Sharing research findings through non-academic outlets can be rewarding and allow them to reach a wide audience.Credit: Getty
As a marketing academic specializing in children’s consumer behaviour, I’ve always strived for my next journal publication and to earn the respect of my peers. But beneath it all, one question has often nagged at me: who is reading my work?
My research — much of it fusing insights from child development and consumer psychology — was trapped inside academic silos and behind paywalls, out of sight of the educators, parents and policymakers who needed it.
The frustration had nothing to do with failing to get my work published in top journals; while I was building my career as an assistant professor, moving from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign to the University of Arizona in Tucson, and again to Villanova University in Pennsylvania, I published papers in all of the right places. But I felt as if I was failing to keep pace with the real-life questions that educators and families have every day about the impact of marketing on children’s well-being.
Before making a career move, try an experiment
The long delays between submitting a manuscript and eventually seeing it in print had also taken much of the joy out of research for me. In one of my projects, for example, I examined the happiness that children derive from experiences, such as going to see a film or playing sports, compared with the happiness that they derive from owning material goods — and how these tendencies change with age. That paper went through two different journals and three editorial teams before it saw the light of day, eight years after it was initially submitted.
I started my career in 2003, before digital publishing became standard practice. My early journal articles often took months to appear in print after acceptance. Because marketing as a field is fast-paced — and because children are especially vulnerable to evolving marketing messages — I recognized a need to share my research findings more promptly, effectively and broadly than journal publications alone allowed.
From around 2007, I took four steps to ensure that my research reached a wider audience quickly and had a meaningful impact.
Reflecting on my role as an academic
The first step was perhaps the most difficult: I started going to therapy to come to terms with my growing frustration and burnout from following the conventional academic path.
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