Some simple advice, based on own experience: Don't be afraid. Prepare well. Use everyday language. Make it simple ("tabloid") yet correct. Show enthusiasm. Encourage curiosity by emphasizing mysteries not (yet) solved. Use whatever forum that is available to you (tv, radio, newspapers, magazines, blogs, youtube, websites, & whathaveyou). But focus your efforts on fora with the widest distribution, to maximize impact. And those you think you master the best. Yet dare to move out of your zone of comfort. And yes, it's our job to tell the world, and not only peers, about science. If we leave it entirely to journalists, science will be less well portrayed. And there will be less dissemination. But work with the journalists, not against them. They're your friends. Not the enemy. And they know valuable things about communication.

The broader audience usually pays for our papers (and the other work we do). In my opinion they deserve that we tell them what we do every now and then. I do not think there is THE most effective way, yet it's our job to find it each time new. And I think we could get better at it.

Owen, your question is absolutely relevant, and I believe that it is the task of the scientists to do the explanatory work as well; it is a part of the job.

I think that

(1) (agreeing with Nils:) who pays the bill, should get also answers (that they understand), and

(2) by explaining one's work, assuming it is done properly, (a) you understand yourself better your topic, (b) you gain further public interest, and (c) consequently and eventually you may get more resource to continue. So, at least in theory, it is a win-win situation.

However, certainly not every researcher is good at it, but I think this is normal and, as this is the case in all skills, it is basically acceptable. The only point that should be made here is that it should be part of the job, and, therefore, the raising of such awareness is (or should be) a part of the training of junior scientists.

With my colleague Gábor Timár, we offer a course for our doctoral students to motivate them to publish. An important point of this type of training is to gain the ability to explain e.g., to your aunt or to the friends of your parents what your are doing in your research. If the young scientist becomes able to do that, I think this is a good start, and then he or she can later accommodate with other type of approaches like interest from the local environment, local government, authority, media, etc. Since we do field training with the students, they meet often with farmers and local people, who are curious about what is happening (e.g. in their own farm...), and so students are exposed to such challenges. Normally they manage it to explain what and why they are doing.

The raising of awareness of younger colleagues is a duty of the senior scientists (parallel to their own public activity). If the awareness and the preparedness is provided, the experience can successively be gained. (And nobody is perfect, of course.)

Great feedback. Have people tried videos, blogs? In addition to magazine or newspaper stuff?

In my view, yes, it is definitely our job. However, not all of us can do it well and effectively, but it can be learnt. If it is done by another person (e.g. a journalist) (s)he will follow the Murphy's law, and somehow misinterprets your message.

As Balázs Székely above mentioned our course, one important message of that is 'when you write any paper, either scientific or popular, you should imagine one of your friends, who is assumed to be the typical reader of that media'. It could be your supervisor if you send a manuscript to the Journal of XXX Science or simply your former classmate if you write an article to a popular scientific blog.

If you are good enough at this, and you can simplify your message without losing its necessary sharpness, you can become popular quite quickly for mainstream media, too. The online portals always seek good scientific writers and blogging opens the door to this.

I do blogging, publishing satellite images with short explanations. If your blog (like mine) is often referred by the mainstream media, there is one more important 'rule' to follow. The average reader spends very short time at a blog article. It means, that one/two image(s) and two paragraphs are well enough but you should publish frequently (which is my fault now :) ). Building up a Facebook group to your blog is advised. See my blog (it is in Hungarian, but you can catch the structure):

http://muholdkepek.postr.hu/

I think that it's some of scientists job.We must be good at it.

Great feedback ... I find it difficult sometimes to simplify my message and explain in layman terms what I want to say. For example how do you get around definitions ---- photos, diagrams?

If they are absolutely needed (I mean the complex definitions or algorithm descriptions), you can put them to textboxes besides your main text, as background info - but they should be written also 'consumable' for the average reader. This makes easier to construct the structure of your main text as simple and easy as possible. However, I admit, it is the key point of the popular science, so I advise: do it several times and follow closely the feedbacks (make light provocations, if the audience remains silent). If you are lucky enough to cooperate with a news portal, its science editor gives you the needed harsh feedback if necessary :-)

I believe that it's definitely our responsibility to become effective communicators. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to share our output to as wide an audience and with as much impact as we would like. In my university (and in most others, I could imagine), we have a course that teaches biology undergraduates how to effectively communicate their ideas in both written and oral form. Part of that course is identifying your audience. Is it a specialist audience? Non-specialist? Mixed? I suppose by "broad" you mean a mixed audience of specialists and non-specialists. It's a matter (not very simple, granted) of balancing the interests of both sides. We can't become overly technical for fear of losing the interest and understanding of the non-specialists, but we have to give enough information to satisfy the specialists. In the end, good preparation, confidence, and of course comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter would be the most important.

Here's a very good guide, which I've been using for my course:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/english-communication-for-scientists-14053993/contents

Are there any good on line resources? What about science magazines, newspaper, radio, Internet pages?

Could we come up with a top 5 list and I will try it out with one of my recent papers.

you should know the following things before going to communicate to the audience.

1. what is the novelty in the publication?

2. who are the audience (scientific group or public)?

3. Is the topic of the paper interesting or useful to them?

Finally, if you have the answer for the above questions, you can easily communicate and explain to any audience.

During the presentation/meeting, you have to use/explain in the common language rather than scientific terms and you can use some case studies also.

All the best

A nice, simple but interesting presentation can make people understand your work better. There are a lot of presentation software available, not only microsoft excel can do the job, example, I used Powtoon and Prezi. These software able to attract my audience's attention.

For me, an Power Point (or similar software) presentaton, with maximum 25 slides (covered with a lot of figures, illustratiosn, graphical presentation, maybe small video); each slide can contain only few sentences and try to speak what audience cant read from the slides (reading slides audience finds very bored). Practice to narrate up to 15 minutes (same as on the scientific meeting).

Thanks for the tips so far. I want to set myself a target for 2013 and complete 5 things to get my research to a larger audience.

No 1. A popular article using simple language as mentioned in earlier comments

No 2. A blog or online presentation

No 3.?

No 4.?

No 5.?

Could people fill in 3-5?

And I agree I think it is the scientists job to do this. But are there others that could help? Or collaborate eg illustrators, graphic designers

I have found with my work that one needs to connect with the audience and speak in terms and language that they are familiar with. I try to make comparisons between the work I do and situations that my audience (normally farmers) are familiar with. This means that I have to do a little extra learning myself to be familiar with their situation but it is definitely worth it. Whilst I believe that peer-review articles are important, the most important technology transfer is that which gets the information in an understandable format to those that are most likely to use it. I have also found that hands-on practical demonstrations, where the farmers themselves do some of the work, are an excellent way to get a message across. If you can devise a practical learning-by-doing demonstration I would definitely recommend it.

Scientific presentations using more creatively colored charts and schematic diagrams and less words/texts is a good way of getting the majority to read your work in a conference/poster presentation for instance.

This is very useful discussion. Is there any software which can check/correct use of Engligh language while writing a research paper?

Owen, I suggest you to make an animation or 3D video (if it is applicable to elaborate your experiment procedures and results). Infographic is also a good and simple way to make people understand your works better. It's just my humble opinion.

Info graphic sounds great can you post details?

Some simple advice, based on own experience: Don't be afraid. Prepare well. Use everyday language. Make it simple ("tabloid") yet correct. Show enthusiasm. Encourage curiosity by emphasizing mysteries not (yet) solved. Use whatever forum that is available to you (tv, radio, newspapers, magazines, blogs, youtube, websites, & whathaveyou). But focus your efforts on fora with the widest distribution, to maximize impact. And those you think you master the best. Yet dare to move out of your zone of comfort. And yes, it's our job to tell the world, and not only peers, about science. If we leave it entirely to journalists, science will be less well portrayed. And there will be less dissemination. But work with the journalists, not against them. They're your friends. Not the enemy. And they know valuable things about communication.

Use a short title

avoid jargons write in simple sentences

you explain brain tumor even to commaner

if possible draw figure to bring home the points

Science is simple- you should be clear what you are writing

I agree with what most people have said regarding this problem. I would like to make one observation which I usually follow when I want to transfer technology to the farmers. As some respondents correctly put it, doing research with the target clientele is the best way to communicate scientific ideas. Writing the report/paper is another way of communicating with the research community but collaboration with the clientele is the best way to get your idea put to use. As scientists we need to practice communication skills and ensure that whatever we do will be readily available to most possible consumers of the results.

As I read throughout the answers, they are quite different. It is like an expression " People below the wind". Looking carefully at the question, we must think about the meaning of the phrase "broader audience". Therefore, the audience could not be only scientist or researchers, but general people such as farmers, politicians, etc., could be also communicated. This would be consistent with the answer given by Akwilin Tarimo. If the broader audience is limited only to scientist or researcher community, then the best way is the visualizing the results in the charts, graphs, tables. Showing equations related to the results could be also good.

If one would like to write a scientist paper for submitting to a journal, the answer would be coincide with that given by Prof. V.S Muruliharan.

Owen - I like your #1 and #2 goals, #3 might be to create an internet "highlight" from a scientific paper you have recently published. My institution does this frequently as a way to make the research accessible to people who ultimately fund our research (the public and public agencies). We do have people that help, who are trained in technical writing and spend time creatively packaging the subject matter, but it is important to work with them closely to make sure the material is accurately portrayed. A recent example from my work is available online at http://www.emsl.pnnl.gov/news/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=509 and you may be able to get something similar put onto your institution's website if you ask the right people, If your institution has staff that are knowledgeable in public relations, they may transmit the highlight to various technical news outlets that will then pick them up and distribute them to a broader audience.

Good advertisement, attractive packaging and use of everyday terms or words..should do the trick!

I recently worked with a toxicologist to try and explain not only toxicology but the changing science of toxicology.(see www.susankirk.com.au to see if you think I managed to succeed) Here are some of the background processes for what I did. I used the internet (medium) to get the message across. I believe this is the best medium for science communication. Why? Think info graphics: think hyperlinks, including full text bibliography, think video: think podcasts: think word count, science is complex can't always be summed up in a few hundred words. (beware: there are also issues and downsides to lengthy word count): think accessibility.

Most of all think back to when you started to learn about science. Get out your old text books if you still have them. Give the journalist links to basic articles about the subject matter. THINK 101. Be prepared to spend a lot of time explaining and helping journalists with the draft (if they will allow you!). This is particularly true for non science journalist like me. And yes use your PR people if you have them. Don't ask them to write a media release (this is causing a lot of sensational science and we don't want that, well newspaper journalists may want it, but it does nothing for the credibility of science) See if they will write you a brief backgrounder and give this to the journalist. Seek out journalists with your news. Think Margaret Gees.

Acredito que o artigo deve ser o mais objetivo possível, sem rodeios ou vícios de linguagem.

Short understandable title-explain the problem or situation you are trying to solve-explain in simple terms the strategy you are performing to achieve such goal-and show results.

Always talk/write in both, the scientific language and the common language for particular subjects difficult to understand.