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@Linguist_CIOL APRIL/MAY The Linguist 21 FEATURES L anguage educators tend to view research positively and express interest in staying informed about new developments. Yet a study by Emma Marsden and Rowena Kasprowicz found that while foreign language educators in the UK occasionally read about research through professional organisations, they have little direct contact with language learning and teaching research. 1 Similarly, in a study with teachers in Canada and Turkey, Hossein Nassaji found that 48% of language teachers rarely or never read research articles, even though 79% strongly agree that knowing about second language acquisition research improves language teaching. 2 The main reasons teachers give for having limited interaction with research are practical limitations and conceptual constraints. Articles are often not accessible because they are hidden behind paywalls. Academic papers are increasingly difficult to read for non-specialist readers. This makes diving into the latest findings an expensive and time-consuming affair. Cue the Open Accessible Summaries in Language Studies (OASIS) initiative, which aims to make such research accessible to an audience beyond the academic bubble. OASIS is a publicly available database (oasis-database.org) of summaries of peer- reviewed research articles about language learning, language teaching and multilingualism. Written in non-technical, accessible language, each summary is a single page providing information about what the study was about, why it is important, what the researcher(s) did, and what the study found. The database currently holds more than 400 summaries on a wide variety of language-related topics, including vocabulary learning, heritage languages and the use of CALL (computer-assisted language learning) to support classroom teaching. The bulk of our summaries focus on recent material, but summaries of some classic papers suggested by journal editors, team members and experts are available too. Fourteen academic journals were involved in establishing OASIS. The editors came together in Chicago in the spring of 2018 and decided on a rough format. After a trial phase, a number of journals are now encouraging authors of new papers to write an accessible summary of their work. Crucially, Language Learning, TESOL Quarterly and The Modern Language Journal now require their authors to write an OASIS summary. The support of three of the top journals in language learning and teaching means that we have a steady stream of new summaries for our users, and a sustainable author- and journal-driven practice. We continue to have discussions with other journals about joining the initiative, and have recently added Language and Education and Foreign Language Annals to our supporting journals. We want to establish a culture of systematic access to research in line with the current trend towards open science. We also have the support of professional language teaching associations, such as the Association for Language Learning (ALL) in the UK and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in the US. In addition to helping us to secure funding, these collaborations enable us to reach all the users the summaries are intended for. New material is added every week, and there is a monthly newsletter to make it easy to stay up-to-date. Visit oasis-database.org to sign up to the newsletter and follow @OASIS_Database on Twitter to get alerts for new summaries. Notes 1 Marsden, E and Kasprowicz, R (2017). 'Foreign Language Educators' Exposure to Research'. In The Modern Language Journal, 101, 613-642 2 Nassaji, H (2012) 'The Relationship Between SLA Research and Language Pedagogy'. In Language Teaching Research, 16, 337-365 Why an open-access database of research summaries is an important new resource for teachers and other language professionals. By Inge Alferink RESEARCH WRAPPED UP © SHUTTERSTOCK