Barriers to science communication about research involving animal experimentation: A systematic literature review

Research involving animal experimentation is a contentious issue at the intersection of science and society, making science communication about it especially challenging. Yet, we lack a systematic account of the barriers researchers and communicators face in this context. Our systematic review used a peer-reviewed search strategy and screening by independent reviewers. The resulting 65 documents (e.g. research articles, editorials, comments) underwent full-text qualitative content analysis. Seven barrier themes emerged from the dataset, most prominently: The Research Is Not Well Suited for Science Communication, The Public Is Difficult, and The Discourse Environment Is Complicated and Dysfunctional (occurred in 86%, 85% and 83% of the 65 documents). Each theme contains multiple barrier categories with varying prevalence across the analysed documents. We elaborate on the most prevalent categories and present examples. This offers researchers and communicators an overview of what they might face so they can prepare accordingly, ultimately strengthening public debate.