Review: Putting stories to work, by Shawn Callahan

• But what about letters: their scholarly use as grey literature
• Online lecturing, with Bart Hallmark

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Grey literature covers a multitude of genres - for example, reports, white papers, preprints, and newsletters. But what about letters?

Letters are not usually listed amongst grey literature forms, but this episode puts the case for why letters should sometimes be considered as grey literature.

Reflecting on the letters of literary theorist I.A. Richards, the episode both examines the advantages of considering letters in this light and explores issues and implications that arise from this way of thinking.

References and links

GreyNet International's list of document types is here: https://thegreylitcafe.buzzsprout.com/1936705/13201726-understanding-preprints-with-jonny-coates.

Selected letters of I.A. Richards, edited by John Constable (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).


Further listening

If you enjoyed listening to this episode , you might also enjoy the following episodes:

• Consuming grey literature: a reader's perspective
• The business of professional writing
• Understanding preprints, with Jonny Coates

Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Overwriting - producing a draft that exceeds your word (or page) limit - is an extremely common problem amongst writers in science, research, and professional areas.

In this episode, Engy Moussa interviews Anthony Haynes. They examine why this problem arises, what harm it does, and, crucially, how to overcome the problem.

The discussion outlines practical solutions, with an emphasis on how to prevent the problem from arising. Topics include the psychology of writing and techniques for planning, reviewing, and editing.

Further listening

We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. You might also enjoy:

• Wasted words: our antidote to verbosity
• Grey literature workflows: the surprising role of pen & paper
• Don't fall in love with your work: Sabuhi Essa on creative processes

Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Anthony Haynes writes: On The Grey Lit Café we frequently explore grey literature by genre. Here we extend our coverage to the genre of case studies.

To guide us, we interview Dr Farrah Arif, Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull. 

Farrah takes us on an expert, and enthusiastic, tour of the genre, taking in:

• how case studies work and what they are used for
• the attraction of case studies and their benefits
• what to do when writing cases - and what not to do
• how to develop as an author of case studies

Further listening

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might find the following of interest:

• The art of pitching, with Dr Yuxia Zou
• Online lecturing, with Dr Bart Hallmark
• How meetings work, with Dr Carrie Goucher

References and links

Shawn Callahan, Putting stories to work (Pepperberg Press), reviewed on our podcast here: https://thegreylitcafe.buzzsprout.com/1936705/13793500-review-putting-stories-to-work-by-shawn-callahan.

Ken Jones, Designing your own simulations (Methuen, 1985).

David A. Kolb, Experiential Learning: experience as the source of learning and development (Prentice Hall, Inc., Pearson Education, 1983)

Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra

Support the show

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Anthony Haynes writes: I've long fought for a greater appreciation of forms of serious communication, other than just books and journal papers - forms such as reports, white papers, presentations, and blogs.

But it's difficult because the collective term for such forms is 'grey [or 'grey'] literature', which is a term likely to enthuse anyone.

'Grey' too easily evokes dullness and drabness.

So the term won't do. Instead, I propose 'silver literature' - a term that does more justice to the sense that such works are valuable. Silver literature constitutes a vault of huge value.

Why, even those users of research who continue to assert that peer-reviewed journal papers represent a 'gold standard' of scientific communication must surely acknowledge that.

Here, then, to mark our 50th episode is a proposal: speak not of grey lit, but of silver lit.

#silverlit

Further listening

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might find the following of interest:

• The games we play in science and research communication
• Welcome to The Grey Lit Café
• Another season over and what have we done?

References

Thomas Gray, 'Elegy written in a  country churchyard'

Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Many engineers need to give presentations. They do so in a variety of contexts - for example, as part of a pitch, project report, conference, or  job application. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a top-quality resource on how to do presentations, specifically about engineering?

Well, there is! This episode introduces Rothwell & Cloud's Engineering speaking by design,

Reference

Edward J. Rothwell & Michael J. Cloud, Engineering Speaking by Design:
Delivering Technical Presentations with Real Impact (Routledge)

Further listening

We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. You might also enjoy:

• Review: Putting stories to work, by Shawn Callahan
• The art of pitching, with Yuxia Zou
• Wordclouds: a neglected form of grey literature

Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water Music, courtesy of the United States Marine Band and Marine Chamber Orchestra

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Word processing has been around a long time now - so long, that we barely use the phrase anymore. So dominant in our workflows has it become that we act as though there's no need to distinguish it - as if there is simply no alternative.

So pen and paper have become redundant forms of technology then?

Well, no, actually. This episode dares, unfashionably, to explore how non-digital technology can contribute to the workflows used in the creation of pieces of professional and scientific communication.

And before anyone shouts, "Technophobia!" - no, not a bit. The argument is simply that different forms of technology have different capacities and potentials - and that there are some processes where pen and paper can come into their own.

In the process, we explore document design, types of paper, and the nature of composition,

Reference and links

Sven Birketts, The Gutenberg Elegies (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2006)

The pen shop in Oxford is Pens Plus.

Further listening

If you enjoyed this episode, you might enjoy the following episodes:

• Don't fall in love with your work: Sabuhi Essa on creative processes
• Wasted words: our antidote to verbosity
• Learning to become design literate: a key resource

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

You can wait a long time for ambitious innovations in the communication of science and research - and then two come along together.

In our previous episode, Scholarly Podcasts, Mack Hagood articulated his thinking behind a novel approach to podcasting.

Now we're delighted to publish our interview with Prof. Giovanni Salucci (University of Florence) and Dr Erika Paoletti on a novel approach to blogging.

Blogging, of course, is no longer new to the field of scientific and scholarly communication. But in this interview Giovanni and Erika introduce a bold innovation - the notion of 'quality blogs' (QBs)

They explain what QBs are, how they relate to both other forms of blogs and journal papers, and the crucial role of metadata.

Though the interviews with Giovanni & Erika and Mack are designed to make sense independently, we suggest they're best thought of as a  diptych. Together, they indicate ways to enrich the communication of serious content.

References and links

The proposal for QBs is outlined in 'The Quality Blog: Proposal of a New Format in Lieu of Academic Research Blog' (Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Volume 54 Issue 4, October 2023, pp. pp. 524-551).

Further listening

If you enjoyed this episode, you might enjoy the following:

• Scholarly podcasts, with Mack Hagood
• Innovation in research dissemination, with Cora Cole
• Online lecturing, with Bart Hallmark

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Anthony Haynes writes: Many scientists and researchers have come to realise that communicating their work effectively requires them to tell a story.

But how?

One resource is brilliant at answering that question: Putting stories to work, by Shawn Callahan. This review introduces some of Callahan's key insights and recommendations.

Reference

Shawn Callahan, Putting stories to work (Pepperberg Press).

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.

Anthony Haynes writes: Nobody could accuse The Grey Lit Café of ignoring innovation in the communication of science and research! In fact, we're delighted to showcase innovative thinking, as in such episodes as 

•  Innovation in research dissemination: Cora Cole on GreyLit
• Online lecturing: Bart Hallmark on pitfalls and good practice
• Understanding preprints with Jonny Coates

- and shortly we'll be publishing an interview with Giovanni Salucci on his notion of 'the quality blog'.

Here, in an episode fizzing with intellectual excitement, Mack Hagood develops some innovative thinking on podcasting.

This episode

Why should scholarship be done aloud? And how should 'sonic' scholarship be done?

In pursuit of the answers to these questions, Mack Hagood (Associate Professor of Media and Communication at Miami University, Ohio) distinguishes between three types of podcast: 

1. 'hi-fi, mid-register'; 
2. 'lo-fi, high-register'
3. the 'third way'  podcast - the form that Mack proposes as an alternative form to journal papers. 

In the process, Mack delves into the characteristics and the benefits of this new form.

References and links

Mack Hagood, 'The scholarly podcast: form and function in audio academia' in Jeremy Wade-Morris & Eric Hoyt, Saving new sounds: podcast preservation and historiography (University of Michigan, 2021).

Mack Hagood's sites include:

• Mactrasound
• Phantom Power

 The researcher mentioned at Cambridge Judge Business School is Pearl Phaovisaid.

The book on narrative is Shawn Callahan, Putting stories to work (Pepperberg Press, 2016).

Further listening

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also enjoy:

• Writing reports successfully
• Sponsored report

Credits

• Sound production: Bart Hallmark
• Music: from Handel's Water

About the publisher

This episode is published by Frontinus Ltd. We're a communications consultancy that helps organisations and individuals to communicate scientific, professional, and technical content to non-specialist audiences.

We provide

• consultancy
• mentoring
• editing and writing
• training

and work on presentations, bids and proposals, and publications (for example, reports and papers).

To learn more about services or explore ways of working together, please contact us via our website, http://frontinus.org.uk/.