News releases about doctoral theses

Unfortunately, it is not possible to issue news releases about all doctoral theses from KI or share information about them through KI’s central social media accounts. However, we do our best to give as many doctoral students as possible a chance to communicate broadly about their research in connection with their thesis defence.

An alternative to the services of the Communications Office is to consult the web editor at your department. In addition to posting a note about your public defence in the KI Calendar, the department web editor may be able to publish a short news article about your thesis on ki.se. Contact the web editor to ask about the routines at your department.

Furthermore, it is important to know that all doctoral theses at KI should include a lay summary in English. To help with this, the University Library offers courses for doctoral students in popular science writing.

Getting in touch

Contact the Communications Office as soon as your thesis has been “nailed” and no later than a couple of weeks before the public defence. Send an email to both the press office pressinfo@ki.se and our popular science magazine, Medicinsk Vetenskap, medicinskvetenskap@ki.se. 

The email should include the following:

• The title of your thesis, date of public defence and a link to the summarizing chapter (“kappa”) in the University Library’s Open Archive.

• A few sentences describing the main results of your thesis and why they are of interest to the public or a specific target group outside the research community. Feel free to include the popular science summary from your thesis in the email.

• Your name, department at KI, other important affiliations (e.g. hospital or university), e-mail address and mobile phone number.

• If you have a request for a special geographical distribution area in Sweden or internationally.

• Information about scientific illustrations or other images to illustrate your research (please attach).

• Cc to your main supervisor to let us know he or she is informed and approves media outreach.

How we select which theses to promote

News judgment is not an exact science, and there are lots of factors that influence which theses get promoted at any given time. Some research areas that lack high-impact journals may be overlooked in the selection process for news releases on single scientific articles. In these cases, a four-year thesis project including several scientific articles may be a suitable alternative.

Selection keys used in our assessment:

• The thesis has been “nailed” and can be found in the library’s open archive. The date for the public defence is set, with at least a few weeks to go.

• The thesis addresses a topic that is of interest to a wider audience or fits in thematically with another communication effort that we are currently working on.

• The various articles in the thesis hold together thematically, so that it is possible to write about the entire doctoral thesis and not just focus on a single article.

• To avoid repetion, the articles underpinning the thesis should not have been covered in previous news releases. In these instances, there must be a new angle that is supported by the entire thesis. 

• There are high quality and educational illustrations available to further the understanding of the research.

Theses in collaboration with other organisations

As a medical university, educating new scientists is one of KI's core activities and of major importance to the brand. Press releases about theses presented at KI by students who are employed elsewhere should therefore still be distributed primarily by KI's Communications Office. In these situations, we are generous about naming collaboration partners in the text, including hospitals, private enterprises, public authorities or other universities. A collaboration partner may also send news tips to a few selected journalists, providing that information about KI is included. Collaboration partners may, of course, also publish news stories about the thesis on their own websites.

Advice to department web editors

If the Communications Office has turned down a request to issue a press release or news tip about a thesis, it is possible for the department to publish a news article on ki.se. To avoid duplicated articles, please contact our central news editor on news@ki.se (or the science communicator who has been in contact with your doctoral student) to coordinate before you start. Here are some general advise on writing and publishing news articles on doctoral theses:

• Ask the doctoral student to summarize the findings in a way that can be understood by a non-scientific audience. Feel free to use the brief template with questions provided by the Communications Office. If you're struggling to understand the information provided, don't hestitate to ask the researcher to explain in a simpler language. If you don't understand it, chances are most readers won't either!
• Remember to adapt the news article so that it also fits in contexts beyond your own department's website. KI's news site is open to everyone, and news items are filtered onto other pages where readers may be unfamiliar with the original purpose of the news story.
• Also remember to distinguish the news article from the calendar event in terms of presentation and content. Both are published on the website news.ki.se in Drupal, but news articles have longer lifespans and turn up in other news feeds than calendar events. Feel free to link together the different pages.
• An easy way to inform about new research results is to write the news article as a Q&A. This should be preceded by a short introduction and headline.
• Avoid writing he full title of the thesis in the headline and preface of the news article. Instead, try to describe the results of the thesis in an easy-to-understand and attention-grabbing way.
• The thesis headline should be added at the bottom of the news article, with a link to the thesis “kappa” in KIB's Open Archive. Please use a linked h2 subheading with the words “Doctoral thesis” above the thesis headline.

Contact 

The press office

Phone:+46 (0)8-524 860 77 | Email: pressinfo@ki.se 

Opening hours: The press office is staffed 09:00-17:00 CET on weekdays. The press office is closed during major holidays, such as Christmas, Easter and Midsummer, and opening hour may be limited during the Swedish summer vacation period.