How to write lay summaries of research articles for wider accessibility

Abstract

Scientific writing can be hard for nonspecialists to understand. Journals are trying to make findings more accessible by asking authors to write "lay summaries." These texts are intended to be more widely understood than abstracts. We show, however, that they are not more accessible due to high jargon and low readability scores of the writing. We offer tips to authors, as well as publishers and editors, for how to improve in this area. Our recommendations aim to make the summaries more easily understood by a wider range of people.Journal articles are the key means for communicating scientific research. In the last century, science has become increasingly specialized such that journals commonly target researchers from ever narrower sub-disciplines. However, even in specialist journals, the research published can be relevant to scientists from other disciplines and to nonscientists including policymakers, managers, educators, and the general public (Knight 2003). Unfortunately, such broad audiences do not always find traditional articles easily accessible because they are written using an academic style that includes low readability of text and confusing jargon (Falkenberg and Tubb 2017).An approach to enhance the accessibility of articles by broader audiences is the inclusion of "lay summaries" (hereafter referred to as summaries) alongside traditional abstracts. Summaries typically describe the issue studied in the paper, the research gap that was addressed, the key conclusion that addresses this gap written in general terms, and highlights the significance of the work with the goal of facilitating communication of the most important contribution of each manuscript across disciplines (e.g., L&O Letters https://aslopubs.