User talk:JobrienUCL

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is always glad for articles on important research projects. However, they need to be described in an encyclopedic, not promotional, manner. And all Wikipedia articles need references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases.

As one of the volunteer administrators here who happens to have some knowledge of this subject field, I can tell that your article Life Study UK  described an important project. With some work, after thorough checking of your website, I was able to find one good third party reference, and I also added some of your relevant web pages.

However, the article still reads in a promotional manner. It is up to you to rewrite it--and rewriting will be necessary to prevent deletion. Let me give you some advice:

First and most important, remember not to copy from a web site, even your own --  it's a copyright violation, but, even if you own the copyright and are willing to give us permission according to WP:DCM, the tone will not be encyclopedic and the material will not be suitable. (Thus, there is generally no purpose in giving permission; it is better to rewrite.) I have not yet identified the press release that you copied into Wikipedia--perhaps indeed you wrote a new one for the purpose, in which case it is not copyvio. But it still is written in a an unsuitable tone.

The formatting was wrong, also, but that was easy to fix and I fixed it. I found a key missing piece of information, the name of the study director, and added it. According to one of the sources, the proper name is "Life Study" not "Life Study UK"--I moved the article accordingly. It also needs some specifics on the amount of funding; it may be in the references, but I shall need to check tomorrow in the library. Presumably you have access to the article in The Timesand can add this, as well as whatever other specific information can be found there -- but remember not to copy it or paraphrase it, but use it as a source for information. The web site also refers to various government meetings, and presumably is based on their press releases or documents. Find them and link them as references. It will be much easier for you than me to find this information. If there are other 3rd party references than the Times, and I would expect that there would be in the medical literature, add them. Your institute's librarian can help you find them.

Now rewrite the text. You wrote it as if to sell its importance, but you should just describe it. A good preliminary is to remove as many  adjectives as possible. Then remove buzzwords and meaningless phrases. for example, try to find plain English for "from all walks of life " and " this new generation of UK children" (and you use that phrase three times). Remove needless words,  And, what should be pretty basic, use proper formal grammar and wording: "environmental factors in early life effect child growth" should be "environmental factors in early life affect child growth". And "mix various sciences together" presumably means to combine the methods and results of different scientific disciplines. Be exact: pregnancy is not a stage in the life of the child, but of the mother, nor is the development of the embryo part of the first year of life. And the term used in formal scientific writing is infant, not baby.

Then, remove duplication: the objectives and differences section pretty much say the same thing. What you should do instead, is to actually add information about the prior studies, with references. (They are, by the way, notable in their own right and should have articles--they may already, in which case you should add to them a link to the article  about this new one.)

What was particularly out of place was the attempt to show why this study was an improvement over the previous ones, as if it were a new model of an appliance. You're not trying to promote one over the other! This is the next of a series, which will presumably be indefinitely repeated at intervals. It therefore inherently deals with a new generation. Give the other differences in neutral formal and exact terms: I think you intend to say in that paragraph that it will make greater use of the social sciences than earlier studies, and take explicit account of cultural differences. That research studies are based on hypotheses has always been true--by hypotheses-led you presumably mean it will be based more formally on specific hypotheses--to make this meaningful, what are they, or have they not yet been defined? "new and creative methods" is meaningless. I'd expect most of the methods are the same as always in the field, so what are the new ones? A relevant factor in such studies is the privacy of the data, and some information about this is needed. Are the results merely going to be "available to UK researchers in the UK Data Archive," or is formal publication planned? BTW, are the results going to be inaccessible to researchers outside the UK?-- to emphasise local use is typical of government press releases. And how can anyone say in advance that "the topics research will have major influence on scientific, policy and public health sectors" You presumably mean the results will have influence, and they are expected to have influence--for all one knows at this point, they may find nothing consequential, and--more likely-- they might be ignored by government and viewed with indifference by the public, as are so many scientific studies. Possibly you do not know the answer to some of this--write what you do know, and can document, and hope that others interested will expand the article. The expected documentation is the most detailed version of the report or proposal that has been made public. that's what people expect to find reference to in an encyclopedia

As a general rule, a suitable page will be best written by someone without Conflict of Interest; it's not impossible to do it properly with a conflict of interest or as a paid press agent, but it's relatively more difficult. You are thinking in terms of press releases, not information. If you think you can do it right according to our guidelines, do so, but expect the article to be carefully checked for objectivity.

I write in such detail in the hope of instructing you in what is needed, as I try to do for new editors writing on important topics, though looking back, it might have been easier for me to rewrite it myself.  DGG ( talk ) 00:57, 27 September 2012 (UTC)