AN ANALYSIS OF THE SCIENTIFIC WRITING STYLE IN GEOLOGICAL WORLD HERITAGE AND GEOPARK REPORTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR NOMINATION AND REPORT QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

Geoheritage projects that are nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Status or UNESCO Geopark labeling, have become to contain increasingly complete and complex geological descriptions. Their justification for status is thus becoming more solidly based on geoscientific and geoheritage grounds. The greater implication of geoscientists in their conception and development, and the closer more extensive examination by geological reviewers should lead to greater quality and credibility for UNESCO labels. Reports on projects by the mandated UNESCO advisory bodies and UNESCO's geological division should also evolve to reflect the increasingly sound scientific approach. Here we analyze a number of geoheritage reports for the structure and quality of the scientific language. We observe that for World Heritage reports, there is limited referencing or citation of the presented literature, and conclude that a more rigorous approach (standard practice in mainstream scientific documents) would significantly improve the ability of reported statements to be verified. Analysis of the language used returns a high number of hedge terms, and vague comparators, such as 'appear', ‘somewhat’, 'several', 'significant', 'seem'. These are used in sentences that can be ambiguous, but which lead to definite conclusions. Such a writing style could be improved with tighter editing to create a report with greater credibility and integrity, more defensible. Such reports could then be discussed on the merits of more clearly stated observations. An improved and standardized writing style could also be demanded of nomination dossiers, and a clearly set out set of regulations, like those for top scientific journals, would benefit both nominations and reports. A proposed set of guidelines will be presented for discussion at the session.