Overview (SC-WAPI)
Publications are one of the most important products produced by think tanks. While communication techniques are evolving and many organisations now use a mix of social media, data visualisation, podcasts, and events to help expose their research, the existence of a solid and well-written research report is a prerequisite.
Though publications come in different shapes and sizes (reports, background papers, policy briefs, books), there are a basic set of good practices that every researcher and communications professional should follow when developing written outputs. This short course offers the opportunity to learn about these by looking specifically at how to write policy briefs and blogs.
Resources
The background note produced for this course explores these issues further and gives readers access to further resources.
Selected articles and resources:
Guardian and Observer Style Guide, The Guardian, 2015
How to write actionable policy recommendations, Research to Action, 2013
Style Guide: how to write one, On Think Tanks, 2016
Improving the quality of a thinktank’s publications: lessons from CIPPEC, On Think Tanks, 2012
Never mind the ‘X factor’, this is the ‘so what? factor’, Wonkcomms, 2015
Finding home: how The Century Foundation took its first small step beyond the PDF, Wonkcomms, 2014
What does the future of think tanks communications hold?, On Think Tanks, 2015
“A policy brief is a piece of paper. It doesn’t DO anything on its own”, On Think Tanks, 2012