scholarship what are your questions
or concerns what are the things that you have tried to do or that you want to know how to do,
what are the reservations that you have, what should I make videos about essentially. I'd also
love to see examples of your favorite public scholars or pieces of public scholarship, even
your own. Please feel free to link in the comments to blog posts that you've written or that other
people have written, people who are awesome on twitter, really good op-eds written by academics.
I'll link to some of my own favorites down below. Basically this is something I care a lot about.
I think that getting research and science out to the general public is really important and so
I'd like to do what I can to help other people to do this. That's all I have for you today,
why don't you go off and tell someone
about your research today who wouldn't know about it otherwise! And I'm Casey, thanks for watching.