Every university communications director I know has a version of this story.

A major funder announces a press moment. The comms team identifies the perfect researcher — relevant expertise, current project, good on camera. They send an email. No reply. They send another. A terse response: "Too busy. Can someone else do it?" They try the head of department, who promises to "have a word." Nothing changes. The deadline passes. The opportunity is lost.

This isn't a one-off. It's the defining relationship problem in university communications: the people who produce the most interesting research are often the least willing to help communicate it. And the people whose job it is to communicate it are left trying to tell stories about work they don't fully understand, with quotes they had to write themselves because the researcher wouldn't talk to them.

The standard response from comms teams is frustration. But frustration doesn't fix the problem. Understanding why researchers resist — and what actually changes their behaviour — does.

Why Researchers Don't Cooperate (And It's Not What You Think)

The comms team's diagnosis is usually: "Researchers don't care about communication. They think it's beneath them. They're too busy doing important work to bother with publicity."

This is wrong on all three counts.

In fifteen years of interviewing academics for national newspapers and magazines, I've found that most researchers care deeply about public communication. They want their work to be understood. They want it to matter. They just don't trust the process that gets them there.

Here's what's actually going on, from the researcher's perspective:

They've been burned before. Most senior researchers have had at least one bad experience with communications — an article that oversimplified their work, a press release that overclaimed, a quote that was taken out of context and ridiculed by their peers. Every time that happens, trust erodes. After two or three bad experiences, the researcher's default response becomes "no" — not because they don't want to communicate, but because they've learned that communication is risky.

They have no incentive to cooperate. Researchers are evaluated on grants, publications, and impact — not on how many press mentions they get. Until very recently, public engagement didn't count toward promotion or tenure at most universities. Even now, when it does count, it counts less than a paper in a high-impact journal. A researcher who spends an afternoon with a journalist is losing an afternoon they could have spent writing a paper. That's a rational trade-off — and until the incentives change, the behaviour won't.

They've never been shown what good looks like. Most researchers have never seen their work communicated well. They've seen press releases, blog posts, and social media threads — all formats that summarise rather than tell stories. They haven't read a feature-length profile of a peer researcher that made them think: "I want that for my work." Show a researcher a beautifully written magazine feature about someone in their department, and they'll start asking: "How do I get one of those?"

Eight Things That Actually Work

1. Start with the researcher's goals, not yours

The comms team's goal: get coverage for the university. The researcher's goal: advance their career, protect their reputation, and communicate their work accurately. These goals overlap — but they're not the same. And the comms team's pitch almost always focuses on the comms team's goal.

Instead: ask the researcher what they want. A profile piece they can use in a promotion case? Better connections with industry? An audience with a specific policymaker? A feature that makes their PhD students proud? Once you know their goal, you can frame the communication opportunity in terms that serve it. "This piece will go to the Science Minister's office" is a more effective pitch than "We'd love to feature you in the next issue."

2. Protect them from themselves

The thing researchers fear most — far more than being ignored — is being made to look foolish in front of their peers. A quote that's slightly wrong. A simplification that a colleague will email them about. A headline that promises more than the research delivered.

The fix: give researchers meaningful review rights. Not "we'll run the draft past you for fact-checking" — because they know that in practice, this means they'll get the final version at 5 p.m. with a request to approve it by 9 a.m. Give them a real review window. Let them correct inaccuracies. And if they want to tone down a claim, let them. A slightly more cautious article that the researcher stands behind is better than a bold one they'll be embarrassed by.

3. Feed them examples

Most researchers have no mental model for what research communication can look like. They've seen bad press releases and dry blog posts. They haven't seen a well-written feature profile, a beautiful research magazine, or a policy briefing that a minister actually read.

Collect examples. Build a small library of the best research communication you can find — magazine features, longform profiles, policy briefs that led to real change. When you're trying to persuade a reluctant researcher, don't describe what you want to do. Show them. "Here's what we did for Professor X in the last issue. Here's what it looks like when their work is told as a story."

4. Make it easy — absurdly easy

The biggest barrier between a researcher and a piece of communication is time. Researchers are not being difficult when they say they're busy. They are busy. Their calendar is a disaster. They're teaching, supervising, writing grant applications, reviewing papers, and attending meetings about meetings. The communication you're asking for is item number 47 on a list that has 46 items above it.

Your job is to move it to item number 1. How? By making it as frictionless as possible. Don't email a list of questions and expect written answers — researchers hate writing. Call them for 20 minutes instead, and record the call (with permission). Offer to come to their lab at a time that suits them. Send them a draft that's 90% complete and ask for corrections — not a blank page and a brief. The less effort you demand, the more likely you are to get a yes.

5. Interview them, don't email them

The standard university comms workflow for a research story: email the researcher, ask them to fill in a template, write the piece using their written answers, send back for approval. This produces the worst possible content — researchers write cautiously and formally, the resulting quotes sound like a grant application, and the finished piece reads like a form filled in by email.

The fix: interview them. A real conversation — 20 to 30 minutes, in person if possible, on the phone if not. Ask open-ended questions: "What surprised you? What was the hardest part? What would you say if you were explaining this to someone at a dinner party?" The quotes you get from a conversation are specific, human, and usable. The quotes you get from a template are not.

6. Give them credit internally

When a researcher cooperates with comms and the result is good, tell their head of department. Tell the PVC for research. Mention it in the internal newsletter. Forward the published piece to the researcher's line manager with a note: "Just wanted to make sure you saw this — Professor X did a fantastic job representing the department."

This does two things. It rewards the researcher with the currency that matters in universities — recognition from senior colleagues. And it signals to other researchers that cooperating with comms produces professional benefits. Word spreads. "Did you see that piece about Sarah's work? Her dean mentioned it at the faculty meeting."

7. Build a bench of willing collaborators

In every university, there are a handful of researchers who genuinely enjoy public communication. They're good at it. They return emails quickly. They give good quotes. They don't need to be persuaded.

Find these people. Cultivate them. Treat them like the strategic assets they are. Give them the best opportunities — the front-page features, the high-profile interviews, the glossy magazine spreads. Their success will do more to persuade their reluctant colleagues than any argument you can make. Nothing sells a researcher on communication like seeing a peer benefit from it.

8. Use an external writer

This sounds self-serving, but it's true: researchers are often more willing to talk to an external journalist than to their own comms team. An outsider feels professional, objective, and worth making time for. An internal comms officer feels like another administrative demand.

An external writer — someone with a journalism background, who knows how to interview, who can produce a finished piece that the researcher gets to review — removes the biggest source of friction. The researcher doesn't have to write anything. They just have to talk for half an hour. And the result is a piece of communication that they didn't have to produce but still feel ownership over.

At Stokel Publishing, this is exactly what we do. We interview your researchers. We write the stories. We handle the review process. Your comms team gets professional content. Your researchers get their work communicated well — without spending hours producing copy they're not trained to write. And over time, researchers who were reluctant become researchers who volunteer.

Because once they've seen what good looks like — and how little it demands of them — they come back for more.