📄 Category

scientific communication and education

32 papers

Scientific communication and education focus on the vital bridge between complex research and the public, ensuring that discoveries are understood, trusted, and applied. This field explores how scientists share their work with students, policymakers, and communities, turning dense data into stories that inspire action and learning. It is about making the scientific process transparent and accessible to everyone, regardless of their background.

At Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category from bioRxiv to help you navigate these developments. We provide both plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries, allowing readers to grasp the core ideas quickly or dive deep into the methodology. Whether you are a teacher looking for classroom materials or a curious learner, our goal is to demystify the latest findings in science outreach.

Below are the latest papers in scientific communication and education, curated directly from the bioRxiv repository with our dual summaries to guide your reading.

📄 scientific communication and education

Ethnobotanical survey of plant mosquito repellents: Knowledge, utilization, and application methods for malaria prevention in the Rwenzori Region, Western Uganda

This study documents the widespread use of locally available plants, particularly *Cymbopogon citratus*, *Rosmarinus officinalis*, and *Eucalyptus* spp., as mosquito repellents in the Rwenzori Region of Uganda, highlighting community knowledge and application methods that could inform future malaria prevention strategies.

Mugisa, T., Kimera, E., Ikiriza, A., Kakongi, N., Meble, K., Andinda, M., Idehen, C., Anyanwu, C., Ungokore, H. Y., Igwe (…)2026-05-07
📄 scientific communication and education

Participant engagement and feedback in microbiome projects: a case of AWI-Gen 2

This study demonstrates that returning individualized gut microbiome results to older women in South Africa and Kenya is feasible, low-cost, and effective in motivating health-promoting behaviors when delivered promptly through culturally grounded, local-language engagement strategies.

Nkera-Gutabara, C., Olubayo, L. A. I., Oduaran, O. H., Kisiangani, I., Khoza, S., Gama, K., Maritze, M., Mabunda, C., Ke (…)2026-04-22
📄 scientific communication and education

Statistical invisibility of working equids in Mexico: Dissecting the gap between global diagnostics and official data (1970-2022).

This study reveals that despite a 76.5% overall decline in Mexico's equine population since 1970 and a massive 710.8% overestimation in international data, working equids have experienced a paradoxical resurgence driven by economic necessity, underscoring their critical yet statistically invisible role in the country's small-scale agricultural sector.

Garcia-Seco, E., Diaz, M. A., Tadich Gallo, T., Toribio, R. E., Galindo Maldonado, F., Hernandez-Gil, M.2026-04-17
📄 scientific communication and education

Comparing the outputs of intramural and extramural grants funded by National Institutes of Health

This study compares NIH intramural and extramural grants from 2009 to 2019, revealing that while extramural funding is more cost-effective for generating academic publications and citations, intramural funding is more efficient at producing research that directly influences future clinical work.

Zheng, X., Yang, Q., Potnuri, J., Ni, C., Hutchins, B. I.2026-04-16
📄 scientific communication and education

Community needs for FAIR pathogen data

This study by the Pathogen Data Network identifies systemic barriers and specific training priorities among infectious disease stakeholders, revealing that limited funding, data aggregation challenges, and a need for bioinformatics education are the primary impediments to achieving FAIR pathogen data, thereby providing an evidence-based roadmap for community-responsive support and infrastructure development.

van Geest, G., Thomas-Lopez, D., Feitzinger, A. A., Weissgold, L. A., Halabi, S., Cuesta, I., Hjerde, E., Gurwitz, K. T. (…)2026-04-15
📄 scientific communication and education

The Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE)

The NIH Common Fund Data Ecosystem (CFDE) provides a collaborative, standards-driven infrastructure that integrates heterogeneous datasets from 18 NIH programs to overcome barriers in data discovery and analysis, thereby enabling cross-disciplinary insights through unified tools and community support.

Jurgens, J. A., Bueckle, A., Vora, J., Maurya, M. R., Mohseni Ahooyi, T., Zheng, E., Stear, B., Wang, D., Ree, C., Ramac (…)2026-04-12
📄 scientific communication and education

Gender imbalances of retraction prevalence among highly cited authors and among all authors

This bibliometric analysis of over 10 million authors reveals that while overall gender differences in retraction rates are minimal, significant field-specific disparities exist, with structural factors such as discipline, career age, country income, and publication volume being stronger predictors of retraction than gender.

Boccia, S., Cristiano, A., Pezzullo, A. M., Baas, J., Roberge, G., Ioannidis, J. P. A.2026-04-08
📄 scientific communication and education

Traditional Physical Practice Participation and Vision-Related Quality of Life in Adolescents: The Serial Mediating Roles of Exercise Self-Efficacy and Visual Function Anomalies

This study demonstrates that traditional physical practice participation significantly enhances vision-related quality of life among junior secondary school students through both direct effects and a serial mediation pathway involving increased exercise self-efficacy and reduced visual function anomalies.

Zhang, X., Liu, Z., Long, J.2026-04-07
📄 scientific communication and education

Rigor and Transparency in two neurotrauma-publishing journals: editorial policies improve transparent reporting.

This study demonstrates that the *Journal of Neurotrauma*'s mandatory rigor section significantly improved the reporting of specific transparency items compared to *Experimental Neurology*, though it highlighted a need for further improvements in reporting sex as a biological variable and reagent details.

Bandrowski, A. E., Namburi, A., Ferguson, A. R., Floyd, C. L., Martone, M. E., PRECISE-TBI Authors, T.2026-04-03
📄 scientific communication and education

AI in Practice: A Multilingual Survey of 2025 BioHackathon Participants

This paper presents a multilingual survey dataset from 105 participants of the 2025 DBCLS BioHackathon in Japan, detailing AI usage patterns, challenges, and demographics across genomics and bioinformatics, accompanied by cleaned data and documentation to support research on AI adoption in science.

Sriwichai, N., Feriau, L., Tongyoo, P., Noda, Y., Gyoji, H., Noisagul, P., Goto, S., Steinberg, D., Wangsanuwat, C.2026-03-27