29 July 2026 ยท Dissemination & policy
Why this research has to work for farmers, not just journals
Most soil ecology research disappears into journals that the farmers whose land it was measured on will never read, not a criticism of the science, merely how academic publishing works, but it sits uncomfortably alongside a project such as this one, where every dataset comes from a working farm, and every farmer involved is making real business decisions, sustainability claims, and scheme sign ups based on exactly this kind of biology.
The dissemination plan for this PhD is therefore built in a specific order, and it is not the order in which journals usually come.
What actually goes out, and when
At least three peer reviewed journal articles are planned, targeting journals including Soil Biology and Biochemistry and Global Change Biology, submitted progressively as the project matures, alongside conference presentations aimed at feedback from other soil biogeochemists. This is the academic track, and it matters, because the science needs to be checked and trusted.
Annual summaries, however, go to participating farms and industry partners every year, communicating interim findings without waiting for, or risking, journal publication, while a final policy facing report translates the whole project into implications for grazing management, soil health, and carbon storage that a farmer or policymaker can actually use. Public engagement includes accessible digital content as well, and the infographic on the research page of this site is a first attempt at exactly that, explaining soil food webs and carbon and nitrogen cycling without requiring a soil science degree to follow it.
What that means for the farms taking part
None of this works without real farms agreeing to have small parts of their fields fenced off and sampled for three years, so the commitments back to them are specific. Written consent is obtained from every landowner before any fieldwork begins. Farm and site identities are anonymised in datasets and publications, referred to only as Site A, Site B, and so on, with location data generalised where needed. Any landowner can withdraw at any time without penalty, and sampling itself is kept spatially limited and non destructive at the scale of the whole field, so participating never meaningfully affects a farm's agricultural productivity.
Open by default, once anonymised
Once processed and anonymised, the underlying datasets and R analysis scripts are intended for open access deposit in Aberystwyth University's research repository and Zenodo, under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. This matters for the same reason the carbon fractionation and nematode trophic work matters: a claim that cannot be checked is not really a scientific claim, merely a claim that sounds like one. Making the method and the data open is part of taking that seriously, not an afterthought once the papers have been published.