Resource of the Week #185: Two Recent Practical Guides from SciDev.Net

Hello again. To be most effective, researchers sometimes must communicate with people outside their own fields. Two recent additions to the Practical Guides series from SciDev.Net provide advice on such communication.

One of these recent guides is titled “How to Communicate in an Interdisciplinary Team”. This guide includes advice on dealing with differences in terminology, in research perspectives, and in cultures. It also discusses publishing interdisciplinary studies. One suggestion that it makes is for team members to spend time informally getting to know each other.

The other of these guides is titled “What Journalists Want from Scientists and Why”. This easy-to-read guide contains many good tips and insights. For example, it explains

• why journalists often want to interview scientists without delay
• why journalists tend to prefer telephone rather than email
• why talking with a journalist can be worthwhile even if you aren’t mentioned in the resulting story

General information on the Practical Guides series appeared in an earlier Resource of the Week post. Also, the AuthorAID Resource Library now contains an entry on the Practical Guides.

This new entry includes a list providing links to Practical Guides that may especially interest researchers. We thank Juan Casasbuenas, training coordinator at SciDev.Net, for providing this list.

Until next post—

Barbara