lay summary research proposal example

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In a nutshell: how to write a lay summary

November 26, 2018 | 5 min read

By Christopher Tancock

Why “translating” your research for a general audience can bring many benefits – and how to do so

With thanks to Kristina Killgrove

Elsevier Authors' Update is pleased to present this article in support of PHD2Published Academic Writing Month. opens in new tab/window

You must be rather pleased with that newly-published article. After many long months, your hard work has paid off and that paper has now taken its place in the library of academic literature. Unfortunately, so have another 2.5 million articles just this year. How do you stand out amongst that enormous crowd and get attention? One way of doing this is to make your article as accessible as possible and a good way of achieving that aim is to prepare a lay summary.

What is a lay summary?

Though your colleagues and peers are probably able to get to grips with your article, the chances are that its content will be unintelligible to the average man or woman in the street. What’s more, researchers are increasingly tasked by their institutions and funders to outline the impact of their research for the general public and beyond their specific area of interest. If you can transform your article into something that the wider public can understand, you’ve got yourself another readership - and one who is more likely to share what it is that you’ve discovered/hypothesized/confirmed further. The key to doing this is in producing a lay summary.

A lay summary, or impact statement, is a very efficient way of conveying the essence of your article briefly and clearly. Fundamentally, what you’re aiming to produce is a short paragraph outlining the article content, aimed at non-specialists in the field and written in a way that they can easily understand. This element differentiates it from the abstract, which is designed with your subject peers in mind. The structure of a lay summary should answer the main questions of “who/what/where/when/how many/why?” (in essence, you’re trying to justify why someone should spend time in reading what you’ve produced). Answering these questions in a concise manner will deliver all the details the reader needs. The most important part of it is a “summary within a summary”: one final sentence which explains why the research is important, and what the article has concluded.

What’s the big deal?

Lay summaries are already commonly used by researchers in many subject areas, as they encourage and increase the possibility of collaboration, and some funding bodies even require them as part of their application procedure. Writing such summaries – distilling your work into a “portable” and maximally-accessible form can bring many benefits for your wider interactions with society at large. Among other things, they’re great for use in press releases or when communicating with journalists. In short: this is a communications skill worth learning.

Here are some pointers on how to write a useful lay summary:

Predict and cover the “so what?” factor – justify your research.

Give some background and context to the research. What prompted you to do it?

Follow a logical order. This may not always coincide with a temporal order.

Explain the impact of the work – what is going to change (especially in relation to wider society)?

Use succinct, short sentences – and write in plain English. Imagine you’re talking to an undergraduate who’s just stepped into your introductory class. Or, better still, pretend you’re trying to explain your article to a distant family member who works in retail/fashion/hospitality.

Avoid jargon unless absolutely necessary and explain it if you do have to keep it in.

Use first person and active voice (“we agreed” rather than “it was agreed”).

Use positives not negative sentences: “You will have repeat appointments at least once a fortnight”, rather than “The usual practice is not to schedule repeat appointments more frequently than once a fortnight”

Images are very important – try to include one if you can.

When you think you’re ready with your summary, ask a friendly non-academic to read it. Ask them if they understood it: the number of questions you get might dictate that further revision is needed!

Supporting lay summaries at Elsevier

Here at Elsevier we’ve been exploring how we can support authors with writing, hosting and promoting lay summaries. Several of the journals we publish including: Epilepsy & Behavior Case Reports opens in new tab/window , International Journal of Paleopathology , Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports opens in new tab/window and Journal of Hepatology opens in new tab/window now provide lay summaries for selected papers on their homepages. These are made freely available to readers. Note that different journals and subject areas might approach the same basic idea in various ways. For example, the Materials Today group of journals has recently launched its “Contributor” project whereby early and mid-career researchers are encouraged to write “news summaries” of recent articles (which are then checked with the original author(s) for accuracy and published on the Materials Today news page opens in new tab/window ). There might be similar initiatives in your community, so make sure you keep your ear to the ground and get involved if you can.

Looking to the future, we’re also in the process of experimenting with facilitating the submission of lay summaries during the submission process – and aggregating them on a grander scale for authors to aid their discoverability. Stay tuned to hear more on our efforts in this regard.

Lay summaries can be a powerful tool to extend and broaden the impact of your research. Don’t forget that there are a number of other tools available to you as author – check out our guide to “getting noticed” opens in new tab/window , for example. Have a go at writing a summary for your next article and ask your editor if the journal in question is interested in participating in the lay summaries project. Enjoy making a splash with your next article!

Contributor

Christopher Tancock

Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey

How to Write a Lay Summary: 10 Tips for Researchers

Once you know what a lay summary is, the next question you’ll probably be asking yourself is ‘how to write a lay summary?’ But why is this important for researchers? For one, there has been a surge in research output. The past decade has seen a 4% annual increase in peer-reviewed science and engineering (S&E) journal articles and conference papers being published. 1 However, it’s not just the increasing number of published articles but the visibility your work receives that indicates a researcher’s productivity and success. While researchers often come up with ground-breaking and crucial findings, it can be challenging for non-academics and even specialists from other disciplines to understand its importance. Communicating research findings to a broader audience is a crucial aspect of any scholarly work. So in this article, we will explore the importance of writing a lay summary, explaining how to write a lay summary to ensure your research reaches and resonates with a wider audience.

Table of Contents

What is a lay summary in research?

Lay summaries are condensed descriptions of research findings that are written in a simple way so that wider audience can understand the work presented with ease. Writing a lay summary also aids in bridging the gap between often complex research work and non-specialist readers, providing them with a clear overview of the research’s purpose, key findings, and real-world implications. By making the published study more widely available, researchers can foster inclusivity, promote wider engagement, and spark new research, and influence public policy. Writing a lay summary in a simple, compelling manner goes a long way in not only ensuring visibility, it also makes it more comprehensible and usable for journalists, policymakers, and people around the world.

4 Reasons you need to write an effective lay summary

Create greater visibility: An impactful lay summary is a great way of describing and communicating details of the research done to the general public and can help those who don’t have an academic background to better understand your work.
Enhance transparency: A well-crafted lay summary can boost transparency, adding to the reliability and credibility of your research. A lay summary that describes and communicates your research findings in a clear, simple way leaves little room for misrepresentation.
Improve engagement: A succinct lay summary makes research findings easier to understand and highlights its significance. This means that audiences can engage more actively with your work, leading to an increase in the number of citations.
Widen research impact: Writing a lay summary that is engaging and compelling helps researchers effectively convey their research findings, emphasize their work’s applicability and potential, and drive real-world impact.

How to write a lay summary of scientific papers

A lay summary of a scientific paper doesn’t have to be challenging to write. Here are some simple steps to keep in mind when writing a lay summary.

1. Identify your audience

Before you start crafting your lay summary, consider who your target audience is and tailor your language accordingly. This will make your lay summary more engaging and relevant to your readers, whether they’re policymakers, patients, or the general public.

2. Keep it simple, yet informative

Simplicity is the key to an effective lay summary, so avoid jargon and technical terms that might confuse your readers. Think of it as telling a story rather than presenting scientific data and focus on conveying the core message of your research in straightforward manner.

3. Highlight the importance

Describe the real-world impact of your findings and how they contribute to solving relevant issues or advancing knowledge in your field. Clearly articulating the significance of your work can keep your readers interested and invested in your research.

4. Follow a logical structure

A well-structured lay summary guides the reader through your research logically, step by step. When writing a lay summary, cover the problem you aimed to address, your methodology and key findings, and the implications and potential applications of your research.

5. Provide relevant context

Avoid assuming prior knowledge from your audience, provide enough context and background information to help readers understand your research without overwhelming them with technical details.

6. Use engaging examples

Analogies or real-life scenarios can help your audience grasp complex concepts and appreciate the relevance of your research. So integrate relatable examples when writing a lay summary.

7. Emphasize the benefits

Highlight the benefits of your research, how it can improve lives or contribute to societal advancements, and the practical implications of your work to resonate with readers.

8. Add the final touches

Employ formatting styles like subheads and bullet points and add visual elements like illustrations, tables, or graphs, to easily present data. Write a catchy headline or introduction and use a conversational tone when writing the lay summary.

9. Seek peer feedback

Get colleagues or friends outside your field to review your lay summary. Their feedback will help you gauge whether your summary successfully conveys the essence of your research to a broader audience.

10. Proofread and edit

As the last step, proofread and edit your work to polish language, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Clear, error-free writing lends credibility to your research, ensuring it’s taken seriously and leaves a lasting impression on your readers.

Lay Summaries vs. Abstracts

It is common for to get confused between research paper abstracts and lay summaries. While both are used to convey research findings, they have vastly different purposes and audiences.

Abstracts provide a synopsis of a research project that is written for an audience of scholars and experts interested in a particular field of study. An abstract usually includes complex concepts and technical terms when trying to explain the relevance of the research topic. Researchers use an abstract to outline and highlight their objectives, approach, and finding. Abstracts provide a summary of the research paper so that readers may quickly grasp its ideas and decide whether it is pertinent to their areas of interest. An abstract requires usually is more detailed and longer than a lay summary.

Lay summaries on the other hand offer non-technical explanations of a research project. It is typically written for a wider audience, including non-academics and experts from other fields. A lay summary’s main objective is to make the study findings accessible to those who are not subject-matter experts by using analogies to simplify concepts. They highlight the practical relevance of the research in a succinct, impactful way.

Though both lay summaries and abstracts are different, if written in a compelling way, they can be powerful tools to engage readers and help you garner greater visibility for your work.

References:

1. India is world’s third largest producer of scientific articles, following China and US: Report. India Today, Jan 2, 2020. Available online at https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/latest-studies/story/india-is-world-s-third-largest-producer-of-scientific-articles-following-china-and-us-report-1633351-2020-01-02

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How to Write A Lay Summary for Your Research

How-to-write-a-lay-summary-for-your-research.

Samantha Green

April 24, 2019

A lay summary presents a concise snapshot of your research in approximately 200 words, using plain language to make it understandable for non-specialists. For people outside the research community, lay summaries make it quick and easy to understand why your work matters. Whether they’re science journalists, practitioners or professionals, policymakers, science-based content creators, or the public, they need to understand and engage with your research for it to make a significant impact.

Lay summaries can be crafted before your article publishes and used for grant applications, or after the publishing journey to promote your research. Here are a few ways that lay summaries can expand the impact of your research:

- Better accessibility : Removing words and terminology non-specialists won’t understand increases the readability of your work to a wider audience.

- Broadens your audience : Explains research in an understandable manner that can be easily understood and shared among non-experts

- Easier conversations and sharing: Explaining scientific work without jargon is challenging, but a lay summary can serve as a template for informal discussions on the work or sharing on social media.

- Improved visibility and transparency : By explaining why this work is important to you, you acknowledge the biases in your work while contextualizing the reasons behind it

Since lay summaries add time to your process, they can often feel like just another box to tick on the publishing checklist. But their value is clearer when you consider the significant impact they can have on your readers and your research itself.

Many journals view lay summaries as a key part of the publication process. Many of these journals focus on a specific audience, like teachers for education research journals or clinicians for medical research journals. Offering lay summaries helps these publications connect with stakeholders that need to understand the latest research on the topic even though they’re not experts in the research community.

Regardless of journal policy, lay summaries are a useful tool for any author looking to share their work in a way that connects with everyone, everywhere.

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Lay summaries

These examples give guidance about the sort of language to use and the level of simplicity we’d like you to aim for when summarising your work for lay summaries.

Description of your study

Your lay summary or a simplified version will be published on our website.

In the description of your study please include:

Brief background/context
Aim of study
How you will go about the research
The information the research will provide.

How your scientific text might look

Previous work has shown that pulmonary arterial vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) exhibit cytoskeletal variation. We hypothesise that these translate into VSMC phenotypic differences in contractile properties.

How it might be simplified

We have seen that muscle cells from lung artery walls differ from each other in their ‘cytoskeleton’ – their structural scaffolding. We believe that these cells have distinct and important individual functions and behaviour.

Blood macrophages play a crucial role in atherosclerosis due to scavenging oxidised LDL. CD36 receptors bind and internalise OxLDL. We will use whole genome microarrays to evaluate the transcriptional profile of macrophages after stimulation of CD36 with OxLDL.

White blood cells known as macrophages are important in the process of fatty build-up in the artery wall, called atherosclerosis. A specialized protein receptor, CD36, on the macrophage surface sticks to ‘bad’ (LDL) cholesterol and brings the fatty deposit into the cell. Using ‘gene chip’ technology, we will study the changes that occur inside macrophages when CD36 recognises and interacts with cholesterol.

In patients with non-obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy whose symptoms are refractory to standard drug therapy, there are no therapeutic options. We will randomise 50 patients with medically refractory non-obstructive HCM to drug X or placebo for six months. The primary end-point of the study will be peak oxygen consumption.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a relatively common inherited heart muscle disease. Many patients experience symptoms of breathlessness, fatigue and chest pain. These symptoms are not always controlled with current therapies. We will test whether drug X improves the ability to exercise in patients with HCM, compared to placebo.

How to guide: writing a lay summary

This page provides details for writing about research in a digestible way, it can also used as an outline or a starting point when writing content for websites.

A good plain English summary describes your research to both members of the public and interested researchers/potential collaborators who are non-specialists in your particular field.

What’s the wow factor? Does it inspire?
Be specific.
Short, simple words and sentences. Use plain language and every day words; sentences should be less than 25 words long.
Provide context - give concrete (everyday) examples to help paint a picture for the reader.
Write in the active voice. What are you doing, instead of what will you do.
Avoid acronyms and abbreviations (or at least keep them to a minimum).
Avoid report writing phrases – they make no sense to the general public (i.e. moreover, therefore).
Imagine you are writing for a broadsheet like the Guardian, or a non-specialist magazine such as the Economist.
Do not copy and paste from your proposal, use the headings below to structure your summary.
Proof read to make sure your abstract is grammatically correct.
Aim for your main narrative to be between 350–400 words.

USE ACCESSIBLE TERMINOLOGY

Avoid technical and scientific terms and explaining complex scientific complexes is not the only challenge you may have in writing your lay summary. You also need to adopt a different tone of voice to the one you may be used to when talking with other researchers. Avoiding nominalisations can help with this:

efficacy of X – how well X works probability – how likely X is to happen participate in – take part prior to – before discontinue – stop in the event of – if inform – tell scheduled to undergo – due to have accordingly, consequently – so utilisation – using with reference to, with regard to – about if this is the case – if so

Keep this short and snappy and rooted in what you hope to achieve.
Include your complete project title.
What are you aiming to find out?
This first section is crucial; it should be short and no more than two sentences.
Why is this important?
Why does this research need to be done now?
What is already known about research in this area, and how will the study build on this?
What is the scale of the issue – how many people are affected by the disease or condition you are researching?
Describe the design and method you have chosen.
What will be compared or tested,and what treatments are you giving?
Include details of your participants, how many you will recruit, how will they be selected and what they will do.
How are patients/the public being involved in designing this research?
For ongoing projects - How could this potentially benefit patients?
What is this project’s intended impact?
How might others use this research?
In one to two sentences overview your main project finding and any key project outputs.
What impacts has/could this project have? (e.g. Cost savings to the NHS, a new method for diagnosing or managing a particular disease). Be as specific as you can, giving approx figures for the number of patients that will benefit.
How might others use this research (if applicable).

For those projects which are still in progress, how would you like others to engage with you? Are you looking for collaborators? Are you looking to recruit patients to help you design your research – be clear how you wish to recruit them. Link out to technical protocols or pilot studies that can provide further information to specialists, or a call-to-action for patients or members of the public.

Aside from the summary text, when writing the text for your page on the website please also include:

Funders: List your project funders and include any official statements you have been given by them (such as the funding stream/grant number).
External collaborators.
Department team members, and mention who the PI is.
Publications relevant to this project.
Link to relevant pilot studies, or follow-up work.
Length of the project (e.g. August 2015–August 2018). Or Completed

Any questions?

Contact your department communications officer or patient and public involvement coordinator.

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How to write a lay summary of a research project

By Richard Berks, freelance science writer for charities

Published: 20 August 2020

Writing about research for a lay audience is not just about replacing long words with short ones. It’s as much about what you decide to tell them, and how your explanation flows. For a medical research charity, this is absolutely critical. Many of your supporters will not be experts in research, but they do want to know how their donations are used.

In the previous blog , I spoke about how charities make their lay summary pages clear and visually engaging. In this blog, I’ll be focusing on the text on these pages.

I will show you the method I use to best explain research to make it easier for your audience to understand. There is also a step-by-step guide to how you can apply this method.

The journey and the nuggets

Think about explaining science to someone as a journey. Your audience’s journey starts at Point A – the knowledge that they already have about the topic. It ends at Point B – a new place, where they now know something they didn’t know before.

As you explain a new research project, your audience will have learn new things that they didn’t know before. I call these new pieces of information “science nuggets” .

Science nuggets are useful and needed. But they are not benign – they are a burden for your audience in two ways:

They are brand new information that they must learn and understand. Learning new things is difficult.
They must be ‘deployed’ at the right time.

Back to our journey from A to B. Some destinations (and some journeys) are going to require your audience to learn more new concepts than others – more nuggets to pick up.

Your task as an explainer is not to make the journey from A to B as short as possible for your audience. It’s to make it as easy as possible by reducing the number of nuggets they must collect on the way.

8 steps to make research understandable

I’m using the example of writing a lay summary of a research project. But this could be as easily applied to a news story about a research paper, or an update from a researcher which you’re feeding back to a donor.

Decide on point B first

Your journey goes from A to B – work out where point B is first. Think about all the things that your audience could get from this particular research project, and pick the one which resonates most with your audience.

Think about point A

You’ve got an idea of where your audience is heading – where are they now? What do they know about this topic right now? What don’t they know?

This is always difficult. There’s a fine balance to make between assuming too much knowledge (and so not explaining enough) or assuming too little knowledge, and therefore ‘speaking down’ to your audience, which can feel patronising .

What are the routes between A and B?

Now’s the time to think about the journey to your chosen point B from point A. What are the options? It might seem like there’s only one route, but try and think of at least one more.

For now, pick one of these routes. You can always consider the other options later.

What are the nuggets they'll need to pick up on the way?

Thinking about the route you’ve chosen, what are the “science nuggets” they’ll need to pick up on their journey? What are the new pieces of information they need to learn, understand, and deploy at the right time? Are there gene/molecule names they need? Or a brand-new biological concept? Or new information appended to an old idea?

Reduce the nuggets

Remember that the fewer the nuggets, the easier the journey will be from A to B for your audience. So think about how you might reduce the number of nuggets they’ll need to pick up to understand the project. Cut it back to what they need to know, not what ‘it might be nice’ for them to know.

One tip for doing this is just give it a go : try explaining the project without mentioning one of those nuggets. If it still makes sense and gets your audience from A to B, then that’s a sign that nugget isn’t essential. Get rid.

Re-evaluate and adjust

You’ll be getting a good sense now whether the route you chose is easy or not.

How does the route between A and B seem now? Are there any gaps, or big leaps they need to make? Would a different route be better?

You could also think about your start and endpoints.

Is your Point B right? Would it be easier to head towards a different (but equally valid and rewarding) destination?
Is your Point A right? Have you assumed too little or too much knowledge? If you attacked this trek from a different starting point, would it make it easier?
Repeat as necessary

Repeat the steps above as often as you like until you have something you’re happy with. Congratulations!

Review at a later date

You might find that over time, it becomes obvious that your explanation isn’t good enough. That’s ok. Review and adjust as necessary, and go through the steps above if needed.

This method might seem complicated at first, but it becomes second nature once you practise it over and over again. Remember that your goal is not to make the journey short at all costs – it’s to make it easy. The distinction could be the difference between leaving your charity’s supporters confused, and leaving them wanting to learn more about the work they’ve made possible.

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E.8.6 lay summary guide for researchers: tips on writing a lay summary .

Version 1.0 October 2021

Download as pdf

All applications to ICGC require an accompanying lay language summary of their research and proposed use of ICGC Controlled data. A lay Summary is simply the ability to convey the details and significance of research to non-experts. In the context of ICGC ARGO, a lay summary is an overview of a research project described in a way that can be easily understood by those without prior experience of the project or broader subject of cancer genomics. It is not a slight modification of the abstract or a simplification of the research; a well-written lay summary allows the public and broader scientific and clinical communities to understand the research and its goals, impact and applications. Lay summaries as one avenue to communicate with the broader community forms part of the fundamental principles of ICGC ARGO. We have a strategic commitment to public engagement and making data widely available beyond scientific publications and into the patient and public communities.

Lay summaries are used within ICGC ARGO to:

Support wider public engagement with ICGC ARGO research by increasing the visibility of ICGC related research
Uphold core principles of responsibility and commitment; ensuring the benefits of ICGC ARGO research are tangible, recognized and valued by the communities we aim to benefit
Encourage multidisciplinary work by helping other disciplines understand each other's research and work together
Promote trust and transparency in the research process by robust governance processes communicating the use of ICGC ARGO data to the general public
Foster a culture of data sharing and raise awareness of the duty to share data for societal benefit and value
Increase the relevance, visibility and impact of ICGC research
Reporting to the ICGC ARGO Executive Board and funding agencies
Develop communication tools and assist in media relations.

Conveying the significance of research to those outside their field is a challenge for many researchers. Therefore we have developed guidelines below to assist in the development of the lay summary.

Lay Summary Guide for Researchers: Tips on Writing a Lay Summary

There are several key elements of developing a lay summary for researchers to consider:

Structure and content
Readability
Language Guide

1. Structure and Content

Using plain language, answer the below 6 questions as a general guide to form your lay summary:

What is the research question?
Describe how the study addresses the relevant evidence gap in the tumour type or more broadly
How and what types of patients with cancer would be affected by this research?
Why is the study needed? Highlight the direction of the research and how it may contribute to the broader knowledge base of cancer
Describe the study methods, tools, setting and the patient population
How long it will take
What are the expected outcomes and timeframes
The potential applications of the research
The relevance and benefits of the research to the wider population, to the quality of life, health and care of cancer patients current and future
Contributing to the body of knowledge about cancer
Funding applications, evidence building, further collaborations, publication etc

2. Readability

Develop the language in your lay summary as if you are describing the study to someone outside your field
Define any technical terms used, such as “genome sequencing techniques” or “analytical tools”
Refrain from using acronyms, but if necessary, spell out in full when first used in the text
Refrain from using jargon or meaningless terms and phrases
Choose appropriate verb choices such as simpler “buy” in place of “purchase”
Provide simple, relevant examples when describing the research
Have a word count of 250 words maximum. The minimum word count is 100 words
Utilize an online readability tool such as www.readabilityformulas.com . This free tool has an automatic readability checker that analyzes your text (in a few seconds) and calculates the number of sentences, words, syllables, and characters in your content. Using readability formulas will yield the reading age level and grade level of your text and help you determine the suitability of your text to your audience. The reading grade level to be aimed at for the lay summaries is grade 8 or 9.

3. Language Guide

Talk in an active voice (“I.. we..”) and second person in place of third person
Use people-first language, ideally by focusing on the person, not the disease or circumstance, for example, use “people with cancer” or “treatments that have failed patients” rather than “patients who failed treatments”
Try to avoid emotive or negative language such as battle, fight etc
Be respectful
Be realistic in your language around impact and expected outcomes. Please avoid detailing intensively the anticipated impacts and exaggerating benefits.

Lay Summary Before and After Examples

Lay Summary

This project comprises a focused effort to understand the evolution of prostate cancer. It will provide a detailed understanding of the molecular heterogeneity of the disease, link that heterogeneity to clinical outcome, and develop improved clinical tools for patients and clinicians. By making all data and tools available, it will create key resources for community use. ICGC controlled-tier data will be used to probe the relationship of inherited genes to prostate cancer evolution and clinical behaviour.

Word count: 76 words

Readability: Grade Level 15, College graduate and above

Revised Lay Summary

Prostate cancer begins when cells in the prostate gland start to grow out of control. This is caused by changes in the DNA of normal cells. DNA is the chemical in our cells that makes up our genes. Genes control how our cells work. We know that cancer can be caused by DNA mutations or changes. This can then lead to uncontrolled cell growth.

DNA changes can be inherited from a parent or acquired during a person’s lifetime. We want to learn about when and how this happens in different people. By studying gene changes, we can help scientists to better understand how prostate cancer develops. This could help to design treatments that target those changes.

An organization called the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) has gathered data or information about the nature of various cancers. We want to study this data using powerful computers to learn about the growth and spread of prostate cancer. We want to see how certain genes are linked to prostate cancer and how our bodies react when gene changes occur.

We think that prostate cancer tumors are made up of many different types of cells. We want to know how these cells are linked to cancer treatments and outcomes. If we can see how these cell types respond to different treatments, we can find better ways to detect and treat prostate cancer. We can then add our new data to the ICGC database for use by patients and doctors in our communities.

Word count: 250 words

Readability: Grade 8

Lay Summary: Genome Architecture in Cancer

Cancer is often linked with acquired abnormalities of the tumor genome, such as mutations, gains and losses of parts, and other aberrant structures. Some tumors are characterized by an increased rate for such abnormalities, a process named genomic instability. Our research project is devoted to unraveling the origins of genomic instabilities in cancers. Our approach consists in the systematic analysis of cancer genome architecture with relation to the genes altered in various types of cancer. By analyzing ICGC controlled data, we aim at deciphering associations and functional links between gene alterations and the genomic instability patterns. Taking into consideration genomic instability could improve tumor molecular classifications, prognosis and prediction of response to treatment.

Word count: 113

Readability: Grade level 16, College level and above

Rewritten Lay summary

Your genes carry all the information that makes you who you are. For example, they tell your body to have blonde hair or brown eyes. They also tell your cells how to behave, when to grow and when to die. It is usual for cells to repair faults in their genes. When the damage is very bad the cell may self-destruct or the immune system may recognise these cells as abnormal and kill them. This important mechanism helps to protect us from cancer.

Sometimes mutations in genes cause a cell to no longer understand instructions. The cell can then start to multiply out of control. It doesn't repair itself properly, and it doesn't die when it should. This can lead to cancer. Some genes have a tendency to develop mutations at a faster rate than other genes, and this is called genomic instability.

We don’t know why this happens, and the aim of our study is to understand why some genes mutate and change at a faster rate than others.

An organization called the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) has gathered data about the genomics of various cancers. Using powerful computers we plan to study and analyse the data that has been gathered on these types of fast mutating genes (genomic instability). This study will help us to understand more about the origins and patterns of genomic instability, and this in turn could help us to improve how patients respond to treatments in the future.

Word Count: 246

Readability: Grade 9

Process to Edit

1. Fill in the table below with concepts from the original lay summary/abstract.

Example of Content Development using Example 1 - Lay Summary.

Question	Content
Research question?	To understand evolution of prostate cancer
Why ask?	Gain understanding of progression/growth/change over time Develop improved clinical tools for patients and clinicians
What to do to answer?	Use ICGC controlled tier data – clean, linkages, analysis Probe relationship of inherited genes to prostate cancer evolution and clinical behavior
What do you expect to find?	Detailed understanding of molecular heterogeneity of disease How heterogeneity is linked to clinical outcome
Why do findings matter?	Develop improved clinical tools for patients and clinicians
How to use findings?	Make all data and tools available Create key resources for community use

2. Write Draft 1 using answers to each question.

3. Using https://readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php paste a sample of plain text abstract in the box.

4. Identify all words 3 or more syllables long (.g., Use Show Word Statistics: 3+ syllable words (show all 'hard' words) for substitution.

5. a) Substitute simple words or phrases found by checking word synonyms, b) Use simple explanations for complex words or phrases and/or c) Read similar concepts on lay websites.

6. Write Final version by making edits as needed to comply with word count, language and readability guidelines.

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3 Principals for Writing a Great Lay Summary for Your Proposal

Don’t underestimate the importance of lay summaries. Here are some of my discoveries from writing for popular science magazines.

Many scientific funding agencies require you to submit a lay summary alongside your research proposal. I’ve noticed that scientists tend to underestimate the importance of this part of the application.

A lay summary can serve many different purposes. It may be used on the funder’s website when announcing the supported projects. It will probably be used by a committee who are likely not experts in your topic to assign reviewers for your proposal. But even your reviewers who will be more familiar with your research topic will likely read the lay summary of your proposal before looking at the rest. And first impressions are crucial, especially when time is scarce.

This means that as well as having a lot of different audiences to write for, you need to invest time to polish your lay summary.

I know that this is easier said than done. Many scientists hardly ever receive any training in writing for a lay audience (or even academic writing). And there often aren’t many opportunities or incentives to practise it.

Apart from working as a scientific writing strategist and editor, I write about scientific research for popular science magazines. In this blog post, I want to share three principles that I’ve learned that are also applicable for grant proposal lay summaries.

Principle # 1: Tell a story

If you’ve read any other of my blog posts, you’ve probably heard me talking about the importance of storytelling in scientific articles and grant proposals. Well, the same applies for lay summaries and communicating science to the public, in general.

What does “telling a story” mean?

It means to provide the whole picture, not only a snapshot of your results. Your narrative should contain the essential elements of story :

I recommend starting your lay summary by introducing your topic of research and providing some background. You could introduce, for example, what your research area is about, why it is important and what the general problem in the area is.

Then comes the most crucial part of the story, the specific problem that your research idea would solve. This could be a gap in the literature, a scientific conflict or something else.

The problem statement would ideally be followed by a more detailed description of the specific research you are proposing. But that’s not where the story ends.

At the end of your lay summary, I recommend including a few sentences on how your research would improve the state of the start, and what potential benefits this would have for society and/or science.

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Procrastinating on your writing? Not feeling like you’re effective at communicating clearly and/or getting desk-rejected a lot?

In this free online training for science researchers, Dr Anna Clemens introduces you to her step-by-step system to write clear & concise papers for your target journals in a timely manner.

Principle #2: Use simple language

I never advocate for expert, jargon-heavy language when simple language would do (that’s just ugly writing). But in lay summaries this is extra important. You will probably need to simplify your language a bit more than you would in a scientific article or the rest of your proposal. Ideally, you wouldn’t use jargon or technical, field-specific terminology at all.

If you find that certain terms that may be daunting to a lay audience are necessary in your summary, add short explanations. A little “trick” I like to use when introducing a technical term in my science writing is to use “so-called” before mentioning the word. This alerts the reader that I don’t expect them to know the word that follows and doesn’t discourage them from continuing to read.

Also, please ditch any acronyms in your lay summary. And – even though it can be tempting – don’t use synonyms that describe the same thing. Because the reader of your lay summary may not find it obvious that “surface”, “sample” and “structure” refer to the same thing.

What’s more?

Simple language means using short sentences and easy sentence constructions. Don’t ever use more than one subclause in a lay summary. If you really can’t find a way to break up a long sentence, you can use colons and hyphens, but don’t overdo it.

To enhance the reading experience, it’s just as important to use verbs instead of nouns: “We investigate…” is so much easier to read than “The investigation of…”. Turning nouns into verbs also shortens your writing and makes it more concise. For more examples and tips on this, have a look at my blog post on language tips for scientific writing .

Last but not least, try to make your writing “flows”, i.e. connect sentences with each other and build up the information throughout your summary (see also principle #1). If you would like to learn how to do this, check out my comprehensive guide on the concept of flow .

Principle #3: Be specific

When writing for a less specialised audience, you don’t want to provide detail that only experts would understand or care about. Therefore, it’s easy to become too general in your lay summary, especially when describing your proposed research.

So, be careful not to forget to describe what your research idea actually is. Your lay summary should capture both your objective and your specific aims (especially if you aren’t required to submit another abstract or summary of your proposal). Instead of leaving this information out, use the tips in principle #2 to tune your description of objective and specific aims so a lay audience can understand.

There you have it: These are the three science writing principles that I believe should guide you when writing lay summaries for grant proposals.

Keep in mind that writing for lay audiences isn’t easy and that it may take you more time than the academic writing you are used to. Before submitting, I recommend asking a colleague, friend outside your research field or editor to read your lay summary and to point out where they got stuck.

What is your biggest struggle when writing lay summaries? Let me know in a comment below.

Before you go… Register for a private viewing session of this free training for science researchers.

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Writing a grant application

Diabetes UK only funds the highest quality research. The selection process for our research funding is independent and decisions are based on the views of world-class researchers and people affected by diabetes.

Below are some tips for writing your grant application.

Essential pre-application reading

Read our general guidelines for grant applicants – this gives you general information about salaries, disallowed costs and eligibility criteria.
Read our research grant terms and conditions .

Write a good plain English summary

All Diabetes UK grant applications are reviewed by our Grants Advisory Panel : a group of people affected by diabetes. Their role is to reflect the collective perspective of people with or at risk of diabetes and feedback on whether your research is a priority for them. They will review your plain English summary only, so a clear and accessible summary is essential.

Do not underestimate the importance of this section. GAP's recommendations influence the funding decisions made by Diabetes UK’s Research Committee. They will comment and score your project based on how understandable the plain English summary is, and how relevant your research is to the needs of people with or at risk of diabetes.

Translating scientific summaries into plain English

We strongly encourage you to ask someone without a scientific background to review your plain English summary before you submit.

A good lay summary should include:

Context: Why are you doing the research? What is the motivation behind the research application? Were the questions and outcome measures informed by patients’ priorities, experience, and preferences?
Aims: State clearly the aims and objectives for a lay audience. What do you hope to find?
Strategy: Describe clearly what you are actually going to do throughout the project.
Impact: Explain how achieving the research objectives will benefit people with diabetes and what the next proposed action will be if the research objectives are not met.
Data on the number of people affected by the condition (e.g. for a specific complication of diabetes).
Details of how people with diabetes will be involved in the study design, delivery and/or as research participants. How will they be supported (e.g. will they be provided any training?) and what incentives will they receive for their involvement?
Details on whether patient involvement impacted the methods to be used in the research.
Timescale to impact on the lives of people with diabetes, and reasons why.
Basic science applications must clearly demonstrate how your research relates to diabetes and how it could provide valuable insights for future research and/or translation into clinical practice.

A good lay summary should avoid:

Detailed explanations of what diabetes is – GAP are likely to know a lot about this and will want to know more about the particular research project.
Unnecessary jargon, abbreviations and technical terms wherever possible. If you have to use them provide a clear explanation.
Wordy sentences. Try to keep sentences short and simple, less than 25 words.
The whole scientific story. It’s a short summary – what are the ‘take-home messages’?
Using the scientific proposal with a few word changes. It is usually obvious when this is done, and it is important to realise that the plain English summary requires a different approach.

Helpful resources for writing in plain English

NIHR ‘Make it Clear’ guidance on how to write a clear and concise plain English summary.
Plain English campaign - guidance on how to avoid jargon when communicating your research.
Hemingway Editor - can help to make your writing clearer and more readable.

Demonstrate how your research relates to diabetes

Diabetes UK funds research that has the greatest chance of improving the lives of people with diabetes. It is therefore important that you clearly communicate how your research relates to diabetes and fulfills this criteria. Please consider the following tips when writing your application:

Basic science applications must clearly demonstrate how their research relates to diabetes and how it could provide valuable insight for future research and/or translation into clinical practice.
Applicants whose expertise primarily relate to another field should seek to collaborate with relevant experts in diabetes, and people with diabetes where necessary. Your application should clearly indicate how your proposal is relevant to diabetes.
It is helpful to explain how your proposal relates to and furthers existing research.
Consider how you can involve people affected by diabetes throughout the research. Please refer to our Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) page for more information.

Ensure your research proposal is clear

Explain why your research is important. Provide preliminary data if appropriate.
Make sure your hypotheses are clear and are reflected in the methodology.
Explain what the outcome measures will be.
Identify and address any potential challenges or pitfalls – what will you do if your first aim doesn’t result in the outcomes you expected? Do you anticipate any challenges with recruitment or retention of participants? Have you considered a contingency plan?
Provide sufficient detail on the experiments and how they will be carried out to demonstrate understanding of what you are doing.
Give realistic sample sizes and power calculations based on evidence, including a statistical analysis plan.
Ensure that your design and analysis is optimal for your research study. This applies equally to studies in human diabetes as well as for animal models. Ask a statistician to review the study design, analysis and power calculations.
Clearly describe the future clinical benefits and timescales of practical improvements that could result from the research. Be realistic in these estimates.
Ensure that the costs associated with the research and staff time allocated to the research are realistic as these will be questioned by the Research Committee.

Applications that require statistical analysis

Details of the power calculations and derivation of sample size: applicants should ensure that this includes all of the information needed to replicate the calculations, details of which software or equations were used and which hypothesis test is being used. Details on where the information used in the calculations came from is also required.
Data Management: applicants should ensure that responsibilities relating to data collection, storage, verification and security are assigned to an individual with appropriate expertise in data management.
Staff on applications: we advise that support from a statistician is sought during the preparation of your application. Where support has been provided, the individual consulted should be named within the application. If continued support with analyses is provided during the lifetime of the grant, appropriate costs may be included for statistician time.

Before you click submit….

Ask at least one independent person to proof read your application – reviewers dislike typographical and grammatical errors because they could lead to reduced clarity and risk the reader misunderstanding your text.
Ensure the main research proposal is typed in the correct section of the online portal.
Ensure figures make sense and are correctly referenced in the text. Attach figures as an appendix, as the online portal will not allow embedded figures.
Make sure your research proposal is correctly referenced.

Helpful resources

Research Design Services is part of a network of regional support services funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The service provides support to those preparing research proposals for submission to peer-reviewed funding competitions for applied health or social care research. The service requires at least 6 weeks to review an application once submitted.
AMS Framework for Multimorbidity Research was developed to drive research into multimorbidity. The resource is designed to support researchers contributing to develop an understanding of global health challenge to multimorbidity.

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Published: 08 May 2020

A protocol for co-creating research project lay summaries with stakeholders: guideline development for Canada’s AGE-WELL network

Mineko Wada 1 ,
Judith Sixsmith 2 ,
Gail Harwood 3 ,
Theodore D. Cosco 4 , 5 ,
Mei Lan Fang 2 &
Andrew Sixsmith 1 , 4

Research Involvement and Engagement volume 6 , Article number: 22 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Funding bodies increasingly require researchers to write lay summaries to communicate projects’ real-world relevance to the public in an accessible way. However, research proposals and findings are generally not easily readable or understandable by non-specialist readers. Many researchers find writing lay summaries difficult because they typically write for fellow subject specialists or academics rather than the general public or a non-specialist audience. The primary objective of our project is to develop guidelines for researchers in Canada’s AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, and ultimately various other disciplines, sectors, and institutions, to co-create lay summaries of research projects with stakeholders. To begin, we produced a protocol for co-creating a lay summary based on workshops we organized and facilitated for an AGE-WELL researcher. This paper presents the lay summary co-creation protocol that AGE-WELL researchers will be invited to use.

Eligible participants in this project will be 24 AgeTech project researchers who are funded by the AGE-WELL network in its Core Research Program 2020. If they agree to participate in this project, we will invite them to use our protocol to co-produce a lay summary of their respective projects with stakeholders. The protocol comprises six steps: Investigate principles of writing a good lay summary, identify the target readership, identify stakeholders to collaborate with, recruit the identified stakeholders to work on a lay summary, prepare for workshop sessions, and execute the sessions. To help participants through the process, we will provide them with a guide to developing an accessible, readable research lay summary, help them make decisions, and host, and facilitate if needed, their lay summary co-creation workshops.

Public-facing research outputs, including lay summaries, are increasingly important knowledge translation strategies to promote the impact of research on real-world issues. To produce lay summaries that include information that will interest a non-specialist readership and that are written in accessible language, stakeholder engagement is key. Furthermore, both researchers and stakeholders benefit by participating in the co-creation process. We hope the protocol helps researchers collaborate with stakeholders effectively to co-produce lay summaries that meet the needs of both the public and project funders.

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Plain English summary

Funding bodies often require researchers to write lay summaries (summaries in non-scientific language) to share their research with the public and explain its importance. However, researchers typically find lay summaries difficult to write and the public finds them difficult to read. If stakeholders outside the academic sector are involved in writing lay summaries, the summaries are more likely to be understood by the public. Our project aims to develop guidelines for researchers in Canada’s AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, and eventually in various other disciplines, sectors, and institutions, to help them work with stakeholders to co-create lay summaries. We have created a lay-summary co-creation protocol based on workshops conducted with an AGE-WELL researcher. This paper presents the protocol, which researchers funded by the AGE-WELL Core Research Program 2020 will be invited to use to work with a range of stakeholders to co-produce a lay summary of their projects. The lay-summary co-creation protocol has six steps: Learn the basic steps for writing a good lay summary, identify the target readership, identify stakeholders to work with, recruit stakeholders to work on a lay summary, prepare for workshop sessions, and run the sessions. To help researchers get the most from their experience, we plan to give them a guide to writing a good research lay summary, help them make decisions, and host, and facilitate if necessary, their lay summary co-creation workshops. This protocol would help researchers write effective lay summaries to share their research with a wide group of readers.

A lay summary is a brief synopsis of a research project that explains in plain language its essential components—what, who, where, when, why, and how—to the general public or a target, non-specialist audience [ 1 , 2 ]. It is imperative to develop a lay summary and make it available to the general public for several reasons. First, a lay summary provides a way to communicate to project funders what issue or problem a project aims to solve, why it is important to address the issue or problem, how the researchers aim to solve it, and how the funding will be used in the project. The lay summary also enables members of the public on a funding application review committee to be fully included in the decision-making process and allows the researchers to demonstrate their accountability to the funding bodies [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Second, rather than being limited to a niche, perhaps academic or specialist, group, a lay summary increases the visibility of a project because it can be made more universally accessible, thereby creating a broader readership and increased awareness of and understanding about the issue that the project aims to address [ 3 , 4 , 6 , 7 ]. However, it should be noted that “accessible” is a relative term and so it must be defined and applied in the specific context of a project and in terms of the aim of the text and its target readership [ 8 ]. Third, a lay summary enables researchers to communicate the real-world relevance of their projects’ implications to the public, and as such, funding bodies are increasingly urging researchers to produce lay summaries that will help improve public awareness and understanding of projects and their overall importance and impact on everyday life [ 3 , 9 , 10 ]. Fourth, in the case of projects that require recruitment of participants, a lay summary can help potential participants understand the study and its goals and decide whether or not to participate [ 3 , 4 ]. Finally, a lay summary that stems from a health or medical study or intervention can inform patients’ decision-making on medical and pharmaceutical interventions, which will help facilitate the adoption of project outputs that can solve the target issue, such as the development or use of a technology product or services [ 3 , 11 , 12 ].

Many researchers are facing increasingly frequent requirements from funders to develop lay summaries, but even those who recognize the benefits of doing so often find the process challenging and cumbersome primarily because they are immersed in an academic scholarship environment. They are thus conditioned to use traditional academic communication channels (via research proposals, peer-reviewed articles, and conference papers and posters) and specialized academic language [ 6 , 7 ]. Academic writing frequently draws heavily on jargon and other subject-specific terminology, which can come across as difficult or opaque to lay readers. Using academic writing practices to disseminate newfound knowledge is therefore fundamentally exclusionary and runs counter to the current movement towards meaningful stakeholder participation, inclusive research, and co-creation methods. If academic/research institutions, researchers, and funders are claiming to strive for equity, diversity, and inclusion and want those claims to be taken seriously, they must communicate information in an open and accessible way to enhance inclusivity. This requires a significantly different approach to traditional methods of communicating research, not only in terms of how the research is presented (language level, amount of detail, medium of communication, for example) but also in terms of who is involved in the process of creating (writing) the information (e.g., stakeholders with limited knowledge of current developments in science and state of the art research). However, there appears to be a certain reticence among researchers to undertake a more collaborative model of research, possibly because of a reluctance to deviate from prevailing traditional academic expectations and cultures [ 13 ]. Until researchers both understand the benefits of producing and using a lay summary and master the relevant processes and techniques involved, they may perceive this requirement as an unnecessary burden [ 3 ] or as another barrier to publishing peer-reviewed papers [ 7 ] or gaining research funding.

Collaborative team approach: stakeholder involvement in the research process

Patient and public participation is an increasingly popular approach to research [ 14 ], and a collaborative team approach is proving to be essential in various fields of research and practice [ 13 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. The collaborative research approach involves academics/scientists collaborating with stakeholders from different disciplinary and sectoral backgrounds (e.g., older adults, caregivers, community organizations, industries, policymakers) to foster knowledge exchange and integration across disciplines and sectors [ 18 ]. This process of cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral knowledge exchange and integration promotes a co-production of knowledge that transcends disciplinary and sectoral boundaries [ 15 , 18 ]. Such an approach is essential for understanding and addressing complex, real-world problems because they are context-specific, needs-driven, and multifaceted, all of which renders the implementation of a traditional, uni-disciplinary approach inadequate [ 15 , 18 ]. The collaborative team approach requires researchers to work with stakeholders as research partners from the outset to identify a real-world problem, understand the multilayered issues that surround it, co-develop project objectives, and co-design and implement the project [ 18 ].

The process of creating a lay summary is an inherently collaborative one: ensuring that researchers work on an equal footing with key stakeholders at an early project proposal stage is critical to their fully understanding each stakeholder’s language ability and literacy level, as well as their interest in, experience of, and knowledge level of an issue that a project aims to address [ 11 , 19 ]. In particular, incorporating lay perspectives into research is perceived as beneficial for facilitating understandings of problem areas and increasing a research team’s capacity to generate more effective solutions [ 13 , 20 , 21 ]. The integration of lay perspectives is also politically mandatory, as the general public technically own publicly funded research and are entitled to have their voices heard and to legitimize decisions [ 22 ]. Lay people who are involved in research as research partners can also benefit directly from their involvement, as demonstrated by Duke [ 14 ] and Wada and colleagues [ 13 ]. Both studies identified empowerment, social engagement and connectedness, inclusivity, and skills and knowledge development as potential benefits that lay people can gain through involvement in research projects.

While general guidelines for writing a lay summary tend to provide tips on content and word choice [ 23 ], few of them contain sufficient detail to expand researchers’ understanding of how to create a lay summary that communicates scientific knowledge effectively to the general public or a non-specialist target readership [ 9 , 24 ]. In addition, while collaborating with key stakeholders is often critical for developing a lay summary that is written in accessible language and includes information that is relevant to the target readership, to date there have been few guidelines that can help researchers navigate the process of co-creating a lay summary with stakeholders [ 12 ].

Project context

This project is part of an ongoing priority in AGE-WELL NCE (Aging Gracefully across Environments using Technology to Support Wellness, Engagement and Long Life), a Pan-Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) focusing on aging and technology. In 2019–2020, AGE-WELL funded 24 projects focused on developing technology-based solutions to address issues experienced by older adults and caregivers. As AGE-WELL explicitly advocates a focus on real-world impacts and the implementation of collaborative team research within the network, there is a growing need for guidelines to help researchers co-develop key outputs of their projects with stakeholders, such as lay summaries of their projects. Accordingly, the primary objective of our project is to develop lay summary co-creation guidelines for AGE-WELL researchers that will ultimately be made widely available to researchers across a variety of disciplines, sectors, and institutions. We began this project by producing a protocol for co-creating a lay summary that consists of a series of steps based on feedback and reflections from an AGE-WELL researcher and older adults who attended co-creation workshops we organized and facilitated for the researcher. The protocol was therefore a collaborative effort. This paper aims to present the lay summary co-creation protocol that 24 AGE-WELL–funded researchers will be invited to use.

Participants

Eligible participants will be researchers who have funding for AGE-WELL’s Core Research Program 2020 (CRP).

Recruitment

We will recruit participants by sending an email to the 24 CRP researchers. It will describe the aims of the project, include a guide to creating a good lay summary of research projects, and provide contact information for the principal investigator of the project.

Co-creating lay summaries of research project with stakeholders: protocol

Figure 1 illustrates the protocol for co-creating project lay summaries with stakeholders: investigate principles of writing a good lay summary, identify the target readership, identify key stakeholders, recruit them, prepare for co-creating lay summary workshops, and execute the workshops. We will guide participants in navigating the lay-summary co-creating process via one-on-one consultations. In particular, once participants have identified the target readership for their respective lay summaries, we will host, and facilitate if needed, workshops with them and their identified stakeholders to enable the co-production of lay summaries of their CRP project.

Process of co-creating project lay summaries with stakeholders

Investigate principles of writing a good lay summary

We will provide a guide to developing a good lay summary of research (Additional file 1 ) to 24 participants once they have agreed to be involved in this project. The guide comprises four sections (Fig. 2 ). Drawing from the literature on and available guidelines for developing a lay summary, we include a definition of a lay summary and explain why it is important to create one. We also emphasize that identifying the target readership is a critical step as it informs participants about what information needs to be included in a lay summary and what language, or literacy, level the lay summary needs to be written in. Additionally, the guide explains the basic principles of writing a good lay summary, with a particular focus on precision and succinctness and the use of plain language. The guide also contains five questions that should be answered in a lay summary—1) What problem needs to be addressed? 2) What are the aims of the project? 3) How will the project be carried out? 4) Why is the project important? and 5) What are the expected outcomes or impacts of the project?—and includes examples of the responses to these questions.

Four components of the guide to developing a good lay summary of research

Identify the target readership

Participants will identify the target readership for their lay summaries. While a lay summary is generally targeted at the general public, it is also broad in scope [ 6 ]. Defining the readership at the outset is critical to the development of an accessible and compelling lay summary because it determines the level of interest in an issue that a project seeks to address, the knowledge level about the issue, the language, or literacy, levels of the target readership, and the ultimate format of the lay summary [ 3 , 11 , 25 ]. For example, guidelines for target reading levels in lay summaries vary from Grade 6 to Grade 10 reading levels [ 4 , 11 , 26 ]. However, while a Grade 8 reading level is standard for newspapers and is thus often seen as offering a general assessment of reading levels among the general public [ 11 ], Nunn and Pinfield [ 5 ] note that reading levels vary among readerships and that readers with a high literacy level tend to be the group that benefits most from a lay summary. This means that a large segment of the general public will potentially not be in a position to benefit from a lay summary. To minimize this risk, it is therefore important to think carefully about who the target readership is, whose perspectives need to be integrated into a lay summary (e.g., older adults, caregivers, funders, researchers), and why the lay summary is being created (e.g., to recruit participants in a project, to increase awareness of an issue to be resolved in a group of people who experience the issue).

Identify stakeholders to collaborate with

Keeping in mind the target readership identified, participants will then decide which stakeholders to collaborate with to create their project lay summaries. Essentially, some stakeholders involved in the co-creation process should represent the target readership of the lay summary, because they are the most likely group to provide pertinent insight and perspectives. It is therefore important to have a clear understanding of what type of perspectives and expertise will be of most value to a lay summary in terms of its meeting the needs of the identified target readership. Furthermore, taking into account who will benefit from being directly involved in the process (e.g., empowerment, awareness of the project and its aims), and how they will benefit (e.g., increased knowledge about potential solutions), might help participants identify which stakeholders to work with. Ideally, participants and key stakeholders should collaborate at every stage of developing the lay summary to optimize participants’ opportunities to spontaneously learn, discuss, negotiate, and integrate different perspectives. This level of collaboration facilitates an iterative and more organic co-creation process, and thus the resulting lay summary is more likely to be fit for purpose and mutually agreeable.

Recruit identified stakeholders to work on a lay summary

Once participants have identified who to collaborate with in co-creating a lay summary, they start the recruitment process. This step can be a challenge, as lay-summary co-creation requires particular time commitment from stakeholders. Participants must ensure the identified stakeholders will be available to attend any face-to-face co-creation sessions, but family caregivers, for example, may have difficulty attending sessions during the day unless they can find someone to replace them at home. Participants must therefore be prepared to be flexible in terms of the formats and timings for meetings for the co-creation process.

Participants must give careful consideration to the optimum number of stakeholders to recruit for the co-creation process. A group of 6–10 with relatively diverse backgrounds may introduce different ideas and perspectives but reaching a consensus could prove challenging. In contrast, a group of 2–4 may result in more focused discussion and streamline the co-writing, co-revising, and co-editing process, but the scope of diversity is necessarily more restricted.

Recruitment methods will vary. A multi-methods approach can be effective as it addresses people’s different preferences for and accessibility to various communication methods (e.g., flyers, emails, social media platforms). Approaching community organizations and groups to which target stakeholders are likely to belong and asking them to circulate recruitment notices to their members (e.g., seniors’ centre, patient groups, family caregiver associations) would increase the number of target stakeholders that participants can reach out to. Regardless of which medium is used, all the objectives and expectations of the project need to be clearly and concisely expressed. For instance, participants may state the overall objective of the co-creation process: “To write, in simple language, a summary of a project that investigates how family caregivers manage giving medication to older adults living with dementia.” If the process extends over multiple sessions, the objective of each session may be described: “The first session focuses on developing a shared understanding of the project” and “the second session focuses on discussing a drafted lay summary and finalizing it.”

Prepare workshop sessions

Participants will prepare for their lay-summary co-creation workshops by making decisions about the number of co-creation workshop sessions they plan to have, and the objectives of each session. The number of sessions that will be needed to complete a lay summary should be calculated based on the availability, skills, and experiences of the participating stakeholders. For example, if a wide range of stakeholders are invited, and includes stakeholders who do not consider themselves to be writers in any way, the writing process may take longer.

Participants will identify and explain the objectives of each session to stakeholders prior to the workshop. For example: “The first session aims to develop a shared understanding of a project, and the second session will focus on writing, revising, and/or editing a lay summary.” For each session, participants will plan what instructions and guidance they will give to stakeholders before they come to sessions so that both groups can make best use of their time. For example, participants will consider 1) sharing an academic research proposal or the original summary prior to the first session with the stakeholders, and 2) developing and sharing glossaries of key terms used in the original research proposal and summary. It is also important to inform stakeholders what they are expected to do prior to the sessions (e.g., read the original summary, identify language they do not understand, and be ready to discuss the summary in a session) as well as during the sessions.

Execute workshop sessions

A participant may start a session by welcoming stakeholders, setting ground rules and expectations for the session (e.g., respect for different perspectives and ideas), and briefly explaining the objectives of the co-creation process as well as of each session (if there will be more than one session). The participant may then present an overview of their project to the stakeholders, followed by a Q & A about it. During the Q & A phase, stakeholders may request further clarification of key concepts of a project, which may lead to discussion about potential simple terms to describe them. After the Q & A, a participant may introduce and discuss the structure of a lay summary (e.g., problems/challenges, objectives, methods, and impacts). Key ideas about each section of a lay summary will be discussed. Small group activities may be a more effective approach for identifying key ideas to be included in a lay summary if stakeholders are introverted or otherwise hesitant to offer an opinion. A participant may end the session by sharing experiences of the co-creation process among the stakeholders. Throughout the session, a participant may have a facilitator present to help not only with time management but also with discussing and developing ideas put forward by stakeholders and a participant. Figure 3 presents an example of a first session.

An example of a first workshop session

Writing a lay summary based on the identified key ideas may be done in a subsequent session. Alternatively, at the end of the first session, the participant might invite stakeholders to draft a lay summary outside the scheduled sessions, although this is dependent on stakeholders’ motivation, availability, and skills.

Ethical procedures

Ethical approval is not required for this project because its objective is to improve the quality of services and resources for promoting and supporting collaborative team research for researchers within the AGE-WELL network. According to Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, quality assurance and quality improvement studies do not constitute research and thus do not require a Research Ethics Board review [ 27 ].

A lay summary is one example of the types of public-facing research outputs that are becoming increasingly important to project funders and the general public. This paper has presented a protocol for co-creating lay summaries of research projects with stakeholders based on lay-summary co-creation workshops we conducted with one AGE-WELL researcher. Reflections and feedback from the researcher and stakeholders who participated in the workshops on the co-creation process have been incorporated into the protocol. A catalyst for the development of the co-creation protocol was the recognition that many lay summaries published to date are not fit for purpose. It is a challenge to produce lay summaries that include information that will interest a target readership and are written in accessible language [ 3 ].

Initial feedback on the lay summary protocol suggested that researchers—and by association, projects—might not have the capacity to engage in the co-creation of lay summaries. However, this argument is becoming less relevant as collaborative team approaches and meaningful involvement of stakeholders increasingly become standard practice . The creation of lay summaries should not be treated as a necessary evil that gets tacked onto the real part of the research; it is an essential knowledge translation activity. Stakeholder engagement is critical for project planning and so should be adequately resourced in the same way that the “core” aspects of a project are planned and resourced. This may also include compensation and reimbursement for lay people who are involved in the co-creation process.

In terms of resources, funders and researchers need to consider the benefits—or added value—of co-creating lay summaries. A key aim of the development of our protocol is to position the production of lay summaries as part of a co-creation approach to research, particularly in the early stages of a project when the members of a project group are developing a shared understanding of its aims, approaches, and methods. This forces the researchers to think in terms of the target group whose issues they aim to address and engages the whole team (researchers and stakeholders) in reflecting critically on the ideas, objectives, and methods of the project. The production of lay summaries could be seen as a milestone and deliverable from the first stage of the co-creation process and as a way of building relationships and mutual trust within a team. It is envisaged that the project group will continuously update the lay summary, as well as co-create other public-facing outputs. Co-creation benefits researchers and funders as it fosters the production of more effective solutions to real-world problems through cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral knowledge integration [ 13 , 15 , 18 , 20 , 21 , 28 ].

The benefits of participating in the process of co-creating lay summaries may be as important as those offered by the final lay summary. Our experience in developing the protocol led us to identify several potential benefits of participating in the process:

It can foster an effective working relationship within the project team (researchers and stakeholders).

It can help both researchers and stakeholders better understand the co-creation process because the lay summary co-creation is an early stage of the overall co-creation process that will be applied throughout the lifetime of a project.

It can validate the roles and contributions of stakeholders in a project, thus awarding them a greater sense of accomplishment.

It can help researchers critically evaluate their ideas and proposal, prior to the main research phase.

Strengths and limitations

Last, it should be noted that the protocol we developed is not without limitations. First, it focuses on supporting researchers as they navigate their way through co-producing lay summaries with stakeholders, and thus may not be useful to other groups of people who intend to develop lay summaries with stakeholders (e.g., funders, community organizations). Second, the protocol is a work in progress and its effectiveness needs to be evaluated. Despite some of the gaps, a key strength is that it offers one of the first step-by-step guides for researchers to co-produce project lay summaries with stakeholders. We hope that it will also serve as a tool that helps researchers not only to recognize the multiple values of collaborating with stakeholders but also to produce lay summaries that benefit both the public and project funders.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank participants in the initial lay summary co-creation workshops for their time and effort to develop a lay summary and provide feedback on the process and current protocol.

This project is funded by Canada’s AGE-WELL NCE to support the cross-cutting activity cluster on Transdisciplinary Working.

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Gail Harwood

Department of Gerontology, Simon Fraser University, #2800 – 515 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3, Canada

Theodore D. Cosco & Andrew Sixsmith

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Contributions

MW, JS, TDC, MLF, and AS contributed to designing the protocol of the initial co-creation workshops. After the workshops, all authors reflected on the co-creation process. MW drafted the protocol based on their reflections and feedback from participants in the workshops, and all authors contributed to revising and editing the protocol. The final manuscript was approved by all authors.

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Correspondence to Mineko Wada .

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Ethics approval and consent to participate.

Ethical approval is not required for this project because its objective is to improve the quality of services and resources for promoting and supporting transdisciplinary working for researchers within the AGE-WELL network. According to Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, quality assurance and quality improvement studies do not constitute research and thus do not require a Research Ethics Board review [ 27 ].

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Wada, M., Sixsmith, J., Harwood, G. et al. A protocol for co-creating research project lay summaries with stakeholders: guideline development for Canada’s AGE-WELL network. Res Involv Engagem 6 , 22 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-020-00197-3

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Received : 26 December 2019

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Published : 08 May 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-020-00197-3

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Lay summary
Co-creation
Collaborative team research
Stakeholder involvement

Research Involvement and Engagement

ISSN: 2056-7529

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Writing a plain language (lay) summary of your research findings

Trusted information from health and social care research studies should be publicly available for the benefit of all. Information about research findings should be available to those who took part in the study, interested groups or communities and the general public in a format that is accessible and easy to understand. This also makes it easier for health professionals, commissioners, policy makers, and funders to access and use the findings to help make informed decisions and so improve the nation’s health.

As part of the HRA’s research transparency strategy we ask research sponsors to include a plain language summary of their findings in their final report . These plain language summaries will then be published on our website alongside the study research summaries .

How do you write a good plain language summary of your research and its findings for a general audience?

Here are some general principles:

Be accurate, clear and concise
Do not assume any prior knowledge
Use words that are appropriate for the reader
Use short sentences (up to 20 words) and short paragraphs (up to 3 sentences)
Use neutral language
Consider using infographics with explanatory text
Involve patients, patient representatives, or members of the public in the development and/or review of your summary/feedback plans
Involving professionals with experience of writing in plain language for the public such as medical writers can also help.

This e-learning module explains how to write a plain language summary of your research findings. It sets out key points to consider and the information that should be provided using existing guidance on this topic.

What should you include in your lay summary of the research findings?

You should consider including the following information (N.B. not all of the suggested content will be applicable to your research and there may be other information you wish to include):

Thank you to study participants

General information about the research such as:

Study title
Who carried out the research? (including details of sponsor, funding and any competing interests)
What public involvement there was in the study (how many people, what their relevant lived experience was, and what they did)
Where and when the study took place
Why was the research needed?
What were the main questions studied?

Who participated in the study? What treatments or interventions did the participants take/receive? What medical problems (adverse reactions) did the participants have? What happened during the study? What were the results of the study? How has this study helped patients and researchers? Details of any further research planned Where can I learn more about this study?

Further information and resources:

General guidance:

National Institute for Health Research (NIHR): Plain English Summaries Guidance
Digital Curation Centre (DCC): How to Write a Lay Summary
HRA Public Involvement Guidance

Clinical trials:

Summaries of Clinical Trial Results for Laypersons - Recommendations of the expert group on clinical trials for the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 536/2014 on clinical trials on medicinal products for human use (2018). [N.B. The HRA led on the development of these guidelines through an EU-wide taskforce. Whilst this guidance is intended to support the EU Clinical Trials Regulation it can be applied to writing lay summaries for all types of research that have taken place in the UK.]
The Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard (MRCT Center): Practical guidance and toolkit for the dissemination of non-technical summaries to research participants. Visit the Return of Aggregate Results to Participants guidance document and Return of Aggregate Results to Participants toolkit.
Envision Pharma: Plain language Summaries Toolkit
TransCelerate: Recommendations for drafting non-promotional lay summaries of clinical trial results
European Commission Clinical Trials Expert Group (CTEG): Good Lay Summary Practice
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Request in-person training for your federal agency, or use our videos and materials to create your own class.

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COMMENTS

PDF Lay Summary Examples
For example game play is different for an arcade type game such as Donkey Kong than for strategy-based games such as the World of WarCraft. Additionally even within specific game-type genres the play can vary such as between third person versus first person game play.
In a nutshell: how to write a lay summary
A lay summary, or impact statement, is a very efficient way of conveying the essence of your article briefly and clearly. Fundamentally, what you're aiming to produce is a short paragraph outlining the article content, aimed at non-specialists in the field and written in a way that they can easily understand. This element differentiates it ...
How to Write a Lay Summary: 10 Tips for Researchers
If you've ever wondered, 'how to write a lay summary?', you're in the right place. Learn the importance of a lay summary and simple steps to help you write an effective lay summary to ensure your research reaches and resonates with a wider audience. Read on!
PDF Guide to writing a lay summary
Guide to writing a lay summary Distilling your carefully thought-out research programme into simple, concise English in order to be accountable to the general taxpayer - it's become a standard part of funding and fellowship applications, but it's the stuff of many researchers' nightmares.
PDF Writing a good lay summary
This guide will take you through some of the key points to remember when writing a lay summary. This is general advice - please always check with your individual funding body for any guidelines they supply.
How to Write a Lay Summary
the following way [7]: 'A lay summary is a brief summary of a research project or a research proposal that has been written for members of the public, rather than researchers or professionals. It should be written in plain English, avoid the use of jargon and explain any technical terms that have to be included.'.
How to Write A Lay Summary for Your Research
A lay summary presents a concise snapshot of your research in approximately 200 words, using plain language to make it understandable for non-specialists. For people outside the research community, lay summaries make it quick and easy to understand why your work matters. Whether they're science journalists, practitioners or professionals, policymakers, science-based content creators, or the ...
How to write a lay summary
Lay summaries These examples give guidance about the sort of language to use and the level of simplicity we'd like you to aim for when summarising your work for lay summaries.
How to guide: writing a lay summary
How to guide: writing a lay summary This page provides details for writing about research in a digestible way, it can also used as an outline or a starting point when writing content for websites
PDF HOW TO WRITE A GOOD LAY SUMMARY
HOW TO WRITE A GOOD LAY SUMMARY As part of your application to BRAIN UK, you should provide a short lay summary of your research in plain English. To try and improve the public's knowledge and engagement of neuroscience research, it is our intention to publish a lay summary of each of the studies supported on our website.
PDF PowerPoint Presentation
PowerPoint Presentation. Many funders ask for a summary of your research for a non-expert audience. Here's a short guide on how to craft a lay summary that grabs the reader's attention and leaves them wanting more. What's the purpose of a lay summary?
How to write a lay summary of a research project
8 steps to make research understandable I'm using the example of writing a lay summary of a research project. But this could be as easily applied to a news story about a research paper, or an update from a researcher which you're feeding back to a donor.
E.8.6 Lay Summary Guide for Researchers: Tips on Writing a Lay Summary
E.8.6 Lay Summary Guide for Researchers: Tips on Writing a Lay Summary. Version 1.0 October 2021. Download as pdf. All applications to ICGC require an accompanying lay language summary of their research and proposed use of ICGC Controlled data. A lay Summary is simply the ability to convey the details and significance of research to non-experts.
Communicating Your Research: How to Write a Lay Summary
Here are five tips on how to write a lay summary: 1. Know Your Audience. The key to any successful communication - regardless of format - is to know who you are talking to and what they care about. You should tailor your messages and your language based on your audience. For instance, when you are writing a manuscript for a scientific ...
3 Principles for Writing a Great Lay Summary for Proposal
3 Principals for Writing a Great Lay Summary for Your Proposal Don't underestimate the importance of lay summaries. Here are some of my discoveries from writing for popular science magazines. Many scientific funding agencies require you to submit a lay summary alongside your research proposal.
Writing a grant application
A good lay summary should include: Context: Why are you doing the research? What is the motivation behind the research application? Were the questions and outcome measures informed by patients' priorities, experience, and preferences? Aims: State clearly the aims and objectives for a lay audience. What do you hope to find?
In plain language, what are lay summaries?
Lay summaries are a critical component of grant applications, i.e., as part of the grant application process, you may be required to provide a brief plain language summary of the research you propose to undertake. A few examples of funders that require plain-language summaries are available here. But why do funders require lay summaries of ...
PDF 7How to write lay summariesversion copy 2.indd
It describes some general guidelines for writing lay summaries and explores some issues and challenges with lay summary provision. This guide should help researchers who are required to write lay summaries and organisations with an interest in public engagement with research, or those with responsibility for making research accessible.
What Makes a Great Lay Summary?
Researchers often find it difficult to write a lay summary for their research article. In this article, we discuss 09 easy tips to follow to draft a great lay summary.
PDF Guidelines for Writing a Lay Summary
Canadian Frailty Network's Citizen Engagement Committee has created a set of guidelines to help communicate research to a broader, general audience. The guidelines include some general rules and tips for writing a "lay" summary, as well as links to readability tools, and a "before and after" example.
A protocol for co-creating research project lay summaries with
Background Funding bodies increasingly require researchers to write lay summaries to communicate projects' real-world relevance to the public in an accessible way. However, research proposals and findings are generally not easily readable or understandable by non-specialist readers. Many researchers find writing lay summaries difficult because they typically write for fellow subject ...
PDF IRB Research Summary Exemplar
IRB Research Summary. 1. Purpose/Significance: Working together across professional boundaries is a common demand of the mental. health climate today, an approach which is only tenuously supported by the research (Abolela et. al., 2007).
Writing a plain language (lay) summary of your research findings
Involving professionals with experience of writing in plain language for the public such as medical writers can also help. This e-learning module explains how to write a plain language summary of your research findings. It sets out key points to consider and the information that should be provided using existing guidance on this topic.
plainlanguage.gov
Plain language makes it easier for the public to read, understand, and use government communications.