Read, Summarise, Teach: ReaLiTea and OASIS Redefine Research Access

ReaLiTea and the OASIS project share a key aim: To help teachers access and use research to inform their work.  Therefore, a key component of ReaLiTea is the cooperation with OASIS, which is an online database of one-page, non-technical summaries of language studies published in journals. The goal of these synopses is to improve communication about language-related research by summarising journal articles for a non-academic audience. 

2025 has already seen an exciting development for OASIS, as the entire database was migrated to a new platform, with new functionalities added.  Since the successful launch of the new summary creator in February, dozens of summaries have been uploaded each week on a range of topics, including language learning, language teaching, multilingualism, language policy, and language and social justice. There are now over 2,300 searchable summaries held on the database. This includes 196 summaries about computer-assisted language learning, including several focusing on AI; 174 about identity;140 about motivation and 156 about teacher education. 

A screenshot of the OASIS database

Several additional journals have joined the initiative, many of whom require or strongly encourage authors to submit a summary of each new article published. The OASIS team has worked with these journals to develop an optimised workflow for summary creation, using a new automatic PDF creator.  This development means that summaries can be easily submitted by authors themselves, improving the sustainability of OASIS and giving authors more autonomy. The OASIS team continues to check each summary to ensure eligibility and adherence to the genre guidelines, and to confirm that the summaries are of articles that have been accepted for publication on an internationally recognised citation index. 

There is also now a short download survey to gather data about the intended usage of the summaries. Since 2019, OASIS summaries have been downloaded over 83,000 times with an estimated two out of every three downloads being carried out by individuals working outside a university, including educators, students, and policymakers. 

Finally, there is a new ‘Collections’ feature, whereby any community, project, or initiative can gather their own set of research summaries, facilitating work at the interface of research and practice.  OASIS is working with ReaLiTea colleagues to build a collection of summaries that support the various work packages. In addition, ReaLiTea and OASIS are collaborating on the development of a teaching module for pre-service teachers to help them engage with research and produce their own summaries of language-related studies.  The module will be piloted over the next few months.

You can find out more about OASIS activities and what others are saying about it on the OASIS website.