A Romanian researcher working in America has found a way to optimise computer simulations of nuclear reactors so that they take just milliseconds, compared a couple of days, as in the present. I wrote about it in Mindcraft Storiesbut here I want to give you some behind-the-scenes elements: how does a study become the subject of a press release? How does the study find its way into the communications office? How does the collaboration between researcher and communicator works, how does the researcher help with the press release?
Why: language barriers (also) separate scientists
Let's start with "why". Why would a researcher be interested in making the effort to explain their results to outsiders? Ionuț Farcaș, the author of this study, thinks it is important for his study to go beyond his specialisation, because it reaches other scientists, "who may be working in a different direction and using a different language", as well as the general public. For example, the simulations that Ionuț has simplified with the algorithm he has found could also have applications in medicine, weather prediction and space flight. For such a wide range of interested people to know that this result exists, it needs to be taken out of the pages of the journal, explained in a different language, including a focus on the business potential.
"The language barrier is what separates people from scientists. For example, as I work interdisciplinarily, I have had the opportunity to participate in events focused on scientific computing/computational mathematics, mathematics, engineering and physics. Presenting the same material to these relatively heterogeneous communities is interesting because they tend to be fairly homogeneous in terms of the language used."
On the reasons why researchers communicate with the general public, and with other audiences outside the specialist area, I have written before here (language: Romanian), here (language: Romanian) and here (language: Romanian).
The communication office wants to hear about the researchers' studies
"In the building that houses the Oden Institute, both at the entrances and in the elevator and corridors, there are posters put up by the communications department encouraging us to contact them as soon as an article is about to be published," says Ionut.
Here I interject with a personal note: in general, researchers are encouraged to send their draft article to the communications office as soon as they have submitted it to a journal. This is why most press releases for studies submitted to Nature, British Medical Journal, Lancet and others are published at the same time as the scientific article.
In Ionut's case, he wrote to the communications office himself, after making sure his study was published in a good journal: Communications Engineering / Nature. No response was initially received.
Sometimes scientific journals provide communication services
"After the article was published, the people at the journal promoted it on Twitter (this resulted in a couple of reactions), and - this was surprising because I don't know where they found out about the article - the people at the computing center (Texas Advanced Computing Center), who gave us the computational resources to do this study - promoted the article on Linkedin."
Often several forces "conspire" to promote an outcome. Sometimes the journal itself has a communications team: they may distribute the study on social media, as in Ionut's case, but they may also plan a press release and think up special illustrations that would go into presenting the result to the public. At a minimum, the journal team sends a standard email to authors urging them to work with the communications offices of the institution where they work, telling them who they can talk to about their study before publication and under what conditions, and setting embargoes on publishing the results. See a sample guide that AAAS (The American Association for the Advancement of Science) makes available to authors published in the journal.
The host institution generally produces the communication
Most of the time, the press release is produced by the host institution of the researcher who conducted the study. If a study has multiple authors from multiple institutions, the communications offices will liaise with each other and release the press release in tandem.
In the case of the nuclear simulations study, there were several factors that contributed to the study receiving wider visibility. "Among those who saw the post was my supervisor, Karen Willcox, who reposted it," explains Ionuț Farcaș.
To promote this study, Ionut created accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn "because both platforms offer the opportunity to promote scientific results to both the scientific community and the general public."
The press release is a team effort
At the beginning of January, Ionuț Farcaș was contacted by a person from the Institute's communication office: she "saw the article, it's interesting and [asked us] if we want (he wrote to all three authors) to write a promotional article for the Institute's news page."
That word, "interesting", received from a communications office, is important. Even if the scientific journal is a very good one, even if the result is significant in the field, communicators need to be able to decide to what extent it can be presented, explained, to a non-specialist audience. Without this hook, the study may not be able to be promoted through a press release. But it can be promoted in other ways - on social media, with an infographic or in other ways tailored to the study.
The next step for researcher Ionuț Farcaș was a mini-interview with the communication office. "About a week later, I received the draft, in a Word document, and a few suggestions later, the article was published online on the Institute's website on 9 February."
Very important: a press release will always be written and validated with the researcher. The communicator and the researcher work as a team and nothing is published without the approval of the scientists.
For comparison, a journalist does not have to validate their article with the researcher they are interviewing. I explained here why.
For Ionut, the outcome of the discussion between him and the communication team was this press release. I saw it on the social media account of his partner, who had shared the release and so I got in touch with the author of the study and wrote an article about the result.
If you have a scientific result or a project and would like to benefit from the experience of a communicator in writing a press release, do not hesitate to to contact me for a collaboration.
English (UK) 
Română