The ability to convey your ideas to a variety of audiences is an essential skill. A lay summary is a short document included in many grant applications that asks you to explain your proposal to a non-specialist audience. Writing an excellent lay summary will help you get funded. Lay summaries are also often used by funding agencies to gather donations and document the impact of their work. However, many people struggle with writing a clear lay summary.

The Audience

The first thing to consider when you sit down to write your lay summary is the audience it will be presented to, as “non-specialist” covers everyone from a Nobel laureate in a different discipline to your neighbor’s 8-year-old son. Most requests for a lay summary provide some guidance, using a term like “educated lay audience” or providing a reading level. I assume a 12th grade reading level for an “educated lay audience”. For context, most major newspapers are written at an 11th grade reading level. 

Contextualizing Your Work

Much like an abstract, the lay summary should clearly identify what issue your work addresses, how big of a problem it is, why nobody has solved this problem yet, and how your work will help solve this problem. Many foundations will post lay summaries from previous funding opportunities. Read these, and look for patterns in how people describe their work and model your lay summary after those that have been proven to be successful. 

How common is the disease your work relates to? How does it affect the lives of those who have it? The lives of their families? How much does it cost to treat? Is there a cure? 

Why isn’t there a cure? What bit of knowledge is lacking to cure the disease? How will your work help fill this gap?

If your work is more basic than applied, it is often worth including a sentence to help your audience understand why solving the question you want to solve is important. Why do we need to improve binding efficiency? Why are kinetics important?  What does determining a structure allow you to do?

Importantly, the end of the lay summary should call back to the scope and impact of the problem, and then conclude with a clear, simple statement of how the work you propose will help. It should directly tie in to the knowledge gap you state earlier in the summary. For example, if the gap you identify is “There is no animal model that mimics the effects of [the disease] on [tissue or body process]. Because of this, we don’t know the effect of [drug] on the heart.” Your concluding sentence should include text like “by showing that the [name] mouse faithfully displays all [tissue] effects of [disease], our project both improves our basic understanding of how [disease] impacts [tissue] and will provide the community a means to test new drugs to treat [disease]”.

Adjusting Reading Level

Microsoft Word and other programs are able to analyze your text and provide an estimated reading level. The reading level reflects things such as the complexity of the text and the general familiarity of its content. To decrease the reading level of a given piece of text, a good first step is to look at the length of your sentences. Any long, complexly structured sentences should be broken up into a series of simple sentences. Rewrite any sentences using semicolons or colons. Any text in parenthesis should be removed or given its own sentence. Next, look at the vocabulary you include, and simplify wherever possible.

• Use “drug” instead of “therapeutic”.
• Use common terms for conditions instead of medical terminology. For example, “bruise” instead of “contusion” or “high blood pressure” instead of “hypertension”.
• Simplify scientific terminology. An enzyme “breaks down” something, instead of “catabolizes” it. 
• If your work focuses on a specific gene or protein, you can name it once, and then refer to it as “this gene” or “this protein”.

This is one area that benefits from the use of a large language model AI, however proceed with caution. AI will often subtly change the meaning of the text it returns, and can return false information. Furthermore, anything you put into a freely available AI system will not be confidential. Most universities have a confidential AI system that you can use instead of the freely available systems.

Get Feedback

Most of the people you know are non-specialists with respect to the topic of your proposal. Send friends and family your lay summary. Ask them to tell you in their own words what they think you are proposing to do. Make note of any common points of confusion and address them. Importantly, and this can be humbling, ask them if they think the work you are proposing will be helpful. If they seem hesitant, this is a clear sign that you need to revise and clarify the scope of the problem you are working on and what your impact will be. 

Conclusion

While difficult, writing these summaries will help you clarify your thinking about the work you are doing, and give you language to use in social situations when people ask you about your work. Science is a difficult endeavor, and communicating its importance is key to its success.