Roman Lyach

• Ph.D.
• Researcher at Scio Research

When submitting a research paper, we as the authors are almost always asked to disclose any conflict of interest. However, I have never seen anyone do it. I wonder if this sentence is just a formality that the editor must put in and the author must declare, or if it matters in some cases. Have you ever seen a paper with a declared conflict of interest?

Do you think that publishers of international scientific journals be paying their reviewers for reviewing scientific papers? If so, what should be the price for one review? Or should there be professional peer-reviewers?

I am looking for a communication manual or strategy that the government (or other institution or organization) uses to communicate with the public and to persuade the public to act. The manual should be describing target groups based on socio-demography, values, beliefs, and other characteristics. It should then specify how to approach each of these target groups.

We are trying to persuade farmers and hunters not to kill wolves, lynxes, bears, otters, and beavers. But we need a financially based argument that these mammals are beneficial for the ecosystem and save money if we keep them alive. Is there any literature that estimates how much money will one wolf/lynx/bear/otter(/beaver save per year?

We are trying to decrease the fear of the public towards large carnivores (bears, wolves, lynxes). We want the people to stop fearing those animals and to perceive them more positively. We are also trying to de-escalate the conflicts between farmers (owners of domesticated animals) and large carnivores. Here, we are mainly looking for ways to contact the public and farmers and communicate the problem with them.

We are trying to create a PR and communication campaign that the government will use to motivate the public (especially old people and people from villages) to replace their old coal stoves that emit high emissions. We want to motivate those people to replace coal stoves with more environmental-friendly technologies such as gas, electricity, geothermal energy systems, solar panels etc. We will do this by asking the people via in-depth interviews and questionnaire surveys. Do you have any experience with successfully persuading people to throw away their old coal stoves?

We want to create a PR and communication campaign that the government will use to motivate the public to use public transport instead of privately owned cars in peoples´ daily lives. We want to persuade undecided people who can use both public transport and cars to use public transport more often, especially when both means of transport are of comparable quality and equally accessible. We will create a questionnaire survey where we will access the perception and behavior of the public towards transport choice. Do you have any suggestions on how could we link it to a communication strategy and campaign that will follow after that?

I need to test if a certain value (e. g. the number of lung cancer patients) has changed over time (e. g. over the last 30 years). I want to observe time trends over the years – when did the numbers increase, when did they decrease, and what is the overall trend over time.

We want to create a PR and communication campaign that the government will use to motivate the public to use public transport instead of privately owned cars in peoples´ daily lives. We want to persuade undecided people who can use both public transport and cars to use public transport more often, especially when both means of transport are of comparable quality and equally accessible. We will create a questionnaire survey where we will access the perception and behaviour of the public towards transport choice. Do you have any suggestions on how could we link it to a communication strategy and campaign that will follow after that?