Resource of the Week #14: Maximizing Research Impacts—Guidance for Social Scientists

Hello again! I’m writing this post at the end of a busy week: the last week of the Intensive Course in Research Writing.

A few days ago, in a posted comment, an AuthorAID community member asked, “Can we have some tips/guides/good materials on scientific writing in the social sciences?” I replied that, in fact, our next Resource of the Week would be mainly for social scientists.

What’s the resource? It’s Maximizing the Impacts of Your Research: A Handbook for Social Scientists.

A group from the London School of Economics and elsewhere prepared this handbook. They say it “provides a large menu of sound and evidence-based advice and guidance on how to ensure that your work achieves its maximum visibility and influence with both academic and external audiences.”

Accordingly, this handbook has 2 main parts: “Maximizing the Academic Impacts of Research” and “Maximizing Research Impacts Beyond the Academy.” It also has an extensive bibliography.

In all, the handbook runs almost 300 pages. However, by reading the executive summary—which runs about 5 pages—one can gain many main points.

Much of the advice applies to researchers in both the social sciences and other fields. For example, item 17 in the summary states: “Academics who wish to improve the citation rate of their journal articles should ensure that title names are informative and memorable, and that their abstracts contain key ‘bottom line’ or ‘take-away points’.”

Good advice to remember!

Until the next post— Barbara