9. Dissemination of Resaerch

Dissemination of Research

In this latest Newsletter Series on Research, we are looking at research dissemination and how best to get your key findings across. In the words of Professor Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer for England):

“Research is of no use unless it gets to the people who need to use it”

It is probably never too early in a projects’ lifetime to identify who is your audience. Maximum benefit of your research requires engaging with your primary audience and the stakeholders who have an interest or will benefit from your research from the very beginning.

Your type of research output should be geared for optimum delivery to create maximum impact. Whether your interested parties be direct colleagues, clinicians, patients, public, charities managers, decision makers, commissioners or any combinations of these. Understanding where different audiences may look for information and using those channels accordingly will help maximise your output.

If you have been awarded a grant for your research, a pre-requisite maybe clearly mapping how your research will be disseminated. For example, our own CSVS Research Grant requires completion of a Newsletter article and AGM presentation. Similarly, regional ethics committees often stipulate dissemination plans are embedded into the original research proposal, typically this will also include provision of lay summaries to participants.

Traditional research dissemination approaches revolve around the 3 ‘Ps’:

• Posters
• Presentations
• Publications

Many meetings and conferences (eg. VS / CSVS AGM, BMUS, Charing Cross, UK Stroke Forum) offer poster exhibitions running alongside the main programme. This is a great way to display your whole project in a succinct, portable and very accessible way, while also offering you the opportunity to informally speak with your audience directly and network with interested parties. It also makes for a useful informative display for your hospital corridors, waiting rooms or scanning rooms etc. Instruction for creating posters is included in relevant websites, but generally should be eye-catching with a mixture of graphics and text that can be read in two minutes and is not too ‘busy.’

Although researchers may lean towards written communications to get their research across, more effective communication to patients or decision makers for example, will be through talks in Public Involvement Programme (PIP). Practising presentations in monthly lab meetings, as well as delivering your research to people who may not otherwise hear it, bring questions and perspectives you may not have thought of. It’s also a good way of getting feedback prior to publication and signposting your audience to future publications.

Given the broad spectrum of subject areas vascular ultrasound encompasses, there are many different options for submitting papers for publication – most typically, peer-reviewed journals. Many journals are listed on the CSVS website, along with their impact factor (calculated from the number times their articles are cited within the last few years and is an useful way of comparing the impact of journals).

Journal List (not exhaustive!)

CSVS membership will provide accessibility to many of these journals via the ScienceDirect Access link provided under the My Locker webpage (https://www.svtgbi.org.uk/my-locker/), on the My SVTGBI navigation pane on the left hand side. Before writing your paper, have a look at the type of articles journals produce, they may accept Case Studies as well as Original Research articles and each have their own instructions to authors. Choosing titles and keywords carefully, along with a well written abstract will ultimately help determine how effective a literature search will be in picking up your research.

There is a lot of resources online from your NHS Trust if you have a Research Department. Here’s a link to the research web pages associated with University Hospitals of Leicester (https://www.leicestershospitals.nhs.uk/aboutus/education-and-research/research-innovation/) and Oxford University Hospitals (https://www.ouh.nhs.uk/research/) to give you an example.

Increasingly, innovative dissemination methods that go beyond traditional academic publishing and meetings, where relevant, may achieve more widespread research uptake and understanding. There are many other possible lines of communication. Write less, talk more was one piece of advice from the NIHR for greater impact; tap into networks, attend meetings, give workshops, meet for coffee! Healthcare STP networks maybe a great place to start, MDTs, local or regional meetings, social media, a summary for a departmental website, which ever opportunities are pertinent. Use your Trust’s communication teams or Research Departments to help you. Letters to the editor published in journals could be a good way to respond to a publication, help to keep the conversation going. Engaging with the public is widespread practice, you could produce a lay abstract for display on a noticeboard, attend patient forums or community groups. For example, if you’d looked at fistula assessment intervals, you’d benefit from talking to the renal patients and getting their view.

To match non-traditional outputs, Altmetric is just one system intended to complement traditional measures of output impact. Tracking attention that research outputs such as scholarly articles and data sets receive online. It pulls data from: social media, traditional media (mainstream and field specific), blogs and online reference managers. Altmetric now typically display next to each research article. Below is an example of recent research paper that was published in Circulation Research (https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.124.324327). The research methodology was mentioned in the 4th article of the Research Series (https://www.svtgbi.org.uk/research/3-svt_research_series/4-research-questions-hypothesis/). As you can see, when the article was published in early June there was a lot of attention in the news (mainly for two weeks) due to the Sildenafil compound that was used and the favourable results. Although the number of downloads has since reduced, it is in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric.

https://ahajournals.altmetric.com/details/164266268/news

As you can see, there is much to consider when disseminating your work, and as a starting point, we would recommend the following useful NIHR link:

National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) - Centre for Engagement and Dissemination

https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/how-to-disseminate-your-research/19951 https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/collection/how-commissioners-use-research-evidence/

Good luck!

Written by Yvonne Sensier (University Hospitals of Leicester)

Edited by Osian Llwyd (Oxford University Hospitals/University of Oxford)