Scientific research is typically shared through peer-reviewed journal articles. Before a study is published, it’s reviewed by several other scientists to assess its quality and soundness.
While this process aims to ensure rigor, it’s also important to understand that studies with positive
or statistically significant results are often more likely to be published than those with negative or inconclusive findings. This publication bias can skew perceptions of the strength of the evidence surrounding a topic.
Being mindful of this potential bias will help you seek a broader understanding of a research area and not rely solely on a single published study.
Now let’s get down to the practical steps for locating and accessing the studies you need.
If you’re looking for information on a particular topic but don’t already have a specific study in mind, here are three strategies you can use:
Try scientific search engines such as:
To prioritize recent research, filter by publication date. Set up alerts to be notified of new papers matching your keywords.
Ask researchers where they publish their work and which journals they follow.
Not all academic journals hold the same standards, and knowing a journal’s reputation can significantly affect your assessment of an individual study. Some illegitimate or predatory journals, for example, charge publication fees with little to no peer review. Others might publish fake manuscripts generated by dubious third parties known as paper mills. Determining whether a particular journal or published paper is legitimate requires some sleuthing.
This is your most reliable line of defense against subpar publications. If you’re unfamiliar with the journal a paper comes from, ask trusted researchers in the field for their perspectives on its quality.
Many journals charge users a fee for access (though some open-access journals do not). As a reporter, you should not have to pay to access scientific papers. Here are a number of ways to get around paywalls:
When you find a study of interest, identify the university of the lead researchers and contact their media relations office. Public information officers (PIOs) can often provide access to the paper and facilitate connections with the scientists involved.
Tools like Unpaywall can automatically find free, legal copies of articles you encounter online.
Some publishers, such as Elsevier and Springer Nature, offer media access to their papers. Services like EurekAlert! often provide full-text PDFs of embargoed and newly published articles to journalists.
If you receive press releases from universities or subscribe to scientific journals’ email alerts about new issues, chances are you will encounter an embargoed scientific paper. This means the journal publishing it prohibits public release of the findings until a certain date or time.
If you agree to abide by a journal’s embargo policy for a scientific paper, you can read the paper, interview scientists (assuming they also agree to the embargo), and write your story. But you can’t publish your story until the embargo lifts—violating an embargo policy could mean you lose access to future papers the journal publishes.
When interviewing outside sources about these studies, err on the safe side by asking them to agree to the embargo before sending along the study. Since embargoes are common in academia, they’ll likely be familiar with the process.
Embargoes give journalists a head start on the reporting process for exciting new studies, allowing them to publish a story at the same time a new paper comes out. But the system also has flaws. It relies on the honor code, which can easily be ignored, and it artificially promotes some papers over others, skewing news coverage.
