Say it in English, please!

By Mats Hannerz, consultant, editor and former forest researcher, Silvinformation AB

What’s going on in your institute? I’m probably not the only one who is curious. I am one of many – journalists, newsletter producers and communicators – who are constantly searching for news to report to the scientific community and the public. But what can we actually find on the webpages of the Nordic and Baltic research institutes?

Forest research in our region lies at the cutting-edge, and produces a mass of important scientific results. A quick look at the web pages gives an idea of the number of researchers involved and their productivity: Finland’s Metla engages 370 researchers, Sweden’s SLU has over 3000 employees and published 1300 scientific articles in 2012, the now merged Forest and Landscape Denmark has some 300 employees, and the corresponding institute in Norway 220 people.

There ought to be a mass of interesting information from these and other forest research bodies. But where is it? A quick look on the web strengthens my suspicion that communication departments focus on publishing in the local language, if they publish news at all.

Forest & Landscape Denmark has its Recent Findings series in English, and five articles were published in 2012. That’s better than nothing. Norwegian Forest & Landscape Institute has no English news, and its only publication in English is its yearbook. SLU seems to be in a class of its own, with quite a frequent flow of English news (although of course not all concerns forestry). Norwegian University of Life Sciences probably produces a lot of interesting research – but where are the signs on the website? I couldn’t find a single item of forest news. Metla shows at least a bit of an ambition in publishing its Metla Bulletin 1-3 times per year, but I assume the institute publishes much more than that. Icelandic Forest Research has nothing other than contact information on its English pages.

And what about the Baltic institutes? Lithuanian Institute of Forestry, Latvia University of Agriculture, Estonian University of Life Sciences – no news in English from any of them! Silava (Latvia) at least has one report on forest status.

We must be aware that, although individually strong, we are small in an international perspective. Furthermore, we all have the disadvantage of speaking peculiar languages, and these are barely understood even by our closest neighbours. If we are to become stronger and compete for international grants, we need to cooperate… and cooperation requires communication.

I can hear the counterarguments already. We communicate via conferences, we produce scientific articles, and we must primarily serve the needs in our own countries. But my response is that we also need to reach people outside our immediate networks. We don’t know which scientist may have use of a particular research result, and we don’t know what kind of information decision-makers are looking for.

Publishing scientific news on the web is a very good way to start a communication chain, running through newsletters, regional portals (such as NB Forest), newspaper articles, and ending up in policy briefs or practical implementation. In times of global change and diminishing resources, the role of forests is more important than ever. Forest science has a key role here, but we need to tell the world.

So, dear fellow scientists and colleagues at communication departments, my message is as follows: Say it in English please, and say it simply!

By way of a footnote, another reflection when looking at websites of universities and institutes is that many ‘news’ items are actually little more than internal announcements of cooperation agreements, awards to researchers and new appointments. Of course, this is interesting to some people, but other scientists and the public want to know about research findings!