Purpose of publication
- Public reports
- In reports that are aimed at a wide audience, brevity is important, so
information must be presented concisely and clearly.
- Executive reports
- These are usually internal reports about specific topics and may include
advanced analyses
and presentation if the readership is more technically sophisticated.
- Archival and regular publications
- Many organisations provide detailed data to the public. Such data are often
published electronically. Data that are simply provided for others to analyse
may be simply provided in spreadsheet format but presentation is important
in 'Yearbooks' that are aimed at a wider audience.
Publication medium
All information used to be published in black and white on paper,
but colour and electronic delivery are now more common. Colour in particular
makes it
much easier to present information clearly, especially in graphs.
- Quality and resolution of medium
- Colour print on glossy paper is best but expensive. Computer screens have
relatively low resolution — much fewer 'dots' per unit
area and this limits
the type size of text and the detailed information that can be presented, especially
if the screen is small.
- Cost
- Electronic publication on the internet is much cheaper than printing on paper,
but this often results in poorly presented information. It is important that
as much effort is put into effective communication of information on a web site
as would occur on paper.
- Format
- Many reports are published on the internet as 'pdf' files. Although they
are still limited by the screen resolution of the computer, it is possible to
zoom in and to print them at much higher resolution.
- Recent standards (HTML5 and CSS3) allow web pages to be formatted almost
as flexibly as on paper.A web site can also be interactive, both for navigation
around the site and for interacting with individual pages. (CAST itself is an
example of what is possible.)
- Archival data are often provided on the internet in spreadsheet format.
Alternatively, a web site may dynamically extract and display information from
a large behind-the-scenes database.
With computers and internet connections becoming more
common, a well-designed web site is becoming a very powerful and flexible way
to present information.
There is no perfect publication medium, but a well-designed
web site should be considered.