Elizabeth Royle

While a PhD student, Elizabeth Royle sat through a vast number of research seminars that she didn’t understand, thanks to the speakers assuming that their listeners were better informed than they really were.  The abiding resentment generated by this experience incentivised a long-standing desire to make science more accessible to non-specialists. 

As a Managing Editor (ME) and copy editor, she has wrangled with Cochrane’s Plain language summaries since they were first introduced – initially with a declarative title of no more than 25 words and text limit of 100 words – and every iteration since, so is delighted to have been involved in this PLS pilot project.  

Elizabeth started with Cochrane in 1996 and her posts since then have included:

• ME for three Cochrane Review Groups (Cochrane Vascular, Injuries (ongoing) and Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC));
• Cochrane Copy Editor; and
• Since 2012, Manager of the Cochrane Copy Edit Support team.

Elizabeth spoke at 'Virtually Cochrane', a virtual event we co-hosted with Cochrane Ireland in April 2021. Watch the recording Cochrane’s Plain Language Summary Project: what have we learnt so far?