Plain Language Summaries

ASGCT encourages authors to make their work more accessible to the broad CGT community by including plain language summaries.

Make your timely research findings more accessible to the rare disease community by submitting a summary using plain language. Submissions of the plain language summary will not be used in the review for abstract acceptance. These summaries will instead be reviewed by the Patient Outreach Committee, and the top ones will be highlighted and shared alongside accepted abstracts. All plain language summaries will be under the same embargo policy as the abstracts.

Guidelines and Tips

• Summaries should be 200 words or less.
• The intended audience of these summaries is patients, caregivers, or advocates in the rare disease community. 
• We encourage aiming for a readability score above 55 and a grade level score below 11 (learn how to check your score here).
• Start with the most important message for the intended audience and then move on to how the methods or findings may impact the disease community or the field.   
• Be wary of including details and scientific jargon that may cloud the main message. 
• Concepts should be explained as simply as possible while keeping their meaning.
• We recommend you structure your summary with the following elements:  
  • What does a lay reader need to know about the subject to understand your abstract? 
  • What did you want to achieve with your research? 
  • What was the main finding of the research? 
  • Why is this study important to the rare disease community? 

There are many useful resources online to assist with writing a Plain Language Summary:  

• Check the readability and grade level scores of your summary.
• A report from the US Department of Education for writing about research in everyday language, which includes a glossary of technical terms and their revised PLS usage.
• Review tips on plain language or clear communications best practices.
• A checklist of items to include in your plain language summary.

Review Process

Plain language summaries will be reviewed by taking into consideration the following criteria:

• Followed submission guidelines  
• Flesch reading ease and grade level score  
• Understanding of clear communication practices  
• Overall abstract review score 
• Relevance to broad patient communities  

All summaries submitted will be reviewed by the ASGCT Patient Outreach Committee for final consideration in the abstract publication.