Imagine this – you go to your local park in Europe (or North America) and you take pictures of, and with, random children. Then, without the child’s or their guardian’s consent, you post those picture online for the world to see with captions like “these kids stole my heart [heart emoji]”. This would be unacceptable, ...

Should scientists be concerned if their research output is inaccessible to non-experts? Put another way, should scientists make an effort to communicate their science to the wider public? I posed these questions to a group of graduate students and postdocs and the feedback was mixed. On the one hand, there were legitimate concerns about the ...

Running an independent project is different from writing the proposal for it. I know it seems obvious but for a person who is running their project for the first time, this does not become obvious until the work begins. Once a project is funded, the postdoc is effectively a principal investigator and is on the ...

Communicating science to the public can be a balancing act, especially for academics who are used to speak about their science to peers that share a considerable amount of background knowledge. Many scientists believe that they need to ‘dumb down’ their research in order to make their audience understand it and fear that it will ...

Column by Marie Chancel, post doc at Karolinska Institutet, about her principles as a reviewer.

Hands on heart – not everyone has the time or wants to dedicate their time to pursue science communication besides their research career. That’s okay. But, even if you do not plan to communicate science to the lay audience, being present on social media can have benefits for you as a scientist. With that I ...

Scientists are extensively trained and therefore the experts in their fields. Accordingly, there should be no better person for communicating the significance and limitations of their research than them. However, this is only true in part. While some of them are natural communicators and already take part in public outreach and science communication (scicomm), there ...

Social media were originally created to help people stay in touch when they are separated spatially or temporarily. They were so successful in connecting people that they became an omnipresent part of people’s lives. Anything that gets posted to social media has the potential to reach a lot of people. Just like in real life, ...

Column by Ulrikke Voss, lecturer at University of Oslo, about her walk from Ystad to Abisko and the 28 scientists she met on the way.