• Question: Do you publish articules publicly so the public could read them because that would be really cool to learn about the science behind sport

    Asked by xgeorgiastephx to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 11 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by kayleighwarwick.
    • Photo: Helen O'Connor

      Helen O'Connor answered on 11 Jun 2011:

      Hi, I do try to get them published in scientific journals, but there is SO much competition to get articles published. I have sent 2 papers so far and havent had any luck 🙁

      But instead I write my own blog and articles for other people’s websites, so I can help the public learn about psychology topics (like why exercise can help our brain be better at learning and revision!). Often when we write articles, we get given lots of rules about how long the article can be and even what font size to use. This is an article that I was asked to write for gym-goers about exercise addition: it is not a piece of my own scientific research, but it tries to give an overview of the topic in a language that makes sense and hopefully help people http://www.yourdocmedical.co.uk/exercise/243.

Comments

  • Photo: Jenni

    Jenni commented on :

    Scientists publish their work in Scientific Journals so that other scientists can read them. Before this work is actually published it has to be read by other scientists to check that the work is good and that the scientists haven’t cheated!

    Some journals are available to the public for free, but most of them require expensive subscriptions. So as well as publishing in these journals, scientists send articles to magazines like New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/) and Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/), or just try to convince normal newspapers to write about their work because we really want the public to know what we’re doing.

    It’s **really** tough to get your work published in these publications though because there are **so many scientists** doing so much work. Instead lots of scientists write blogs, visit schools and talk in public places to tell people what they’re doing.

    Also, there aren’t really any science magazines aimed at school children – I’m currently setting up a website with a friend (OurLab) which trys to communicate exciting science to school children. It’s under development at the moment, but if I won this competition I’d use some of the money to build the website… watch this space!

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    As Jenni and Helen said, we do try to get our work published, and because of the internet it is much easier to see scientific papers. Here’s my first every “first author” paper (one where I did most of the experiments and wrote most of the paper):

    http://jap.physiology.org/content/89/4/1387.abstract

    You’ll notice that it is not written in a way that is understandable to anybody except those who actually know all about the topic (which is a bad habit scientists have!), but basically we wanted to know if warm-up exercise made the increase in oxygen use during exercise faster. The answer was “sort of, yes!”. This led to all sorts of other discoveries and got me a PhD, so I’m very proud of it!