Resources

Practical guides on research communication and editorial craft.

Written for the people who commission, produce, and edit research reports, policy briefs, and institutional publications — by editors who work in those sectors.

Policy Writing

March 2025

Why your policy brief is not getting read — and how to fix it

Most policy briefs fail not because the research is weak, but because the document is structured for the researcher rather than the reader. Five structural problems, and how to solve each of them.

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Editing Services

February 2025

Structural editing vs. line editing: what does your publication actually need?

The most common misdiagnosis in research publishing: commissioning a line edit when the document has a structural problem, or requesting a structural edit when the prose is the issue. How to tell the difference.

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Research Communication

January 2025

How to write an executive summary that policymakers will actually read

An executive summary is not an introduction. It is the document. Policymakers and senior decision-makers often read nothing else. Here is what makes one work — and what makes most of them fail.

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About These Guides

Written from editorial practice, not general advice.

The guides on this page come from the work we do every day: editing research papers, reports, policy briefs, and other publications for organizations working in energy, governance, public health, and international development.

They are not generic writing advice. They are specific to the documents our clients produce and the audiences those documents need to reach. If you find them useful and want to talk about a project, we are easy to reach.

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