The social science of science communication is a vast field of research, with new papers constantly being published on topics such as science misinformation, people’s perceptions of risk, climate change communication, and more. How can you keep up to date with it all? Many of the strategies you might use to keep up with physical science research work for scicomm research, too. Here are some tips.
Search specific journals
Just as there are journals dedicated to astronomy and chemistry and microbiology, there are journals dedicated to science communication. The main three that cover the full breadth of scicomm research are Science Communication, Public Understanding of Science, and the Journal of Science Communication. Other journals cover subfields of science communication, like Health Communication, the Journal of Health Communication, and Environmental Communication.
Journals in the broader communication field, such as the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and New Media & Society, frequently publish work with implications for science communication. Similarly, political science journals like Political Communication and psychology journals like Psychological Science and the Journal of Environmental Psychology offer valuable insights for our community.
If you’re looking for research on communication related to a specific area of science, try searching that field’s interdisciplinary journals. For example, Climatic Change publishes research on climate change communication, and Risk Analysis publishes research on risk communication.
Search Google Scholar and other databases
Although checking individual journals is a good start, don’t limit your searches to a small list of journals. Since science communication is such an interdisciplinary field, a broader search will often turn up insightful papers in journals you never would have thought to check (for example, climate change communication research has been published in literally hundreds of journals). Try searching Google Scholar, or if you’re affiliated with a university, use your institution’s library databases. Google Scholar lets you set alerts so that you receive an email whenever an article matching your interests is published.
And when you find a valuable article, it’s always a good idea to look at the papers it cites. What journals do they appear in, and who are the authors? That will give you more relevant research to read as well as ideas for further searches.
Follow relevant blogs
As our community increasingly recognizes the need to move beyond silos, some blogs have sprung up to summarize new scicomm research in brief, jargon-free posts. The Link (from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University) and SciCommBites are two such sites. Also, science communication researchers sometimes write about their work in The Conversation. For those interested in climate change communication, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication publishes digestible summaries of all their academic papers.
Connect with science communication researchers
If you find a certain researcher’s work particularly compelling, reach out to them to chat! And if you want to read an article but can’t access it behind a paywall, ask an author for a copy! Just as physical scientists are often eager to share their work with a broader audience, science communication researchers want their work to make an impact in the real world, beyond the pages of the journal.
Talking with a researcher is a great way to learn empirically informed best practices for scicomm, and it will make the vast world of scicomm research feel more approachable for you. And you never know where a good conversation will lead—maybe you’ll end up collaborating with the researcher on future projects. In any case, more dialogue between researchers and practitioners will lead to more effective science communication on the ground and more insightful research in academia. That’s a win-win for everyone involved.
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