Scientists have a great responsibility to share knowledge. Accordingly, in 2018 a new ECTS Academy dissemination initiative was introduced. This action group aims to provide a simplified summary of research findings of ECTS Academy members in order to make these findings comprehensible to a lay audience of non-experts. Moreover, in terms of “public engagement”, the in depth knowledge of bone disease pathophysiology as well as the translation of our findings in the clinical setting represent an outcome of our daily work which has a significant impact on society.
Our dissemination process involves writing a short lay abstract (~ 300 words) of a selected paper from an ECTS Academy member. The abstract should fulfill the following 3 criteria: 1) simple in presenting results, identifying the goals and target group of research presented; 2) brief; since we are in the “velocity era”, the message should be short, direct and effective; 3) easy to read, avoiding scientific jargon.
The abstract is then shared with the respective authors in order to avoid any errors or misinterpretation of the work and to render the message clear.
Subsequently, our abstracts are published on the ECTS Academy website and shared on our social media to achieve a maximum outreach to the public.
Up to now, we have had an average of one disseminated abstract per month but since the Academy is growing every year, we plan to increase the number of communications per months in order to maximize interactions with the public. We also plan to extend the participation to other young and experienced scientists and would welcome receiving communication of their work. Disseminating novel and relevant findings of the entire scientific society working in the musculoskeletal field will improve the quality of research and help share valid information to non-specialized individuals.
We invite you to visit our News Section on the ECTS Academy website to get acquainted with our dissemination activity https://ects-academy.org/events-news/news/ and please contact us for more information (Ciro Menale, ciro.menale@humanitasresearch.it; Vito Guarnieri, v.guarnieri@operapadrepio.it).