PLAIN ENGLISH SUMMARY There is a need for the authors of research reports to be able to communicate their work clearly and effectively to readers who are not familiar with the research area. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), along with a number of other funding bodies and journals, require researchers to write short lay summaries, often termed plain English summaries (PESs), to make research accessible to the general public. Because many researchers write using technical, specialised language, particularly in scientific reports, writing PESs can be challenging. In this study we looked at how to improve the quality of PESs. We took PESs which had been submitted to the NIHR Journals Library and asked authors to rewrite them using new guidance. We also asked an independent medical writer to edit the summaries. We measured the quality of these three versions (original summary, rewritten summary and edited summary) in two ways. First, we asked a group of people who were not specialists in the subject area to read and rate how easy the summaries were to understand. Secondly, we used a well-known measure called the Flesch reading ease score to assess how easy the PESs were to read. We found that there was no difference in how easy people found the summaries to understand across the three versions. However, the PESs that were rewritten by the authors and that were edited by the independent medical writer were both easier to read than the originals. This shows that PESs can be improved and for organisations who feel that employing an independent writer to edit summaries, providing clear, practical guidance to authors may be a cost-effective alternative. ABSTRACT BACKGROUND Plain English summaries (PES) or lay summaries are often included as part of research reports and journal articles. These summaries are vital to ensure that research findings are accessible and available to non-specialist audiences, for example patients and members of the public. Writing a PES requires the adoption of a different style than is generally used in a traditional scientific report, and researchers can find this challenging. This study explored two possible ways to improve the quality of PESs in the NIHR Journals Library: 1) Providing enhanced guidance to authors and asking them to rewrite the PES and 2) Employing an independent medical writer to edit the PES. METHODS We compared the three versions of the PES (original, author rewritten and independent writer edited) to assess 1) how easy they were to understand and 2) how easy they were to read. In order to establish how easy PESs were to understand, a group of 60 public reviewers read a set of summaries and rated them on a four point scale from "Did not understand" to "Understood all". The Flesch reading ease score was used to measure how easy the summaries were to read. RESULTS Results indicated no significant difference across the three versions of the PES in terms of ease of understanding. However, both the author rewritten and independent writer edited versions were significantly easier to read than the original. There was no significant difference in ease of reading between these two versions. CONCLUSION These findings suggest that employing independent medical writers to edit PESs and providing clear, practical guidance to authors are two ways in which the readability of PESs could be improved. Results have implications for journal editors and publishers seeking to enhance accessibility and availability of research findings.

中文翻译：

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了解普通英语摘要。研究报告中两种提高普通英语摘要质量的方法的比较。

普通英语摘要研究报告的作者需要能够与不熟悉研究领域的读者清楚有效地交流他们的工作。美国国立卫生研究院（NIHR）以及许多其他资助机构和期刊都要求研究人员撰写简短的摘要，通常被称为普通英语摘要（PES），以使研究能够为公众所接受。由于许多研究人员使用专业的技术语言撰写文章，尤其是在科学报告中，因此撰写PES可能会充满挑战。在这项研究中，我们研究了如何提高PES的质量。我们采用了已提交至NIHR期刊库的PES，并要求作者使用新指南对其进行重写。我们还请独立的医学作家来编辑摘要。我们以两种方式测量了这三个版本的质量（原始摘要，重写摘要和编辑摘要）。首先，我们要求一群不是主题领域专家的人阅读和评价摘要的理解程度。其次，我们使用一种称为Flesch阅读易读性得分的众所周知的方法来评估PES阅读的难易程度。我们发现，人们在三个版本中找到摘要的难易程度没有区别。但是，由作者重写和由独立医学作家编辑的PES都比原始版本容易阅读。这表明，PES可以改进，对于那些认为聘请独立作家来编辑摘要的组织，向作者提供清晰，实用的指导可能是一种经济高效的选择。背景技术普通的英语摘要（PES）或非专业摘要通常被包括在研究报告和期刊文章中。这些摘要对于确保研究结果可被非专业人士（例如患者和公众）访问和使用至关重要。编写PES要求采用与传统科学报告中所采用的风格不同的风格，研究人员可以发现这一挑战。这项研究探索了两种可能的方法来提高NIHR期刊库中PES的质量：1）为作者提供增强的指导，并要求他们重写PES； 2）雇用独立的医学作家来编辑PES。方法我们比较了三种版本的PES（原始，作者进行了改写，并由独立作家进行了编辑），以评估1）他们的理解程度和2）阅读的容易程度。为了确定PES的理解程度，一组60位公共评论员阅读了一些摘要，并以从“不理解”到“全面理解”的4分制对他们进行了评分。Flesch阅读难易度分数用于衡量摘要的阅读难易程度。结果结果表明，在易理解性方面，三种版本的PES没有显着差异。但是，无论是作者改写的版本还是独立作者编辑的版本，比原始版本都更易于阅读。这两个版本之间的易读性没有显着差异。结论这些发现表明，聘请独立的医学作家来编辑PES并为作者提供清晰，实用的指导是可以提高PES可读性的两种方法。结果对寻求增强研究结果的可及性和可用性的期刊编辑和出版商有影响。