Blog on science communication
Learn how to communicate your research better with websites, presentations & e-learning
Learn to create better posters with our poster design guidelines
This is it. The ultimate guide for good poster presentation design. Use it to create a well-designed poster that stands out and effectively communicates your research. We’ve created this together with conference organizers, scientists and universities. It’s based over a decade of experience with (visual) science communication.
Presenting a poster at a conference is an amazing opportunity to showcase your research, get valuable feedback, advance your career and make lasting connections. Let us help you avoid boring cluttered posters and create a beautiful award-winning posters.
Researchers often reach for jargon because they think it makes them look smart. The evidence says the opposite. Complex writing makes you look less intelligent, costs you citations, and shuts out the people who could actually use your work.
If you want to set up science communication at a new institute, or take it to the next level at your existing organization, this blog is for you! It gives you concrete steps for the first months, so you can get started right away.
Science is about accuracy, while English is a very flexible language. This blogs gives you the good, the bad and the ugly of this flexibility, so you can write better and clearer texts and titles!
If you deal with large research projects involving many partners, you may have wondered how you can arrange the communication plan in such a way that it results in proper science communication, while also pleasing the funding agency.
This roadmap to a better integration of the theory and practice of science communication is the result of a PCST2025 preconference workshop on the topic.
Choosing a domain name for your research website is tricky. With this guide we show you how to name your website for a memorable name that avoid cryptic research acronyms.
Turn your research newsletter into something subscribers actually enjoy and look forward to. With practical tips, fresh content ideas, and easy ways to make every issue relevant, engaging, and worth opening.
If we have to see one more "Happy to share our new paper!" post, we're going to cry. It's depressing: the endless stream of identical LinkedIn posts with confetti backgrounds, a PubMed link, and not a single clue what the research is about. Here's how to fix that post and actually get people to engage with your work.
You’ve made a beautiful, clear poster that finally explains your research in a way people understand. But your supervisor wants you to go back to the wall-of-text template from 2006. In this blog, we’ll help you fight back (nicely). Convince them with scientific evidence, psychology, and great examples.
To make your science communication truly effective, you need to address the doubts, questions, and “but…” responses your audience might have. In this blog, we show how to spot those counterarguments early and build them into your story, with real-world examples from public health, research, and education.
Are you struggling to turn your research into a compelling story for infographic, video, or scrollytelling website? Use our proven story structure to write a powerful script that captures attention, highlights your key message, and inspires action.
What happens to your research project website when funding ends? Research websites often disappear, taking valuable information with them. Don’t let that happen! Follow along on a step-by-step tutorial on how to archive your website and keep it live for free!
How do you figure out which angle to take to engage your audience? It takes two to tango, but also to communicate. And that means you need to understand your audience to communicate clearly and effectively.
Together with a panel, Stephan explored the intersection of public engagement and team science. What are the key insights from this conversation, and which questions should we ask when it comes to science communication?
The science communication field needs knowledge sharing and continuity. The self-employed and small businesses that work in science communication have been offering this for years, yet they remain systematically passed over.
How do the big developments in science affect science communication (‘scicom’)? I propose a way of dealing with this new situation.
Whether you’re presenting a poster at a conference or designing an infographic about your research, your title is the first impression people will get. So make sure it grabs attention and use it to communicate your main message at a glance.
How do you write a short story for infographics, posters, and presentations? A research story is a few sentences about the what, why, how of your research. It makes it possible to explain the most important elements of a research project at a glance.
We want to help researchers create better visuals, so we have created an online tool to help you create your own data visualisation with icons!
Do you want to increase the visibility of your research project’s website and effectively reach your target audience? In this blog, we will discuss some simple yet effective strategies to increase your website's visibility and engage with your audience. Let's dive in!
Creating a website can feel overwhelming, especially when you have to come up with a style and are looking for ideas. In this blog we showcase the different design styles for your website, and give you all the websites you need for design inspiration.
A poster presentation is a dance. A dance in which you start off by yourself, scanning the crowd for a nice partner to dance with. Then, you have to attract that partner and invite them to join your dance.
Do you want to create professional posters, presentations, websites, invitations, or reports? Then you need the tools and resources to design better. We’ve compiled a list of our favorite design tools and resources.
Floor did a science communication internship at The Online Scientist and wrote a report about the process. In this article she shares the 7 lessons she learned while working with us.
To make sure that people book your (online) course, your landing page needs to provide all the necessary information. Answer these questions to create a compelling and informative page for both online and physical courses.
Scrollytelling is a relatively new storytelling technique that combines the power of storytelling with the convenience of scrolling. It is an engaging and interactive way to tell stories that captures the attention of readers and a great tool for creative science communication.
Creating a graphical abstract is a great way to help you communicate your research visually. To create an effective graphical abstract follow our extensive guide with tips and case studies.
It’s our mission to create better science communication through design, so we’ve summarized some lessons from our Design crash course for scientist to help you become a better designer.
Content design is essential for making your text easier to read. It’s the starting point for any designers, and can be used by all researchers instantly. So take advantage of our tips on how to design your text and create happy readers.
There are many styles you can choose from when you design infographics. 3D isometric, illustration, icon, or flat design. But what style to choose? We’ll show you some styles from our portfolio to get inspired.
How can you make your workshops a success? If you're the organizer it helps to think about the trade-offs in time, interactivity and the number of participants. We'll help you choose the right workshop for your wishes.
Do you want to look professional on the profile page of your university website, research page, or LinkedIn page? That means you need to have a good profile picture. We give you the tips to create a great profile picture with your mobile phone.
Are you dreading writing a bio for your website or LinkedIn page? Don't worry, we'll help you write an effective bio that is fun to read and you are proud to share with the world!
We encounter them too often: unattractive team pages with holiday snapshots and boring bios. But your researchers are doing all the work, so we say it’s about time to put them in the spotlight they deserve! With this guide, we will help you take better profile pictures, design an attractive team page, and write interesting [...]
Vague websites with hidden menus, confusing sliders, irrelevant stock photography and long texts that no one wants to read… And many websites are stuck in the 90s with introductions such as “Welcome to our website”. We think you can do better! We’ll share our best practices so you can make your website & homepage useful [...]
When you start thinking about doing science communication, one of the first things to come up is your target audience – in fact, it’s right in the beginning of our Basics of Science Communication workshop! But deciding on that audience can be tricky. In this blog, we’ll discuss the essential question you need to ask [...]
A good EU project website is an excellent way of showcasing your work. We have collected some best practices to help you create better, more beautiful and user-friendly websites.
Your research website is not about you Most subsidies require that you create a website about your project. But who are you making it for? Spoiler: it's not the subsidizer. It's not even you or your consortium. It's the general public and other stakeholders of your project! Unfortunately, most research websites are still obligatory monstrosities [...]
You have a presentation scheduled in Zoom – a common sight since 2020! Use these tips and tricks to avoid the most common blunders when presenting in Zoom.
Here you are, expert in your academic field. And you have found equally qualified partners to create a consortium around a really exciting piece of research. You have everything settled and your research budget is excellent. The project proposal is almost done! But then you realize you have this damned obligatory communication section to add [...]
Let’s say you’re approached by a journalist working on a story, and he or she asks you to talk about your research. What is the single most important thing to keep in mind if you want to be realistic and fair? Spoiler alert: it’s not about jargon… No, the main issue to keep in mind [...]
What can you do to make your research stand out from the crowd? As science communicators in an online world, we have compiled the five most efficient ways to become more visible to journalists, colleagues, conference organizers and funding agencies. Have you ever Googled yourself, only to find an outdated article or forum comment from [...]
Research is slowly moving into the real world, with studies being done using data from social media websites and interaction with the public. But what do you do when you need to cite someone’s tweet? How do you cite a Facebook post in your journal article? Is it enough to give the URL? We’ve compiled [...]
Finding a new hosting provider for your website can be very frustrating; online you find good and bad reviews, you never quite know what a hosting provider does for you, and maybe you lack the technical know-how to assess if they offer enough service for a safe and speedy website. We help you to avoid [...]
"I want a logo!” With these words every logo design process starts. But this isn't enough for a designer to develop the new logo for your website. It helps to know what type of logo you want, or, at least, what your preferences are. Here you find the different styles of logos so you can [...]
Before building a website we advise you to think about why you need a site, who your audience is, and what goals you want to achieve. We developed this website optimizer to help us understand your goals and wishes for your new website and to manage expectations. Please fill out this optimizer for your project [...]
When you are thinking about developing an e-learning course, it’s good practice to think about the purpose, your target audience, and the learning goals before you start. For this purpose we developed the e-learning optimizer that helps you to discover what you need before you start building an online tool. It helps you to define [...]
If you read our blogs, you’ll notice that we talk a lot about making whatever you publish about science easy to understand. This may feel repetitive sometimes. And being scientists ourselves we get why you may think it’s the least important part of any presentation. But science communication is here to stay, so it pays [...]
We wrote the title with the word ‘slides’. Yes, slides. Because let’s get one thing clear first; the fact that we dislike so many presentations is not because presentations or slides are bad. What’s often wrong is the execution of the presentation. People are very visual, so a combination of a story with images works [...]
You have been invited to a well-known international conference to give a presentation – what an honour! Your first thought may be to get started right away by copying graphs from your publications into a slide, or dragging and dropping content from your archive of premade slides and clip-art into an empty presentation… Don’t open [...]
Making theory valuable for daily practice – and vice versa This blog presents the input, feedback and discussion points from the workshop organized by Stephan van Duin and Anne Dijkstra on May 26, 2025 in Aberdeen. For a more readable digestion of this session, please read this blog. There were 11 participants from Germany, Israel, [...]
You’ve probably seen them in , those horribly designed evidence pyramids. We think they deserved an update! So instead of using random designs from Google images, get our pyramid to save your audience from bad design headaches. We have nightmares from these ugly pyramids! Download your Levels of Evidence Pyramid Feel free to use this [...]
Don’t want to read? Book a workshop on science communication!
Invite us to your university, PhD day, conference or summer school and we will inspire you and your colleagues or students to get your message across in more attractive, contemporary and effective ways.
We teach you everything you need to know to create more impact: from defining your message and audience, to engaging the media and making (poster) presentations, infographics and even websites.
