Taking your research paper from published to public

Congratulations! The research paper you’ve been working tirelessly on for months years is accepted, published, and in print. You hold back the urge to print the cover page and post it on your refrigerator. Instead, you take the link and post it to social media sharing your paper with the world. And now you are […]
An Academics Guide to Op-ed Pitches

Long, long ago, in the year 2014, an opinion writer for the New York Times wrote a plea for more professors to come down from the ivory tower and write for the public. Our knowledge demands to be shared beyond the academy! And for many good reasons, not the least bit that op-eds can have […]
Media Pitching for Academics (how to become a source)

If you are a scholar interested in learning about media pitching for academics, you’re in the right place! This introduction post covers how researchers and scholars can pitch a journalist and/or editor to be a source. The goal here is two-fold: to pitch story ideas (e.g., your published research, your expertise) to targeted members of […]
Why do we assume the public is not interested in our research? Thoughts on the knowledge deficit model.

There is much to be said about the knowledge deficit model and its impact on how researchers and scientists think about communicating with the public. Get this: scientists more or less hold negative feelings about the public’s base scientific knowledge. To add insult to injury, researchers who already have negative views about their potential public […]
twitter was never ours to begin with.

i never had a myspace page. i am one of those people who prefers to live by the beat of her own drum, purposefully refusing to conform to trends and crowd behavior. (it is an annoying trait, but i will not be a sheep, damnit!). and boy oh boy the people were on myspace! i […]
twitter for citations

for the love of twitter! there is a hate / love / hate relationship with twitter and the people who inhabit its corner of the internet. i, for one, think it is one of the best cyber places on earth. sure, twitter is rife with shit and shit people. but when you successfully create your […]
where to begin?

the road to public engagement is fraught with road bumps but also with miles of open, beautiful road. the work is hard, time consuming, and can be thankless. but the reward can be substantial. not financially, of course. though this process could be parlayed into grant writing and consultations, among other things. what i think about, and […]
a catalog of research and inspiration

i am constantly and consistently doing research and reading about public scholarship as a part of my journey to become more forward facing as well as to guide researchers and scholars on their own unique public scholarship journey. to support the proposition that academics are content curators, i created a curated catalog of information for […]
how to become a better writer.

the million dollar question with about a billion dollars worth of answers and approaches. how do i become a better writer? i don’t offer the definitive answer to this question…if i had this, i’d be a trillionaire (rounding out my unachievable financial goals reference for good measure)! there are loads of books on how to […]