Essential Writing, Communication and Narrative Skills for Medical Scientists Before and After the COVID Era Gian Carlo Di Renzo Editor 123 Essential Writing, Communication and Narrative Skills for Medical Scientists Before and After the COVID Era Gian Carlo Di Renzo Editor Essential Writing, Communication and Narrative Skills for Medical Scientists Before and After the COVID Era Editor Gian Carlo Di Renzo Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Centre of Perinatal and Reproductive Medicine, University of Perugia Perugia Italy ISBN 978-3-030-84953-5 ISBN 978-3-030-84954-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84954-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface A lecturer should appear easy and collected, undaunted and unconcerned Lecturers which really teach will never be popular; lecturers which are popular will never really teach Michael Faraday, “Advice to lecturers” 1848 When the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, all the main communication systems of medical research have undergone an epochal change. Many online journals and magazines have tried to publish inherent works of this specific problem as soon and as fast as possible, soliciting and preferring them to others, thus changing the sys- tem of free acceptance of scientific works once. Moreover, the way to communicate these works has no longer occurred through standard scientific congresses but with other systems, websites/streaming and webinars or virtual conferences. Now there is something systematic missing, which foresees that this may last in the future, in the post COVID-19 era (AC): the communication system of the medi- cal sciences will be different from now on. There will be far fewer classical-style conferences like the ones so popular before COVID-19 outbreak (BC) but there will be more webinars, in streaming and virtual or so-called hybrid conferences. In any case, these should change their format to fit with the new requests and modern advances and attendees’ fears and doubts which will persists for years. The book idea is based on the legacy left by Michael Faraday, the famous American chemist, who sensed how communicating what happens in science can make the difference between the success and failure of the research itself. In order to maintain the success in medical communication, we should therefore adapt to new styles and be master of the new systems of media communication. This new book fits well in this period, creating a bridge between those who do research, how it is communicated, what are the “traditional” communication meth- ods and what is all the necessary background to communicate with new tools. The volume approach is multidisciplinary and written by top experts in the field of communication and education. It will be a useful tool for scientists in this moment of epochal change in medical communication. v vi Preface It looks that from now on to communicate research, all scientists will “pop op on camera”! Hope you enjoy and track useful information for organising your research, your papers and your congresses or courses… AC ! Perugia, Italy Gian Carlo Di Renzo Contents 1 The Island of Research (Do Not Block the Path of Enquiry) . . . . . . . 1 Gian Carlo Di Renzo, Valentina Tosto, and Valentina Tsibizova 2 Big Data, Metanalysis and Sistematic Reviews: The Jungle of Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Naomi Cano-Ibáñez, Marta Maes-Carballo, and Khalid Saeed Khan 3 Personal Branding and Social Customer Relationship Management in Science, Nurturing Research? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Ricardo Cunha Lopes 4 Essentials on Writing a Paper for a Peer Reviewed Journal. . . . . . . . 45 Marta Maes-Carballo, Khalid Saeed Khan, and Naomi Cano-Ibáñez 5 The Value of the Websites and Online Journals: The Modern Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 David Bloomer 6 The Website Construction: The Door to Open Communication . . . . 77 Filippo Gruni 7 Ways to Implement Scientific Communication in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Gian Carlo Di Renzo, Valentina Tosto, Valentina Tsibizova, Khalid Saeed Khan, and Shehnoor Azhar 8 The “Traditional” Meetings and Congresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Jonathan P. Wyatt 9 The New Ways to Communicate Your Research: Webinars and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Alexandre Manuel Henriques Almeida vii viii Contents 10 The Virtual Theater: The Lure, the Title, the Scene, the Backstage, and the Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Andrew Juurinen 11 Just in Time Medical Storytelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Roger Carl Schank Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 About the Authors Alexandre Almeida He is coordinator of the European Projects Department, including responsibility for setting strategy, identifying opportunities for business, management team and department budget and preparation of proposals for the Horizon 2020 Framework Programmes and other European Programmes to support research, innovation and technological development. He has more than 12 years’ experience in the coordination of European proposals setup and managing projects. Shehnoor Azhar He is a dentist by profession and a Fulbright scholar. He is enrolled as the doctoral researcher at the Department of Clinical Medicine and Public Health, University of Granada, Spain. He teaches occupational health at the University of Health Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan, and has been actively engaged in Phase III clinical trials aimed at finding effective COVID treatments and vaccines. David G. T. Bloomer He is the president of the Global Library of Woman Medicine, now the Education Platform of FIGO. He is a lawyer (from Oxford University) and later founder partner in a publishing group (Parthenon). In 2009, he founded the largest website dealing with woman health in the world. He is one of the major experts in website building and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Naomi Cano-Ibáñez She holds a PhD in clinical medicine and public health. She is a distinguished investigator (Postdoctoral position) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Córdoba (Spain), where she develops teaching and research tasks related to nutritional epidemiology and advanced statistical analysis. She is an expert on public health and community nutrition. She is a part-time lecturer of pub- lic health at the University of Granada (Spain). Marta Maes Carballo She is a breast cancer specialist and surgeon in the Complexo Hospitalario Universitario de Ourense, Spain, and researcher at the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, ix x About the Authors University of Granada, Spain. Her researches focus on breast cancer management, shared decision-making, and health care quality. Filippo Gruni Expert in Digital Marketing e Strategist. web designer, developer, visual designer, marketing specialist and content specialist. As founder of Lotrèk, he manages the commercial initiatives, the communication strategy, and the direc- tion of the brand. He is digital strategist of the Start-Up Teeser (Getapp srl) and president of the Young Accountants. Andrew Juurinen He is director of Marketing at Honeycomb Worldwide Inc., which operates Xtalks.com—a website focused on delivering and marketing webi- nars and other multimedia for professionals in the life sciences. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing the production and marketing of webinars and other mul- timedia content in coordination with many leading scientists and brands in the pharma, biotech and medical device arena and is a recognized expert in this field. Andrew obtained his BSc from the University of Waterloo and an MSc in biochem- istry from the University of Victoria, Canada. Khalid Saeed Khan He is a distinguished investigator at the University of Granada, Spain. He is former editor in chief of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and associate editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. He is profes- sor of public health and preventive medicine and an expert on trials and meta- analysis. He is recently appointed to the prestigious role of COMSTECH Distinguished Scholar. Ricardo Lopes He is head of Digital and Marketing Strategy at Loba.cx; he man- ages the digital communication strategy and the direction of several renowned brands. He is also professor at IPAM - The Marketing School, leading a course unit at the Global Marketing Master's Degree. Ricardo is a Ph.D. researcher in digital media at Universidade do Porto (FEUP), where he is developing a taxonomy of digital human behavior. Gian Carlo Di Renzo He is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, coordinator of the Centre of Perinatal and Reproductive Medicine, University of Perugia and Director of the PREIS School of Firenze, Italy. He is a professor at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the I M Sechenov First State University of Moscow (Russia). He is the founder and editor in chief, Journal of Maternal Fetal and Neonatal Medicine (UK), and the honorary editor in chief, Maternal Fetal Medicine (China). Roger Carl Schank He is an American artificial intelligence theorist. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University of Texas. He is a cognitive psychologist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur, and he has a very big experience on narra- tive science and medicine. He wrote several assays on the conceptual representation for a computer-oriented semantics and many other books on this area. In 2012, Dr