Academia, animated

It’s no longer enough to publish or perish as a researcher. Around 2.5 million scientific research articles are published every year (Bornmann et al, 2011). Out of those, it’s estimated that only 20-30% are cited at least once within the first two years of publication (Waltman et al., 2023). Whilst this will vary across fields, these estimates are concerning - that’s 70%-80% of publications that languish unread. Researchers are missing out on audiences who want to read their work. There are world changing ideas that never end up in the hands of those who need them most.

You need to get eyes on your work for the best chance of driving change with your ideas. You need to be VISIBLE or your research will vanish.

Researchers must have more engaging communication tools in their arsenal than the academic article to reach audiences like policy makers, funders, the lay public, and even other academics. Visual and creative ways to plan, do, and communicate research are increasingly becoming requirements of funders, alongside public engagement and clear routes to real world change.

 

So how do you become visible as a researcher?

Animation.

Animation - moving pictures with a voiceover that explain complicated ideas visually - is a tool for increasing the:

• visibility

• accessibility

• and impact

of your research with new and traditional audiences.

 

Increasing visibility

Being visible means competing with all the other demands for audiences’ attention online.

Do your audiences want to read your 50 page report, or watch a 90 second cat meme montage? (I know which one I’d rather get stuck into!).

Animations encourage audiences to stop their scroll and pay attention to your work. For example, pages with animated video lead to audiences spending 160% more time exploring the content on that site (Wistia, 2023). PLUS, research articles with animated abstracts receive up to 120% more citations than those without (Zong et Al., 2019).

This means that animation is both good for your public engagement, AND your publication reach too.

 

Increasing accessibility

Animation forces academics and designers to break down complicated ideas into simple, easy to understand, and engaging narratives. This opens up the world of research to wider and more diverse people, increasing the potential for impact.

Animation improves recall of research messaging and perceptions of credibility and trustworthiness of science research (Lepito, 2019). This is crucial for the long term engagement of audiences who have previously mistrusted the academy. In fact, animation also opens up academic knowledge to previously underserved audiences - George et al., (2013) found that animation improved health literacy in underserved groups by improving participants’ ability to identify personal information-gaps, engage in meaningful community-level dialogue, and ask questions about health research.

 

Increasing impact

Cutting through complexity and appealing to a wider audience means viewers are more likely to ACT upon research recommendations. For instance, animations improved the uptake of mental health services in young people, where researchers based the script on empirical research findings (Coughlan et al., 2021); and animations have proven to be useful in improving pathways to policy impact too (Reed et al., 2018).

 

Summary

Animations have the power to increase the visibility, accessibility, and impact of your research, in two minutes or less!

Think this sounds good, but have no idea where to start with your own research animations? Here's where to start: 

1. First, consider your audience and script. Here's a two minute video on how to use a simple storytelling framework to distil your research into a simple, compelling story.

2. Second, you need to build an animation but might not have the funding to commission one. Here's a free tool to start building an animation with no experience needed, and another tool to get an AI generated voiceover if you’re not ready to be a video star!

3. Finally, if the whole process terrifies you - work with a professional research animation company. Think about costing professional animation in at the bid writing stage, or applying for public engagement funding at your institution.

Here at Nifty Fox Creative we specialise in bringing research stories to life through animation - from treating cancer to fighting climate change. View our showreal and get in touch here. 

References

• Bornmann, L., Mutz, R., & Daniel, H.-D. 2010. A reliability-generalization study of journal peer reviews: A multilevel meta-analysis of inter-rater reliability and its determinants. PLoS One, 5(12), e14331

• Coughlan H, Quin D, O'Brien K, Healy C, Deacon J, Kavanagh N, Humphries N, Clarke MC, Cannon M. 2021. Online Mental Health Animations for Young People: Qualitative Empirical Thematic Analysis and Knowledge Transfer. J Med Internet Res, 23(2), e21338

• George S, Moran E, Duran N, Jenders RA. 2013. Using animation as an information tool to advance health research literacy among minority participants. AMIA Annu Symp Proc, 2013, 475-84

• Lepito, A. 2018. Where Animation and Science Meet. Integrative and Comparative Biology. 58(6), 279–1282 

• Reed, M. S., Bryce, R., & Machen, R. 2018. Pathways to policy impact: a new approach for planning and evidencing research impact. Evidence & Policy, 14(03), 431-458

• Ryan G, Sfar-Gandoura H. 2018. Disseminating research information through Facebook and Twitter (DRIFT)(2018): presenting an evidence-based framework. Nurse Res, e1562

• Waltman, L., Kaltenbrunner, W., Pinfield, S. and Woods, H.B. 2023. How to improve scientific peer review: Four schools of thought. Learned Publishing, 36, 334-347

• Wistia. 2023. State of Video Report, accessed at: https://wistia.com/about/state-of-video, on 15.07.23

• Zong Q, Xie Y, Tuo R, Huang J, Yang Y. 2019. The impact of video abstract on citation counts: Evidence from a retrospective cohort study of New Journal of Physics. Scientometrics, 119(3), 1715–1727

 

About this guide

There’s long tradition of geographers communicating research ‘beyond the academy’ - to policy, to publics, to young people, to school teachers -  whether to recruit students, for career development, critical praxis and activism, or requirements of funders to document ‘impact’. Ten years ago we published the Communicating Geographical Research Beyond the Academy guide. It sought to bring together and share collective experience and learning, from within and beyond the academy. Today, there’s ever more opportunities and modes and media with which to do this. While many of the points made – about audience, about access, about brevity and the use of plain English – still stand, this collection covers these already familiar issues as well as bringing new perspectives to encourage readers to reflect on motives, means and methods and to illuminate examples of good practice.