Category: Why Effective Communication is Important

A 3-part graphical abstract?

The Urban Ag. ScientistLeave a comment

For those of you still coming to terms with this whole ‘graphical abstract’ thing, this may sound odd – but I went and created a 3-part graphical abstract for my latest paper. In a previous post I wrote about how to create a simple graphical abstract but here I took things one (or two) steps further.

I first put the idea of a 3-part graphical abstract to the Twitter #scicomm community to see what they thought. They were amazingly helpful (thanks everyone!) and had some great suggestions for ensuring the separate graphical abstracts still matched or worked together. Overall people thought that creating 3 separate graphical abstracts rather than mashing my findings together into one larger (inherently more confusing) graphical abstract was a sensible move.

My reasoning was that this particular paper was the summation of my PhD research and so as you can imagine – quite detailed. But it also resulted in 3 distinct sets of findings: methodology, new open-access data and implications for urban food growers. Thus when it came time to design a graphical abstract for this paper I could not find a way to mesh these three stories together in a simple visual way.

Below you can see BIG differences from how each abstract started (just throwing colours and blocks around!) compared to how they turned out. Use the slider on the Before and After images to move right and left to see.

 

In the end I decided to create 3 graphical abstracts which shared a similar visual look and were linked to each other as parts 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3. But they still had to fit with our concept of a graphical abstract as; “a concise, colourful and engaging visual explanation of the take-home message of the paper”.

I admit they took a while to create (try weeks!), mostly at the beginning while I was trying to come up with a set of themed colours and related formats. Once I settled on those it was then simply lots of wordsmithing and tweaking visuals and placement. The final products have muted (but still friendly) colours, a main focus on the headings or catch lines, and different visuals to keep them interesting.

Do I think they worked well? For me – yes. These abstracts can be used together, or separately to target slightly different audiences. I’ve been able to share these on different social media platforms and with traditional media as part of press releases. They draw people in and hopefully quickly communicate the take-home messages of my research.

What do you think? Have you ever considered a multi-part graphical abstract for some of your more complex or
multi-faceted work?

I would love to see your own graphical abstracts or hear whether you think you could use a multi-part one yourself.

As an added bonus I heard from the amazing Dr. Echo Rivera (@echoechoR) who has written a very handy blog post on how to create animated graphical abstracts if you usually create your abstracts using Powerpoint. This could lead to your work and social media posts receiving higher numbers of interactions, clicks and views! I for one am definitely going to give this a go.

Cheers!
Georgia

A more locally connected, resilient and tasty Australian future? How to support all these newly enthused food gardeners

The Urban Ag. ScientistLeave a comment

So, you are stuck at home. You may be isolating, quarantined, or suddenly found yourself under- or completely unemployed with too much time on your hands. You sit with your family, your children, your housemates or by yourself. You watch the news and hear from others about the panic-buying. You’re concerned over food supplies and the fresh food you can find at the shop seems expensive. What are you going to do? Well you could do what many people have done, rush to buy a bunch of food seeds and seedlings. The idea is to “grow your own” and hopefully secure a more reliable (and cheaper?) supply of fresh food. The only problem is, you’re not really sure how to grow food plants – you can keep your house plants and the shrubs in your garden alive sure, but this seems a bit more complicated…

This is the reality for many Australians at the moment. This swell of new food gardeners is a wonderful outcome from the concern and restrictions of the COVID-19 crisis. But how likely are these gardens to flourish? Do newbie gardeners have the skills and experience to produce reasonable and consistent amounts of food for their households this autumn and winter? Or will most of them watch disheartened as their newly minted “victory gardens” fail? The latest results from “Edible Gardens“, a state-wide citizen science project from the University of South Australia, suggest huge variability in the effectiveness of home food gardens.

So, what can we as a country do to help all these newly enthused food gardeners succeed? And how good would it be to come out of this crisis with households and communities that were more resilient, more productive, and more inter-connected than ever?

Read More »

Let’s talk “Graphical Abstracts”

The Urban Ag. Scientist1 Comment

If you’re a scientist, and have had something published recently, chances are you’ve come across this option when uploading your final reviewed, edited and approved copy of your manuscript:

uplaoding graphical abstract to journal websiteFor many of us, reaching this point in the submission of your paper and then realising that you don’t have a graphical abstract ready is just a pain you don’t need. By the end we often don’t have the time or energy left to deal creatively with thinking up yet another way to explain our research.

But hear me out. I want to help you understand the benefit of a good graphical abstract, why you should consider putting the extra effort in to create one, and a few tips on how to go about it.

Read More »

Open-access Research 2018 – Diversity & Sustainability

The Urban Ag. ScientistLeave a comment

I may have mentioned previously that my PhD approach is to complete a “Thesis containing published material” (AKA Thesis by Publication). I am now 7 weeks away from running out of time and money to submit my thesis. On the plus side, many of my chapters have already been written – as papers. On the downside it’s now crunch time and I am one paper short of my 5 planned papers: 2 are published, 1 is under review, 1 is ready to submit. The 5th one remains not yet written as it will present ALL the results from the collected garden data. But this is beside the point of this blog post which was meant to be all about my 3rd PhD paper – published in March 2018. (How it got from March to now without me realising I will never know!)

So here it is! It’s titled, “Typically Diverse: The Nature of Urban Agriculture in South Australia“. This paper presents results from the Edible Gardens Project and reveals the incredible diversity that is inherent in the production methods, water sources, irrigation methods, sizes, labour, and costs of urban home food gardens in South Australia.

To read or share the full article, follow this link: Pollard, Georgia; Ward, James and Roetman, Philip. “Typically Diverse: The Nature of Urban Agriculture in South Australia”. Sustainability (2018).

In the paper we ask (and even answer) questions such as,

  • How are people currently growing food in urban areas? What methods or approaches are they using?
  • Are there relationships between particular production methods?
  • What challenges do urban gardeners face?
  • Do the challenges gardeners face when just starting out differ from the challenges they face further on?
  • How much money do people spend setting up their food gardens? What about their monthly costs?
  • Do urban food gardeners want to save money? And do they believe they succeed in doing so?
  • How does an ‘optimised garden model’ compare to people’s real food gardens?
  • What does the “typical” home food garden look like? (I’ll give you a clue… it looks a bit like the featured image!)
  • What are the implications for the economic sustainability of home food gardens? Are they accessible to everyone?

If you’re interested in finding out about any of these questions – take a look at the full paper. It’s open-access so anyone can read, download and share it with others.

Happy reading!

Georgia, the Urban Ag. Scientist

Talking about the elephant in the room: Mental health and learning how to share your story

The Urban Ag. ScientistLeave a comment

There were nine of us sitting there around a big table, nervously shuffling papers and preparing to share our own stories of mental ill-health. Where were we? What were we doing? Why were we drawing on all our courage to tell others vulnerable details of our own experiences and journeys?

Well, we were at a BATYR ‘Being Herd’ workshop.
And we were prepared.

We were there because each one of us wanted to learn how to tell our story – to tell our story in a structured way that connected with others without emotionally swamping them. We had the reassuring presence of Sam & Tom, our workshop facilitators and Amy – our support person.

“Who’s ready to share next? You have 10 minutes and we’re all ready to listen.”

I took a deep breath in and out, then raised my hand. I looked at my notes, and started to speak…

From the Batyr workshop we learnt practical elements of storying telling around mental health. Things like,

  1. Begin with you – what you’re like and what you enjoy.
    Add a little background context – your family, your up-bringing.
  2. What you experienced: how did it begin? What did you notice first? What did others notice (or not notice about you?). Was it an ongoing issue? Describe how it felt – moments in time. Be careful not to generalise, use “I” and “for me”. Everyone experiences everything differently. No one experience is more “real” or more “valid”. (Depending on who you’re talking to – leave out specific methods of any kind of harm and focus instead on the feelings.)
  3. Turning points & support – there may have been one or there may have been many. How did you know you needed to reach out for support? What support did you seek out? What has worked and what hasn’t worked for you? (This is where you can go into detail).
  4. Where are you now in your journey? What is the key message you want to share with others who may be struggling? What do you do today to manage your wellbeing? (For example, being in nature)

What about for those of us who think a friend or someone we know might being going through a tough time?

Read More »

Open-Access Research from 2017: Aquaponics in… Urban Planning?

The Urban Ag. ScientistLeave a comment

The first open-access article I, along with Dr James Ward and Dr Barbara Koth published in 2017 was called, “Aquaponics in Urban Agriculture: Social Acceptance and Urban Food Planning”. It’s about the perception and social acceptance of aquaponics by urban food growers and Local Government Area in Adelaide, South Australia. A considerable amount of research has been conducted on the technology itself, but little has been done on how people (other than those who actually have such systems) feel about aquaponics. Additionally, the level of awareness and acceptance of local councils (in South Australia known as local government areas or LGAs) can influence either the support or restriction of aquaponics in urban areas.

Collectively our participants not only considered the various strengths and weaknesses of aquaponics, but also used their own experiences to recommend ideas for the possible adoption and expansion of aquaponics. These recommendations culminated in the idea of a set of scaled guidelines, including financial, logistical, resource requirements, and expected productivity for each potential scale of operation – from single backyard to large-scale commercial.

When the discussion moved to urban planning and the influence of local government areas, every participant alluded to a lack of council support for urban food production. There was a strong desire for a shift in current urban planning and that of state level government to better acknowledge and support urban food production of all kinds.

To read or share the full article, follow this link: Pollard, Georgia, James D Ward, and Barbara Koth. “Aquaponics in Urban Agriculture: Social Acceptance and Urban Food Planning.” Horticulturae 3, no. 2 (2017): 39.

But what is aquaponics?

Read More »

Open-access Research from 2017: Citizen Science

The Urban Ag. Scientist3 Comments

It just so happens that 2017 was a good year for writing; I (along with my co-authors), had my first two scientific articles published. Both are open-access and are therefore available for anyone, anywhere in the world to read – no subscription necessary. Publishing articles as open-access may cost more and require a little more ‘hoop-jumping’, yet it is a valuable method of science communication (particularly suited to citizen science).

Hence myself, along with my supervisors Dr James Ward and Dr Philip Roetman wrote a paper called, “The Case for Citizen Science in Urban Agriculture Research”. It’s about the practical challenges of researching urban food production, how past studies have gone about researching urban food yields and inputs, and how effective a citizen science approach can be. We describe the design of the “Edible Gardens Project” as an example of how citizen science can be successfully applied to urban agriculture research.

To read or share the full article, follow this link: Pollard, Georgia, Philip Roetman, and James Ward. “The Case for Citizen Science in Urban Agriculture Research.” Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture and Society 5, no. 3 (2017): 9-20.

Read More »

My first guest blog, “Being BOLD and Taking Responsibility” at the LFIA’s Adelaide forum

The Urban Ag. ScientistLeave a comment

I recently attended an Adelaide based forum on “Building Nutrition”, held by the Living Future Institute of Australia (LFIA). It was fascinating to say the least. Afterwards I was contacted and asked if I was interested in writing a guest blog on the forum experience – and of course said “Yes!”

Here’s how it starts…

“There are times when you hear about real people taking small steady steps toward achieving their goals and making changes. You listen with a sense of satisfaction, the changes might not be huge but at least they’re happening. This is how most change comes about, “green” or not.

Then there are times when this slowness of pace gets to you a little… You begin to hanker for some mountainous shift in the ways things work, some outrageous plan or project or people just getting on with things – regardless of apparent restrictions. For me, these are the moments that make all the small steps and the consistent effort worthwhile. And it doesn’t have to be something I’m personally involved in, I’ll accept inspiration from anywhere!

This is where the latest Adelaide Forum from the Living Future Institute of Australia (LFIA) comes into the story…”

Follow the link to read more on the LFIA website: https://living-future.org.au/blog/

 

Keeping Data Personal: Big scopes, little people

The Urban Ag. Scientist1 Comment

Every now and again I wonder about whether big data can still be personal. This generally occurs after I get a pop-up on my computer or an up-date on my phone which asks if they can track and use my background data.

But it does get me thinking – I hear a lot about us being in the era of “big data”, with mass data collection all around. Some of this is used to categorise us according to our likes and shopping desires. Some is used to actually better the systems and interfaces we work with.

But I know from my own data collection experiences how easy it is (once everyone’s answers are turned into numbers and categories), to lose sight of what those answers really mean in context to each person, and in turn what this means for your research.

But there are people out there making huge efforts to keep our interfaces, data collection and communications not just individual but personal too. I only recently watched a TED Talk by Aaron Koblin from 2011 called, “Visualizing ourselves… with crowd-sourced data”.Read More »

Book breakdown – “Don’t be such a Scientist” Part 4

The Urban Ag. ScientistLeave a comment

The fourth instalment of Dr Randy Olson‘s book explores the trait of “likability” and its place in scientific communication.

“Don’t be so unlikeable”

Even just the title of this chapter made me think – “What does he mean ‘unlikeable’? Is he talking about always agreeing with people? Or trying to look pretty and make friends?” It turns out there’s a bit more to it than that…

To begin with, Olson once again describes the value of scientists as society’s truth tellers, or as the “designated drivers” of reality. Scientists are those who resist getting swept up by fantasy and instead try to take a good hard look at the facts.

Scientists play an important role – there’s no denying it. However the question remains, can you be a scientist and still be liked?

Read More »