Online research report: Science made tangible

Research reports often seem dusty - lots of facts, endless scientific texts, hardly any pictures and if there are any, then only diagrams and statistics. But there is another way. More and more institutions are turning to interactive online research reports and making their research projects accessible to the general public.

An online research report is somewhat more complex to implement than the familiar PDF or print version. However, a well thought-out concept and implementation always pays off. Similar to an online annual report, the online research report also offers many advantages:

Multimedia possibilities

A purely textual account of the research project hardly does justice to the countless hours of research invested and the elaborately compiled results. A wide range of multimedia elements can work wonders here: Animations, videos and sound documents break up the mostly static form. A welcome video replaces the editorial, explanatory videos illustrate complex processes and audio snippets from experts give the otherwise written quotes a face and a voice.

Research for all

With its complex technical jargon and text-heavy form, the classic research report is only aimed at a specific target group. The more interactive online solution also invites interested parties from outside the scientific community to engage with the research projects and take part in the discussion. The specialist topic will probably remain relatively complex, but the multimedia accompaniment to the report makes it much easier to understand.

As simple as possible, as complex as necessary

Make your content more user-friendly and easier to find with clear navigation and search functions. Is interaction with your readership important to you? Then comment and chat functions could be an interesting option.

It would be a shame not to share the elaborate research results with the whole world. In terms of distribution, the website solution beats the standard PDF version hands down. Have you already published a report on a similar topic? Link the research projects to other interesting and related articles on your website. Or share the article on social media with one click to generate even more attention.

In addition to the research report as a whole, you can also optimize the individual thematic articles with specific metadata and thus improve their findability in search engines. The researching readership will find the research report faster and more efficiently.

Online research report: Learning for the future

By digitizing the research report, you can draw conclusions about the behavior of your readership. Which research project was viewed the most and which topic did users linger on the longest? This allows you to design future research reports more in line with the needs of your readership.

As you can see, online research reports offer all kinds of advantages. This was also recognized by ZHAW Health, for whom we were able to produce the digital research report this year. A first for the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

The media releases about the online research report in Werbewoche and on persoenlich.com are fitting.