Reaching the media and sharing research findings
You can reach the University’s Press Office at: press@uu.se or 070-167 92 96
Many media outlets are interested in the knowledge and research available at the University. If you want to make yourself available to journalists who have questions about your field, consider the following:
- Keep your contact details updated in the University Directory, with phone numbers where you can be reached. Fill in keywords and write a short description of what you do.
- Let the Press Office know if you can share your knowledge and perspective on an issue that is popular right now.
- Contact the Press Office if you have upcoming or ongoing projects that you think might be of interest to the public.
- Contact journalists whom you think would be interested in your work (but do not just think locally).
Press releases on research findings
If you have an upcoming publication that you would like to share with the media, please contact the Press Office and briefly describe the most interesting conclusions. Since Uppsala University produces lots of research, we have to be selective. In making our selection, we weigh both public interest and scholarly importance.
The University only sends out press releases on research articles that have been peer reviewed or the equivalent. The press release should be timed to coincide with the publication, so please contact us as soon as you have an article accepted. The Press Office is not subject to publication embargoes.
Material for press releases
If you are asked to submit material for a press release, please write a short summary of your main findings. Preferably in Swedish. Try to make sure that your text can be understood by a layperson. Please stay under 2,000 characters.
- What’s so important? Choose the most important and interesting finding.
- Avoid rhetorical questions. Instead, be direct in your description of your conclusions.
- Explain what the results mean for those concerned.
- A brief background of the field may be needed to put the results in proper context.
- Feel free to use figurative language to explain complicated things. Remove as much specialised terminology as possible.
- At least one contact person should be provided, with email address and phone number, preferably a mobile number.
- Images make the press release more appealing. Photos are more useful to journalists than graphs and diagrams. Read more about images and video for the media.
It is important that our research communication does not exaggerate findings and ‘over promise’. The Danish universities have agreed on national rules for good research communication. (English version on second half of webpage). The page explores such issues as:
- Relevance/context. Tell us what has previously been known so that your findings are not misunderstood or perceived as more (or less) important than they are.
- Uncertainty. Describe the uncertainties associated with the research. Be clear about any limitations and weaknesses in the findings.
- Transparency/conflicts of interest. Openly disclose research funding and partners. This also applies to any business interests and commercialisation plans.
Dissertations
We send press releases about (selected) dissertations in the humanities and social sciences, which are usually monographs. For dissertations in engineering and technology, the natural sciences and medicine/pharmacy, we give priority to communication efforts when the component papers/articles are published in a scholarly journal. We can also inform about articles in our excellent international press tools.
Books
We produce press releases on selected books written in the course of employment and published by academic publishers. In the case of popular science books, it is primarily up to the publisher to promote these books. Sometimes our colleagues write about popular science books in the University’s own internal or external news channels.
Conferences, events and lectures
We send press releases about only a small selection of all the events taking place at the University. Feel free to contact the Press Office so that we can discuss what can be done for the event you are organising. Perhaps informing selected reporters would have the most impact? Don’t forget to add events aimed at the general public to the University’s central calendar.