Policy Brief Exhibition & Contest
THEMATIC POSTER SESSION: POLICY BRIEFS
ECCB2012 is the third European Congress of Conservation Biology organised by the Europe Section of the Society for Conservation Biology. Seeking to offer more opportunities to all participants whilst ensuring a good scientific quality, the Europe Section has regularly highlighted the need to bridge the gap among conservation scientists, policy-makers, managers and other stakeholders such as social scientists or economists.
With this aim, a new initiative will be proposed for ECCB 2012 to better support the large number of posters usually displayed during such congresses and facilitate knowledge transfer and exchange: the Thematic Poster Exhibition (coordinator, Dr Pierre Ibisch, chair SCB-Europe Policy Committee). A Thematic Poster Exhibition (TPE) is organized along similar lines as a symposium: it has a pre-announced topic, and one or a few chairs who may invite posters related to the pre-defined topic. They will be organized as poster corners or science booths based around a conservation market. A TPE shall comprise at least 10 and up to 20 posters that thematically belong together. A special event during this TPE will be the exhibition and contest of Policy Briefs which will benefit from specific instructions for authors.
The Policy Brief Display & Contest during the TPE
| Rationale and objectives | What is exactly a Brief ? | Authors of a brief | Registration |
| Contest | Contact |
The display and contest of Policy-Briefs will be one of the “pre-defined topics” of the Thematic Poster Exhibition at ECCB2012, the topic being here the transfer of scientific knowledge (published results) to decision-makers in a specific format called a brief.
Rationale and objectives
Decision-makers often need to rely on scientific results but they have little time to read the huge amount of scientific literature produced on each topic of interest. For several years, NERC and the British Ecological Society have proposed Science-Policy workshops during which participants can try to write a policy-brief and get some feedbacks and recommandations from professionals.
ECCB2012 wants to offer an opportunity to renew this exercise at a larger scale and offer an opportunity to acknowledge skilled writers for their talent. The idea is to display examples of existing briefs (or similar documents) already written by professionals to provide benchmarks and also present the diversity of formats and styles. It is also an opportunity for the scientists who will produce a policy-briefs specifically for this exhibition and contest to benefit from the feedbacks of the professionals present as well as those from the participants of the congress.
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What is exactly a Brief?
A Brief is a very concise version of a published scientific paper (including a review). It targets readers outside the academic realm such as policy-and decision-makers (in which case it is called a Policy brief) who have little time to read and need straight-to-the-point, although precise and comprehensive information on a topic. A policy brief must minimise risks of misunderstanding by the reader as the reader is not in direct contact with the authors when he/she may use the brief. Briefs represent a new challenge for briefmasters as they must accurately reflect the science presented in the original published research paper, but altogether in an extremely concise way, and in a language understandable by its target audience.
A brief presents the issue, the context and the scope of the analysis, the main results and recommendations for practices. It may also include elements of methodology, indicators of quality assessment or confidence and validity of the results if this helps the decision maker to support his/her case. It also includes enough key references and contacts so that the reader knows where to find more information if needed.
Similarly “Research briefs” or “management briefs” specifically provide recommendations for future research (or methodologies) or management practises and methods (know-hows).
To download the document please click here.
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Authors of a brief
To distinguish between the authors of a brief and those of the research paper from which it is extracted we will call the former briefmaster(s). A briefmaster can be one of the authors of the research paper. If he is not, the research paper used to write the brief must belong to the public domain (normally the case if published in a peer-reviewed journal). We recommand that briefmasters inform authors about their intention to write a brief, the authors being important readers of briefs to ensure the scientific rigour is ensured.
Registration
Displaying a brief at ECCB2012 requires that you reserve a place to do so. It does not prevent you from presenting an oral communication or a traditional poster, and registering a Policy brief does not need you to send an abstract (see below). It does not cost any extra fee. It can also be the only “communication” that you present during ECCB2012 as a registered participant if you wish.
Only participants in ECCB2012 who have paid their registration fees will be allowed to exhibit their brief.
To submit an existing brief (already published), please send us a PDF of this brief to Barbara Livoreil by . Please ensure that the email is entitled: Policy Brief Submission.
To submit a brief you will design especially for ECCB, send the reference of the published scientific paper from which you will write the brief to Barbara Livoreil by . In this case, you will have to follow the instructions for briefmasters.
When you register as a participant of ECCB2012, please use the conference registration form, where you can indicate that you will submit a policy-brief and eventually run for the Policy brief contest.
The number of briefs that will be displayed will be limited by space available. Depending on the number of submissions, the policy-brief session may be divided in two sub-sessions.
Each briefmaster can only present one brief, but there will be desks to make your other briefs available if needed.
Contest
The contest intends to reward the best Policy-brief(s) (several prizes may be available). The Jury will be made up of scientists, decision-makers, knowledge-brokers and journalists to assess the quality of the briefs from different perspectives.
The basic criteria to judge a brief will be the following:
- Scientific precision: the brief must report the science of the original published paper with rigour and comprehensiveness, avoiding distortion or misinterpretation of results. The briefmaster must strictly report what has been written by the authors without adding his/her own interpretation or conclusions.
- Effectiveness: The decision-maker must be able to understand rapidly what the brief is about, and get immediate access to the main results, conclusions and recommendations. It should also provide the key-elements necessary for a decision-maker to understand the robustness of the results or their possible limitations
- Presentation: the design should be eye-catching to be able to find the document easily in a wallet or during a meeting. The language should be jargon-free, concise and simple to maximize understanding by non scientists.
Prize: contacts have been initiated to try to publish the winner’s brief, and a small amount of funds are already available for a student prize. More information will be posted as soon as available.
Contact
Barbara Livoreil, CEBC, Bangor University by
Back to Policy Brief
Instructions for all participants (special instructions for the contest: see below)
The idea for each brief is to display the following:
Note: for professional existing briefs the complete brief may follow another format.
The cover page should contain the main take-home messages and should be enlarged to an A3 format to allow reading from a distance (at least 1m). The complete brief will be available for more complete perusal and for the Jury to evaluate those competing for the prize(s).
There is no guideline/instruction regarding the design of the brief, and no instruction regarding its structure, except if it is submitted for the competition (see below). It is up to the briefmaster(s) to create what they think would convey the message with efficiency. Only paper briefs are allowed in this event (no digital).
All briefs should relate to topics linked to conservation sciences (biology, social sciences...).
Instructions for participants running for the prize(s) (contest)
In order to standardize the briefs to facilitate the task of the Jury, the competing briefs will not be longer than 2 double-sided A4 pages. The cover page will be enlarged to an A3 format to increase visibility during the exhibition. There is no special instruction regarding its structure or design in order to encourage creativity. We recommend the use of a font 14pt minimum in A4 format but this is not compulsory.
A PDF file of the brief will be made available so that it can be transmitted to the members of the Jury.
FAQ FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Why should I participate if I have already published professional briefs?
To present the work done by knowledge brokers in that respect, highlight the diversity of formats and contents, to encourage interaction between ECCB2012 participants, to allow those who will run for the contest to benefit from advice and encouragements from those with experience.
Can I present a talk or a poster at ECCB2012 and also a Policy-brief?
Yes you can. Policy briefs do not belong to the normal range of oral or poster communications so you can add a Policy brief to your other communication with no extra registration fees.
What are the criteria for pre-selection of briefs?
They must be extracted from a scientific paper published in a peer-reviewed conservation sciences journal. It can be a paper reporting primary research, or a review.
Who will be in the Jury?
The Jury will be made of scientists, decision-makers and journalists to assess the quality of the briefs from different perspectives.
What are the criteria for winning the contest?
A brief must report the scientific objectives, results and conclusions of the paper (or review) simply and rigorously (minimizing risks of distortion or possible misunderstanding). It must be useful for a decision-maker (understandable, with the appropriate information, not too long, easy to read and key-elements easy to pick-up quickly). It should also be eye-catching, without jargon and concise. Judges will also consider how easy the original paper was to turn into a brief (as some topics may be more difficult than others, which should be acknowledged).
What is the prize?
At least one Policy brief prize will be awarded. A financial reward has been secured but other forms of acknowledgments are under review.
Where to find examples of briefs?
www.environmentalevidence.org/