Plain-language Summaries of Research: Something for everyone
- eLife, United Kingdom
Tables
Table 1
A selection of journals, societies and other organizations that produce plain-language summaries of scientific research.
| Organization | Type | Name of plain-language summaries | Length | Number of images | Number published per month/year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Astronomy Society (aasnova.org) | Scientific Society | Highlights | 350–500 words | 1 image, plus 1–3 figures from article | ~12/month |
| Journals Digests | One sentence | None | ~20/month | ||
| Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (promotions.bmj.com/ardsummaries/) | Journal | Patient summaries | 500–1,000 words | None at present | ~3/month |
| Astrobites (astrobites.org) | Student-led organization | N/A | 600–800 words | 1-2 | ~20/month |
| Autism (journals.sagepub.com/home/aut) | Journal | Lay abstracts | 250 words max. | None | ~80/year |
| British Psychological Society (digest.bps.org.uk) | Scientific Society | N/A | Variable, generally around 500–700 words | 1 | ~20/month |
| Cochrane (cochranelibrary.com) | Network of researchers | Plain-language summaries | 400–700 words | Usually none | Variable; published 485 in 2015. |
| eLife (elifesciences.org) | Journal | eLife digests | 200–400 words | None | 50–60/month |
| Frontiers for Young Minds (kids.frontiersin.org) | Journal | N/A | 2,000 words max. | Variable | Variable; published over 100 articles since launch in 2013. |
| Functional Ecology (functionalecology.org) | Journal | Lay summaries | 250–350 words | 1 photograph | ~160 articles in 2016 |
| PLOS Medicine (journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/) | Journal | Author summaries | 6–9 single sentence bullet points | None | 14/month |
| Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (pnas.org) | Journal | Significance Statements | ~120 words | None | ~3000/year |
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Plain-language Summaries of Research: Something for everyone
eLife 6:e25411.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.25411
