When you entered the field of academics, your goal was probably to find ways to make an impact on society by sharing your knowledge with others. While this is a great goal, and seems like it would be black and white, the reality is somewhere in between if you want to make a global impact.

The switch to a global audience instead of a targeted group of readers has created an upheaval in academic publishing. Now, if you want your article to have a better chance of being published and be read by a wider audience, you have to make sure it appeals to a global target market. To do this, there are strategies you should follow to ensure your works show up in web searches.

Open Access Publishing and the Consequences

When the idea of open access publishing first hit the scene, it was a win/win consideration. Scholars would have their work more widely read, and readers would be able to access information immediately in comprehensive levels to be able to learn information they might never have obtained before.

Now that open access has been around for a while, there have been some consequences that weren’t fully foreseen. For instance, journals are usually commercial organizations that seek a profit for publishing the intellectual property of academics. But taking away paying subscribers and moving towards open access means that author charges increase.

When a compromise is found, open access publishing will mean a wider global audience and more scholars willing to publish their work freely online. In the meantime, if you want your work to appeal to a vast target market, you need to ensure it’s optimized correctly.

Tips to Help Create Appealing Writing

Before you start writing, make sure you know who your target audience will be. This can be difficult if your work is generalized for everyone. But if you’re attempting to reach a specific market, it’s easier to know what to include and what not to cover.

To make your writing appealing in general, follow these tips:

●      Analyze your paper for ambiguous or confusing terms and concepts. If what you’ve written is something specific to your culture, it needs to be explained or reworded. The English language, for example, is full of idioms and other figurative language that someone from another country might not understand.

●      Consider geographical references. Where you’re from, it might be common sense to know what your allusion to a mountainous terrain means, but someone who’s never seen elevation might not get the point you’re trying to make.

●      Cover your bases with measurement and money. The metric system is the most widely used unit of measurement, but it’s not universal. Likewise, the English dollar is the most common form of money, but it’s not global, either. If you must use a measurement or money reference, be sure to include alternative units, as well.

●      Be cautious with your image selections. Use a picture to symbolize your text of something that is globally understood.

With these small tweaks to your writing, you can ensure that your article appeals to a global market rather than a niche group.

What Not to Do When You’re Writing for a Global Audience

There are things you should make sure you include in your writing to encourage it to be exhaustive for everyone, but there are also things you absolutely shouldn’t do, such as:

●      Using negative terms. When possible, replace a negative sentence structure with its more neutral or positive counterpart.

●      Double the same thought with different words. We get it. Word counts are important. But your reader is going to catch on when you’re saying the same thing in a paraphrased way just to hit the target count.

●      Overuse figurative language and abbreviations. An occasional metaphor or simile can help get the point across, and abbreviations definitely have their place. But overusing any of these turns your work into something that has to be deciphered, causing the reader to lose sight of the point behind your article.

As you’re putting your paper together, make sure to sound professional by avoiding these few traits.

Open or Print; Global or Niche; Impactio Makes Publishing Easy

You have lots of choices as to your publishing medium and target audience. However, they all require a reputable program so you can design your final article, like Impactio. It’s the software solution consistently chosen by academic experts all over the world. Impactio has all the tools you need in one easy-to-use program to compile a professional finished product.

When you need helpful, efficient, and easy-to-use processes, Impactio has you covered. Simple steps let you drag and drop your work, use pre-designed headers and subsections, turn your data into charts, tables, and graphs, and do so much more. Confidently submit your work to a traditional or open access publisher when you start with Impactio and you’ll get maximum global impact!