The Conversation is an international news website that gives researchers the opportunity to reach a broad audience. Lund University, which became a member of The Conversation in 2017, set a goal one year ago to increase its number of publications. For 2024, the goal was 40 articles, and the aim is to further increase the number of publications in 2025.
“It was very pleasing to see so many LU researchers publishing articles in The Conversation in 2024 and to note the impact they had. There is so much exciting research being carried out at LU, so I hope that there will be even more publications in 2025,” says Per Mickwitz, pro vice-chancellor for research, sustainability and campus development.
Smooth collaboration
The Faculty of Social Sciences published the most articles: 20 articles with 330,000 reads. However, the HT Faculties, with 400,000 reads for their ten articles, have the highest total number of reads. The Faculty of Science has published the same number of articles, while the Faculty of Medicine also ranks highly in terms of the number of reads per article – its eight articles have amassed an average of 36,000 reads.
The strong showing by the HT Faculties is in large part due to Mikael Roll, professor of phonetics, whose article “People who are good at reading have different brains”, now has over 200,000 reads. The article is based on a newly published scientific study.
“It’s overwhelming. I have received many questions from readers and have been interviewed by a South African radio station. It is easy to write for The Conversation when you have just finished a research article. You can approach it like writing for an older relative,” says Mikael Roll.
He appreciated the collaboration with The Conversation’s editor Miriam Frankel.
“I am very impressed. Miriam Frankel was fast and good at making the content more oriented towards a wider public,” says Mikael Roll.
Mikael Roll sees two reasons why the article became so popular: the debate about the reading crisis, both nationally and internationally, and the timing just before Christmas, when interest in books and reading increases.
The Faculty of Medicine’s figures were boosted by Christel Nielsen, associate professor of epidemiology, whose article about tattooing and cancer risk garnered over 160,000 reads. However, the study had an enormous international impact after a press release, so it is unclear what is due to The Conversation and what is due to other media. She is also satisfied with the collaboration.
“It was a real pleasure to work with The Conversation. I appreciated both writing together with the journalist who helped me – it was constructive and time-efficient – and the format itself. A lot of people are still getting in touch with me about the study. This feels particularly important as one of the aims was to give the public tools to make informed decisions about tattooing,” says Christel Nielsen.
Top among Swedish higher education institutions
Even though 2024 was a record year for the University regarding the number of published articles it did not measure up to the exceptional reading figures noted in 2020 and 2021. During this period, there was great interest in both Sweden’s management of the pandemic and research in general. The latter was also a factor in The Conversation having a record number of visitors.
Besides Lund University, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University are members of The Conversation. Lund University has published more articles than Stockholm University (30) and Karolinska Institutet (23). However, KI is at the top in terms of the number of reads – 2.3 million compared with Lund University’s 1.6 million.