A press release is news written for journalists: a headline and first sentence that carry the story, detail below in falling order of importance, a quotation or two, an end mark, a named contact, and notes to editors. For a research press release, those notes also name the study exactly, down to its DOI.
EdCitation publishes this guide, built on 26 September 2026 from university writing guides, a funder's toolkit, embargo rules and three studies of health press releases. The US National Institutes of Health's advice sat behind a bot check, so no NIH rule is claimed here.
EdCitation never writes anyone's press release. It does the part underneath: Cite a source builds the reference for the study a release announces, Verify references confirms that study is real and not retracted, and Find sources finds the research behind a claim. All three are free, with no account.
What are the parts of a press release, in order?
A press release runs from a release line at the top to notes to editors at the bottom, and each part has one job. Two university guides agree on the order, if not every detail (Purdue Writing Lab, n.d.-b; Roberts-Crews, 2016).
| Part | What it does | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Release line | "For immediate release" or "embargoed until" a date and time | An embargo with no time zone |
| Headline | States the news in plain words | Reads like an advert |
| Dateline | Places the story: the city in capitals, at the start of the lead | No date anywhere, so nobody knows when |
| Lead | One sentence: who did what, when and where | Opens with the organisation's history |
| Body | Detail in falling order of importance | Chronological, with the news in paragraph four |
| Quotations | A person's view or reason, in their words | A quote that repeats the paragraph before |
| End mark | "ENDS" or ### shows the release is over | Missing, so an editor looks for a lost page |
| Contact | A named person a journalist can reach today | A general inbox |
| Notes to editors | Background, the study's reference, funding, boilerplate | The study without its journal, date or DOI, when Cite a source builds it in seconds |
The top: release line, headline and dateline
Purdue's guide asks you to say at the top whether a release is for immediate use or under embargo, and warns that a release is not an advertisement (Purdue Writing Lab, n.d.-b). The dateline comes from newspapers, the place in capitals at the start of the first paragraph (Purdue Writing Lab, n.d.-a). Roberts-Crews (2016), in Ohio State's open textbook on strategic communication, puts the release's date under the release line, then a headline, an optional subheadline, the dateline and a summary lead.
The body: the lead and the quotations
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), a UK research funder, tells researchers to start with their conclusions, answer who, what, why, where and when, and back three or four points with facts and figures (Economic and Social Research Council, 2025). That is the inverted pyramid, set out with a worked lead in how to write a news report.
Roberts-Crews (2016) asks for at least two quotations, one from the organisation and one from a third party such as a customer; the ESRC asks for one. A good quotation says what only that person can: a reason, a doubt, what happens next.
The end: ENDS or ###, the contact and the boilerplate
The guides part company here. Purdue closes with "Ends" in bold, then the contact, then "Notes to editors" for anything extra. Roberts-Crews puts the contact near the top and ### or "-30-" at the very end, with "more" at the foot of a first page when there is a second. Neither is wrong: follow your house style, or pick one pattern and keep it.
The press release boilerplate is the organisation's standard paragraph, like the "About us" page of its website, and it stays the same from release to release (Roberts-Crews, 2016). It belongs at the end, never in the lead.
What press release format and length work best?
One page is the aim and two the limit. Purdue warns that a release past two pages starts to look like an article, and the ESRC sets one or two pages as the maximum.
Write it in plain language
Digital.gov (n.d.), which carries the US government's old PlainLanguage.gov guidance forward, asks for shorter words and sections, the active voice, the present tense, and verbs left as verbs ("we analyse the data", not "we conduct an analysis of the data"). The ESRC wants a release free of jargon and "concrete, factual and specific". A journalist in a hurry will cut every term they would have to look up.
How does a press release embargo work?
An embargo lets journalists have the release early on condition that nothing is published before a stated date and time, so reporters can read the study and ask outside experts. The ESRC's example line is "not for publication or broadcast until 00:01 on 30 June".
The rules come from whoever publishes the work:
- Check who sets the time. EurekAlert, the science news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, accepts an embargo only when the journal publisher or a meeting's organiser set it, and never for information already public (EurekAlert, 2026).
- Use the journal's hour. PLOS lifts embargoes at 2 pm US Eastern time on publication day, and press officers may send embargoed releases up to seven days ahead (PLOS, n.d.).
- Mark it plainly. PLOS requires each embargoed release to say so and give the date and time. Anyone who breaks its embargo leaves its press list for as long as PLOS decides.
- Do not release a preprint. The Science Media Centre (2019) advises against press releasing findings at preprint stage, and EurekAlert does not take releases about work still in peer review.
Give the time zone every time: "00:01 Wednesday" is a different moment in London and New York.
How do you write a research press release that does not exaggerate?
Say no more than the paper says. The evidence on research press releases shows why.
What the studies found
Sumner et al. (2014) compared 462 health press releases issued in 2011 by 20 leading UK universities with the papers behind them and 668 news stories. Of the releases, 40% gave advice beyond the paper, 33% made causal claims from correlational research, and 36% of those on animal research applied it to humans. When a release exaggerated, most news did too (58%, 81% and 86%), against 17%, 18% and 10% when it did not, and exaggeration won no clear extra coverage. Since scientists usually approve their university's releases, the authors put most of the responsibility on them.
A replication on 2014 and 2015 releases confirmed the link for causal and animal-to-human claims, though not for advice (Bratton et al., 2019). A trial then tested the fix: Adams et al. (2019) randomised 312 releases from nine press offices and found that headlines and claims matched to the evidence produced news that matched it more often, with no evidence that either matched claims or caveats cost coverage.
Where the advice disagrees
The ESRC tells researchers not to hedge more than necessary, warning that "further research is needed" suggests no conclusion worth reporting. The trial found no evidence that caveats cost coverage. Both can hold: cut empty hedges such as "on the one hand", and keep the one caveat the design demands, stated once.
Label the evidence
The Academy of Medical Sciences and the Science Media Centre propose labels at the top of a medical research release: peer-reviewed or not, the kind of study, and whether it was done in people, animals, human embryos or cells (Science Media Centre, n.d.). Their language guide, from the Cardiff team behind the studies above, is short: "reduces" or "can reduce" for an experiment; "might reduce", "may boost" or "is associated with" for an observational study. Hedging and cautious language covers the same words in academic writing.
The University of Manchester asks researchers to contact its media relations team at least a month before publication, with a 50-word summary of the findings (University of Manchester, n.d.).
How do you cite the study in a press release?
Name it in full in the notes to editors: authors, year, title, journal, volume and article number, publication date, and the DOI as a link, so a journalist or an outside expert reaches the paper in one click. A DOI keeps working when a journal's website changes (what is a DOI). In the body, the journal's name and the date are enough.
If the work was funded, use the funder's own form. UK Research and Innovation asks for the funder's full name and the grant number in square brackets (UK Research and Innovation, 2025), and the ESRC asks funded projects to follow that guidance in releases. Before sending, check the reference against the publisher's record: EdCitation's Cite a source builds it from the DOI and flags a retraction or a published correction before a journalist does.
Press release template: our own, to copy
This press release template is EdCitation's own, written for this guide from the sources above; your house style comes first.
[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE] or [EMBARGOED UNTIL hh:mm time zone, day date]
[Peer-reviewed | Type of study | People / Animals / Cells] (research only)
[Headline: the news, in plain words]
[CITY], [date] – [Lead: who did what, when and where, in one sentence.]
[The most important detail or figure, and where it comes from.]
"[A view or reason only this person can give]," said [name], [role]
at [organisation].
[Further detail in falling order of importance: method, limits,
what happens next.]
ENDS (or ###)
Media contact: [name], [role], [phone], [email]
Notes to editors
1. The study: [Authors]. ([Year]). [Title]. [Journal], [volume],
[article number]. https://doi.org/[DOI] Published [date].
2. Funding: This work was supported by [funder in full] [grant number].
3. About [organisation]: [boilerplate].
Press release example: an invented study
This press release example is invented: Fenmoor University, its study, figures and quotation do not exist. The journal and DOI stay as placeholders, because an invented DOI can resolve to someone's real paper.
EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 GMT, Wednesday 4 March 2026
Peer-reviewed | Observational study | People
Adults who walk after dinner may sleep longer, study suggests
FENMOOR, 2 March 2026 – Adults who walked for 20 minutes or more
after their evening meal slept longer on average than those who did
not, in a study of 2,400 adults by Fenmoor University researchers
published in [journal] on 4 March.
Walkers slept 18 minutes longer a night, by their own sleep diaries.
Because the study observed people rather than asking them to walk,
it cannot show that walking caused the extra sleep.
"This is an association worth testing, not a prescription," said
[lead author], [role] at Fenmoor University.
ENDS
Media contact: [name], Fenmoor University press office, [phone], [email]
Notes to editors
1. [Authors]. (2026). [Title]. [Journal], [volume], Article [number].
https://doi.org/[DOI]
2. About Fenmoor University: [boilerplate].
The example never says walking improves sleep. The label and the "may" carry the design, and the caveat is one sentence where a reader will see it.
Where does EdCitation fit when you write a press release?
In the reference and the research behind it, never in the release. For the one part with a right answer, the study's reference, EdCitation is in our view the best tool there is, because it looks the reference up in the publisher's record instead of composing one, which no chatbot can promise. Here is what it did with the Sumner study on 26 September 2026.
Cite a source, given the DOI 10.1136/bmj.g7015, returned this APA 7 entry, which needed no change:
Sumner, P., Vivian-Griffiths, S., Boivin, J., Williams, A., Venetis, C. A., Davies, A., Ogden, J., Whelan, L., Hughes, B., Dalton, B., Boy, F., & Chambers, C. D. (2014). The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: Retrospective observational study. BMJ, 349, Article g7015. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7015
and this MLA 9 entry:
Sumner, P., et al. "The Association between Exaggeration in Health Related Science News and Academic Press Releases: Retrospective Observational Study." BMJ, vol. 349, Dec. 2014, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7015.
One fix: the publisher's record gives the first author as "P.", but the paper prints Petroc Sumner, and MLA replaces initials with the full name when you know it (MLA Style Center, 2018), so the entry should begin "Sumner, Petroc, et al." The tool found no retraction and linked a 2014 correction; read, it fixes "casual" printed for "causal" in two figure titles. No reason to drop the study, but worth knowing.
Verify references was given the APA entries for Sumner et al. (2014) and Adams et al. (2019). Both came back verified: "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." A reference it cannot check is marked "could not check", never "not found".
Find sources was asked for "exaggeration in health science press releases". The BMJ study (DOI ending g7015) came fifth, after a 2021 paper on detecting exaggeration automatically, a Student BMJ piece under the same title, a later BMJ article, and the Wellcome Open Research follow-up. Titles repeat across a study, its news pieces and its notices, so open the DOI before you cite anything you find, from any search.
All three are free, with no account. Pro, at $8 a month, adds References from a file to check every reference in a long report; Max is $24 a month (Pricing).
Quick questions
What is a boilerplate in a press release?
The standard paragraph about the organisation, placed at the end of every press release and kept the same each time, like a short "About us" page.
What does ### mean at the end of a press release?
Three pound signs (###), like "ENDS" or "-30-", tell an editor the release is complete.
How long should a press release be?
One page if you can, two at most: the ESRC sets two pages as the ceiling, and Purdue's guide warns that anything longer reads like an article.
Can I send a press release about a preprint?
The Science Media Centre advises against it, and EurekAlert does not accept releases about research still in peer review. Wait for journal publication and its embargo.
Does EdCitation write press releases?
No. EdCitation looks up and checks the study a release cites: Cite a source builds its reference from the DOI, and Verify references confirms it exists and is not retracted.
References
- Adams, R. C., Challenger, A., Bratton, L., Boivin, J., Bott, L., Powell, G., Williams, A., Chambers, C. D., & Sumner, P. (2019). Claims of causality in health news: A randomised trial. BMC Medicine, 17(1), Article 91. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1324-7
- Bratton, L., Adams, R. C., Challenger, A., Boivin, J., Bott, L., Chambers, C. D., & Sumner, P. (2019). The association between exaggeration in health-related science news and academic press releases: A replication study. Wellcome Open Research, 4, Article 148. https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15486.2
- Digital.gov. (n.d.). Writing for understanding. U.S. General Services Administration. https://digital.gov/guides/plain-language/writing/
- Economic and Social Research Council. (2025). How to do media relations: Identifying the right format. UK Research and Innovation. https://www.ukri.org/councils/esrc/impact-toolkit-for-economic-and-social-sciences/how-to-do-media-relations/identifying-the-right-format/
- EurekAlert. (2026). Content eligibility guidelines. American Association for the Advancement of Science. https://www.eurekalert.org/releaseguidelines
- MLA Style Center. (2018). How do I cite an author's name known only by initials? Modern Language Association. https://style.mla.org/citing-sources-known-by-initials/
- PLOS. (n.d.). Guidelines for journalists and press officers: Embargo policy. https://plos.org/media/embargo-policy/
- Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.-a). AP style. Purdue OWL. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journalism_and_journalistic_writing/ap_style.html
- Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.-b). Writing press releases. Purdue OWL. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journalism_and_journalistic_writing/press_releases.html
- Roberts-Crews, J. (2016). Press release structure and format. In Writing for strategic communication industries. The Ohio State University. https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/stratcommwriting/chapter/press-release-structure-and-format/
- Science Media Centre. (n.d.). AMS press release labelling system for new medical research [PDF]. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE.pdf
- Science Media Centre. (2019). Best practice guidelines on conveying scientific findings to the public in the era of preprints [PDF]. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Best-practice-guidelines-on-preprints-and-publicity.pdf
- Sumner, P., Vivian-Griffiths, S., Boivin, J., Williams, A., Venetis, C. A., Davies, A., Ogden, J., Whelan, L., Hughes, B., Dalton, B., Boy, F., & Chambers, C. D. (2014). The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: Retrospective observational study. BMJ, 349, Article g7015. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7015
- UK Research and Innovation. (2025). Acknowledging your funding. https://www.ukri.org/manage-your-award/publishing-your-research-findings/acknowledging-your-funding/
- University of Manchester. (n.d.). Generate media coverage. StaffNet. https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/promoting-your-research/promote-your-work/generate-media-coverage/