Science communication in the field of fundamental biomedical research (editorial)

The aim of this special issue on science communication is to inspire and help scientists who are taking part or want to take part in science communication and engage with the wider public, clinicians, other scientists or policy makers. For this, some articles provide concise and accessible advice to individual scientists, science networks, or learned societies on how to communicate effectively; others share rationales, objectives and aims, experiences, implementation strategies and resources derived from existing long-term science communication initiatives. Although this issue is primarily addressing scientists working in the field of the biomedical sciences, much of it similarly applies to scientists in other disciplines. Furthermore, we hope that this issue will also be used as a helpful resource by academic science communicators and social scientists, as a collection that highlights some of the major communication challenges that the biomedical sciences face, and which provides interesting case studies of initiatives that use a breadth of strategies to address these challenges. In this editorial, we first discuss

This special issue has primarily been put together for scientists from the biomedical research field. However, we envisage that it will be useful also to scientists from other fields who are taking part or are planning to take part in science communication, as well as to professional/academic science communicators or social scientists (from now on referred to as 'science communicators'). The motivation for editing this special issue was born out of the observation that there are many excellent science communication initiatives by biomedical scientists (from now on referred to as 'scientists'), yet very few of them are publicised in biomedical journals or in science communication journals. We believe this to be due to the fact that few biomedical journals seem to appreciate the importance of these initiatives for their own scientific field, whilst most journals in the science communication field seem not to consider the work by these initiatives sufficiently academic to suit their readership.
This issue intends therefore to bridge this apparent gap between scientists and science communicators, by providing a forum in a biomedical journal for both groups. For scientists this is an opportunity to publish outstanding science communication work without having to provide indepth research for every statement they make, or to refer to science communication concepts and use terms and phrases unfamiliar to them. Rather, we asked the authors to describe their initiatives, rationales, good and bad experiences, strategies and resources. This will hopefully inspire other scientists to start communicating their science or improve the strategies they use. For science communicators this special issue is an opportunity to reach out to scientists and use plain language to explain and raise awareness of concepts, strategies and helpful practices developed in the field of academic science communication -hopefully also raising awareness amongst science communicators that the actual strategies they study have to be similarly applied to their own ways of communication by reaching out to non-specialists who can then benefit. Furthermore, we hope that science communicators will feel inspired to capitalise on the resources provided in this issue and use them as potential case studies for their own research.
Writing articles at the interface of biology and science communication is a challenge, and we are most grateful to the authors, all of whom were prepared to engage in this experiment. Therefore, we encourage scientists and science communicators to step back from their usual expectations for publications in their own fields, and to instead use this special issue as an inspiration to how the gap between the different disciplines could be narrowed or closed, thereby paving the way to more effective interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-fertilisation.
We believe that such interdisciplinary collaborations between scientists and science communicators would be of mutual interest and benefit. For scientists, engaging the public with their fundamental science is of enormous importance, for example to address adverse views about science in society and to improve science literacy, e.g. through the advisory and collaborative involvement of scientists in the design of school science curricula [1,2]. Unfortunately, as explained in Section 4, communicating fundamental science is a particularly challenging task, and scientists could enormously benefit from the collaboration with science communication experts to improve their effectiveness. For science communicators, interdisciplinary collaborations with scientists provide an opportunity to look beyond the usual examples commonly referred to in their field (e.g. climate change, fracking, genetic crops, etc.) and to study the enormous wealth of excellent science communication initiatives developed by those working in the field of fundamental biomedical research -often doing so without any preknowledge of science communication strategies.
In this editorial, we will first explain why more scientists should take part in science communication, but also address and explain two barriers that may hamper such activities: the lack of knowledge most scientists have about concepts and strategies of science communication, and the specific challenges that scientists face in engaging with the public. We will then explain terms used in the field, such as: widening participation, knowledge exchange, advocacy, public engagement, public outreach, public understanding, or public awareness [26] -all of which, including also science education [27], we gather here under the umbrella term of science  communication.   152  153  154  155   156  157  158   159  160  161  162  163  164  165  166  167  168  169   170  171  172  173  174  175  176  177  178  179   180  181  182  183  184  185  186  187  188  189   190  191  192  193  194  195  196  197 198 A concise, thoughtful and easy-to-read review by D.B. Short [28] provides a brief history of science communication, focussing on events following publication of the impactful Bodmer report in 1985 [29] (see also the historical introduction in [6]). It raises several relevant issues: a) Science communication was originally seen as a process whereby scientists fill gaps in the knowledge of the public, a 'top-down' educational approach that was described by the 'deficit model' ( [30] and references within). This 'one-way' mode of communication was later recognised as being 'ineffective' at achieving the communication goals and replaced by models of 'two-way' dialogue or even mutual learning where the public is listened to and has an impact on science and research governance [31]. However, in reality, both models are perhaps not exclusive and need to be viewed with sufficient differentiation; for example, having a certain level of knowledge can sometimes be a necessary prerequisite for members of the public to be able to engage in meaningful dialogue with scientists [28], and a gain in knowledge can very well have positive impacts on people's attitude depending on their contexts and pre-knowledge [30].
b) We need to frame our science communication carefully, to avoid promoting false expectations that can back-fire [28]: for example, over-selling 'benefits to society' including economic gain and quality-of-life improvements derived from fundamental science, may have facilitated mistrust or false expectations by the public (including decision-and policymakers), and encouraged a rising demand for more applied/translational science with expected short-term returns. Moreover, living in "post-truth" times may also affect the ways in which science is communicated and/or viewed, and proactive science communication -with intelligent framing -might be even more important under these circumstances in order to maintain (or re-gain) wider agreement with, trust in, and support for fundamental research as an important pillar of science [32][33][34][35].
c) Science communication is driven by different groups including politicians, scientists, science institutions, funding or patient organisations, and learned societies, which might all have very different viewpoints when setting their objectives for effective communication and engagement. Science communication might easily be misused for political or commercial purposes, which might no longer represent the kind of science communication that was originally intended by the scientists who chose to engage with the public. For this reason, informed and transparent objective setting with a clear awareness of who the beneficiaries are is as important when planning ones engagement [23,36], as it is to maintain independence from commercial interests (see the example of EuroStemCell [37]).
Whilst scientists might be interested in some of the ideas that D.B. Short discusses in his review, it is important to point out that not all of these ideas are universally agreed upon. For example, some science communciators might argue that there is no threshold of knowledge needed to engage in dialogue, or that using science communication as a recruitment drive to encourage students to pursue scientific careers is a good thing. These different views and approaches serve to demonstrate how tricky it can be for scientists who are new to communicating their research, and how difficult it can be to navigate the literature, nomenclature, and attitudes surrounding science communication.  204  205  206  207  208  209  210  211  212  213  214  215  216  217  218  219  220  221  222  223  224  225  226  227   228  229  230  231  232  233  234  235  236  237  238  239  240  241  242  243  244   245 Achieving momentum and impact is particularly relevant for scientists who want to communicate topics of fundamental research that have no direct path to application [39]. Those working in translational biomedical research on topics that concern disease treatment and improvement of life quality (e.g. cancer, neurodegeneration, stem cells) will have a 'naturally' motivated audience amongst those who are affected and are seeking for help and advice (Section 5.2.1; [37]), and this might similarly be the case for topics like food security or sustainability. Those of us who communicate with clinicians to achieve collaboration, may be able to build on a shared scientific goal that is mutually attractive (Section 5.2.2.; [40]); similarly, African researchers were reported to be highly motivated to collaborate on the DrosAfrica project because they saw important opportunities to improve their scientific standing (Section 5.2.2.; [41]). However, without such 'natural' incentives, the only obvious motivations for target audiences to engage are curiosity or an interest in learning (as is expressed and explained in Fig. 1), which are less likely to serve as a solid and self-sustaining driver for a science communication initiative. As a further challenge, fundamental science and its most recent achievements are often not easy to convey and may require extra layers of explanation, to introduce non-experts to fundamental science concepts that underpin new discoveries. This needs extra time and thought, and it seems therefore no surprise that engagement with audiences too often stays at a very basic level. Paige Jarreau stated about this problem on Twitter (@FromTheLabBench, 1 Aug 2017): "Wow, out of 1,000+ sci museum Instagram posts we've analyzed (w/@nicoledahmen) only 8 posts TOTAL discuss a recent sci discovery/finding".
We therefore believe that it requires extra stamina to drive effective science communication initiatives in the fundamental sciences, and that doing so requires long-term, objective-driven approaches. Such approaches make it possible to develop a gradually growing pool of high-quality resources, to gain interdisciplinary expertise and, if the initiative can be sustained for long enough, to provide a higher likelihood of gaining momentum and achieving measurable impact (which may then also lead to external reward and other benefits, such as promotion, alternative professional perspectives, recognition by peers, etc; see [14]). For this reason, examples provided in Section 5.2 of this issue represent objective-driven, long-term initiatives. We suggest that sustainability can be further improved if initiatives are woven into networks of science communication. Such networks can be facilitated through learned societies or not-for-profit science journals (Section 5.2.3.) and through interdisciplinary collaborations that may involve schools, social science, the area of law, the arts, and/or the media. In particular, working with schools provides important opportunities for fundamental scientists to engage with the public, as many work in areas directly relevant to the school science curriculum; via scientist-teacher collaborations, the scientists' subject knowledge can filter through to schools and lesson contents, and such developments can be of mutual benefit to scientists, teachers and pupils and have potential long-term impact on society (see Section 5.2.3.).   255   256  257  258  259  260  261  262  263  264  265  266  267  268  269  270  271  272  273  274  275  276  277  278  279  280  281   282 As already mentioned in Section 2, science communication as an academic discipline has generated many ideas, concepts and strategies for how to communicate science to specific audiences, and literature is available explaining and advising on key strategies [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. However, scientists hardly find the time to keep up with the literature of their own field, let alone academic science communication literature -even more since the field-specific concepts and terms frequently used and referred to in those publications, are often unfamiliar to non-experts and can therefore be difficult to access for scientists. The article by Sam Illingworth [23] aims to overcome such access barriers by providing a concise and accessible overview of basic tricks and tips for effective science communication and raising awareness of opportunities as well as common mistakes or omissions. Notably, this article has been developed by ScienceSplained (a group of expert scientists providing animated videos for academic websites) on their own initiative into an entertaining YouTube video [50].
A key challenge for science communication initiatives is the evaluation of quality and impact [51][52][53][54][55]. Demonstration of impact (i.e. an evidence of change in knowledge, skills or behaviour) is often requested as a quality indicator by funding organisations or during institutional assessments, but evaluation can also be used as an extremely helpful measure to improve quality of individual science communication activities [56,57]. As a major problem associated with evaluations, King et al (p.1 in [57]) point out that: "providing [impact] is extremely difficult given the narrow constraints of available budgets, staff and methodological expertise within which [informal learning institutions] operate" suggesting that "the emphasis on impact is obfuscating the valuable role of evaluation". Furthermore, we have to be aware of the risk that "engagement becomes more about evaluation and measurement than about altruism, mutual learning, and respect" (p.2 in [13]). Notwithstanding potential problems associated with evaluation, it is pivotal for the sustainability of any successful, long-term science communication initiative to include quality and/or impact evaluation. To facilitate this task, the article by Suzanne Spicer provides a brief and easy-to-understand overview of suitable strategies and methodologies [58].  284   285  286  287  288  289  290  291  292  293  294  295  296  297  298  299  300  301  302  303  304   305 The two articles about EuroStemCell [37] and the Manchester Fly Facility [36] have a number of interesting commonalities: (1) both initiatives aim to raise awareness about a specific science topic (stem cells versus fruit fly research) and to address discrepancies between the views of the wider public and field experts; (2) both initiatives started from a single activity (developing a film and website versus generating a training package for students), which gradually expanded into multi-facetted initiatives including multiple strategies to target a broad range of audiences; (3) both initiatives aim to develop science communication networks within their specific research communities, for example they use a central website [59,60] and make their developed resources freely available in order to engage with the general public on a wider scale and to animate scientists from their fields to contribute to the communication effort; (4) both initiatives capitalise on interdisciplinary collaborations and combine complementary expertises to widen the range and quality of their activities. However, a major difference between the two initiatives lies in their scopes and target audiences: stem cell science involves an ever increasing group of researchers and clinicians worldwide, as compared to 10-15K scientists working with Drosophila [61]; and there is a 'naturally motivated' target audience (see Section 4) for stem cell research (with 1.3 million unique visitors of the EuroStemCell webpage per annum), whereas Drosophila research, although of high translational potential, concerns fundamental bioscience in its core attracting far less attention (~25 K visitors of the Manchester Fly Facility websites over 3 years). Given these very different circumstances, it is interesting to see how analogous strategies were developed independently by the two different initiatives. 306   307  308  309  310  311  312  313  314  315  316  317  318  319  320  321  322  323  324  325  326  327  328  329  330  331  332  333  334  335  336 Chao et al. [40] describe how collaborative projects between clinicians and scientists can be achieved; they explain the underlying rationale, implementation strategies, available online tools, and potential mutual gains for the collaborating partners, illustrating this through several concrete examples. Clinicians and scientists have a common fundamental interest (i.e. understanding the biology behind disease-linked genes), and both parties can benefit enormosuly by combining their scientific approaches (i.e. gene-linkage and study of symptoms in patients versus functional dissection of biological/disease mechanisms in animal models or cell culture). However, the challenges lie in the very different scientific education and culture of clinicians and biologists (i.e. systemic physiology at the level of organs and the body versus mechanistic thinking at the level of molecules, cells and organs). Establishing ways of communication that foster a mutual acceptance and realisation of each other's strengths is essential to achieve successful collaboration, which can then pave the way to a greater and mutually beneficial outcome.

Scientist-to-scientist communication
The "DrosAfrica" project described by Martín-Bermudo, Gebel and Palacios [41], aims to "build an African biomedical research community using Drosophila" [62][63][64]. It has common roots with, and still shares important commonalities with "TReND in Africa", a successful charity organisation that focuses on improving the standing of neuroscience in Africa [65][66][67]. Both initiatives collaborate with scientists in Africa to improve science training and education, the science curriculum, research quality and output, as well as the available infrastructure (see also [68,69]). The overarching aim is to reduce the human capital flight ("brain drain") of experts and to positively impact on economic development. As an efficient but also cost-effective model organism, Drosophila can be a driver of such developments, as is illustrated by the role fruit flies played in establishing genetic research in Spain [70]. For researchers in Africa, the cost-saving aspect of fly research can free funds for important infrastructure investments, whilst the uses of Drosophila for research on topics such as pesticide resistance [71], mosquito olfaction [72] or Plasmodium growth [73,74] provide opportunities in areas that are very relevant to the African continent. In their article, Martín-Bermudo, Gebel and Palacios describe how DrosAfrica is being implemented, providing an important resource for those who would like to establish similar collaborations (e.g. [75]). 337   338  339  340  341  342  343  344  345  346  347  348  349  350  351  352  353 354 Science communication and education are two sides of the same coin [27,76], and schools offer important opportunities to open young people's minds to science. Two articles in this issue explore long-term collaboration initiatives with schools in England. The project described by Kover and Hogge [77] aims to improve teaching of inheritance and evolution in primary schools, and the droso4schools project described by Patel et al. [78] attempts to improve biology teaching through establishing the fruit fly Drosophila as a powerful teaching tool in classrooms. Both projects capitalise on long-term collaboration as a very effective strategy, and place university students as teaching assistants in schools: to establish dialogue with teachers, learn about school realities, identify content requirements, and develop school-apt teaching strategies. To achieve momentum and impact, both projects recognise the importance of having a dedicated website to reach out nationally and even internationally [79,80], and they provide purpose-tailored, free-to-download sample lessons to actively involve other teachers that are not collaborating on the project. Both articles talk about the difficult task of actively marketing such projects and in finding teachers who are willing to adopt or adapt the respective teaching resources. The two articles not only address those who want to collaborate with schools in the longterm, but also provide many important insights that are useful for any form of science communication in schools. Learned societies represent the interests of scientists who share the same scientific interests. They are therefore in an ideal position to coordinate, support, and enhance science communication relevant to specific scientific fields. Various societies in the biomedical sciences have recognised this role and are performing science communication to different degrees (Box 2). To raise awareness of possible strategies, the article by Jeanne Braha [81] describes the various science communication activities available to scientific societies, using primarily examples implemented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) [82], a society with a long-standing and vision-driven tradition in science communication [83]. Activities mentioned in the article by Braha include the support of society members through offering advice, providing resources and training, connecting scientists to audiences, making information available to the public, and awarding prizes for outstanding science communication work. Further examples of science communication activities driven by scientific organisations and learned societies are provided in Box 2.   358  359  360  361  362  363  364  365  366  367  368   369  370  371  372  373  374  375  376  377  378  379  380  381  382  383  384  385  386  387 388 Social media present interesting new opportunities for science communication [43,[84][85][86] (but also averse challenges [87]). Here, Vicente et al. [88] explain the rationale and practicalities of The Node [89], a "community [blog] site for and by developmental biologists" and researchers from related fields. The Node is maintained by The Company of Biologists, a "not-for-profit publishing organisation dedicated to supporting and inspiring the biological community" [90]. It provides a field-specific, highly-subscribed-to communication platform which can be used by individuals or societies to write field-relevant, non-commercial blogs (e.g. reports about scientific publications, conferences or outreach events, announcements, job adverts, etc.), but it also provides services such as collated lists of relevant conferences or science communication resources. In this way, The Node can be viewed as a modern form of newsletter [91]. However, although scientist are usually prominent blog users [92], Vicente et al. report that they "average less than 1 comment per post (not including jobs)", suggesting that biologists have a low tendency to engage with the medium (see also [36]). The Node tries to compensate for this by using also Twitter and Facebook as complementary social media platforms, but even this outreach is limited when considering that only about 10% of first/last authors publishing in the journal Development use Twitter (Aidan Maartens, pers. comm.). These various communication strategies explained by Vicente et al., provide a useful resource for societies and other scientist networks aiming to enhance interaction and collaboration within their communities and beyond (for further examples see [93] and [94]). and future perspectives   389   390  391  392  393  394  395  396  397  398  399  400  401  402  403  404  405   406   407   408 As discussed in the introduction, science communication initiatives vary widely in terms of mode of delivery, target audience, and overall aims and objectives. This special issue provides advice and inspirational examples that demonstrate how simple initial steps or ideas can be developed, through dedication and the pursuit of a clear vision, into impactful projects. It aims to raise the wider appreciation of science communication activities and, thereby, improve the condition of those who are actively involved (e.g. help with professional promotion, recognition by peers, alternative professional careers). Some of the articles in this special issue also demonstrate how scientists can go beyond face-to-face communication, through sharing resources and strategies online and, eventually, forming networks of science communication where resources and workload can be distributed. In the biomedical sciences, such an approach is urgently required to improve the standing of fundamental research in society, and this is where we as individuals, but also journals, societies or other organisations, can play a key part in helping to communicate and develop our field. We hope that the articles collected in this special issue provide an impetus for this development, and that in reading them you feel encouraged to communicate your science effectively, and inspired to work with others to develop interdisciplinary collaborations to address both scientific and societal needs. To show the public as accurately as possible I have worked from sketches that I made of the people of Manchester, including a teacher, a clinician and a politician as they are key figures for which it is particularly important to communicate information to. The representation of "biology" is expressive and abstract; as an artist and a non-expert in biology I looked for a way to depict scientific knowledge as a mysterious and intricate energy to catch the eye of somebody who might ordinarily have no interest in biology. A zebrafish, fruit fly and mouse have also been included as they have special relevance in many areas of biological research." (Matt Girling, mattgirlingartist.tumblr.com). To add to this, we, the authors, also feel that these images relate to the spirit of illustrations drawn for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, thus referring to a time in the second half of the 19th century that was particularly open to discovery, curiosity, science and technology.