Following a year of public engagement activities associated with the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, Alison Woollard explains why scientists need to communicate with the public.

An analysis of review, promotion and tenure documents from 129 US and Canadian universities suggests institutions could better fulfill their public missions by changing how they incentivize the public dimensions of faculty work.

Hypothetical battles between animals can be used to interest the general public in biology.

More could be done to make research papers readily understandable by the public.

Journals and other scientific organizations produce a diverse variety of plain-language summaries.

After summarizing over 2,400 articles in plain language, the eLife Features team shares what it has learnt about writing and editing for a broad audience.

Readers of health and medicine Wikipedia pages are more likely to hover over and view footnotes than other readers, but less likely to view the hyperlinked sources in these footnotes.

Biomedical science benefits when plain language allows patients to engage with all stages of the research process.

The NWB data language enables reproduction, interchange, and reuse of diverse neurophysiology data, and the design principles of NWB are generally applicable to enhance discovery across biology through data FAIRness.