Tag Archives: Research Fellow

How science is distilling its message | Times Higher Education

The tongue-in-cheek paper, titled “The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of ‘writer’s block’”, contained no words except the title, the author’s name and affiliation, one self-reference, and words of praise from one reviewer who examined the manuscript “very carefully with lemon juice and X-rays”.

When physicists found that neutrinos travelled faster than the speed of light, a claim that would break Einstein’s universal speed limit, Sir Michael Berry of the of Bristol and his colleagues published a paper in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical titled “Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?” Their abstract revealed their stance: it read “probably not”.

Although some may be under the impression that this needed a bit more elaboration, the “probably not” abstract was a “precisely crafted answer to the question posed in the title of the paper”, Sir Michael told Times Higher Education.

The abstract was “perfectly informative”, in light of the title, he said: “not” because of their negative result, and “probably” because they needed a calculation to arrive at this conclusion. A “one-word abstract ‘no’ would not accurately reflect the work we had to do while writing the paper”, Sir Michael added.

In 1974, clinical psychologist Dennis Upper of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Massachusetts, US, published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis the shortest-ever paper.

 

Key leads from this articles:

Data Visualisation

Seal level rise

These days I’m an independent data journalist and information designer. A passion of mine is visualizing information – facts, data, ideas, subjects, issues, statistics, questions – all with the minimum of words.

I’m interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath. Or, failing that, it can just look cool!

Myself, and the rest of the crack team here at Information is Beautiful, are dedicated to distilling the world’s data, information and knowledge into beautiful, interesting and, above all, useful visualizations, infographics and diagrams.

@infobeautiful (just infographics)@mccandelish (details of my tawdry life too)This site’s RSS Web FeedFacebook email: pa [dot] david [dot] mccandless [AT] Gmail [dot] com.

I’m David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer. I’ve written for The Guardian, Wired and others. I’m into anything strange and interesting.

Curated from Hello | Information Is Beautiful

It’s been a year since I started Draw Science. Can’t believe it. The idea’s come a long way, from just a blog that I started for fun, to an open-access journal in the works. Now, I’m travelling while I set up the journal and doing a study on behalf of my other organization,

 

I’ve already ranted about the problems with science communication. Even when a layperson gets access to a paper despite all the pay-per-view journals, the use of esoteric jargon makes it practically impossible for the public to read fresh-from-the-lab-bench science. For the last few months, I’ve been working on a solution through Draw Science. Now it’s time to take off the band-aid and treat the wound.

 

Curated from Draw Science

Valuable Other Scholarly outputs

“The Winnower is an excellent forum for sharing ideas and rapidly disseminating work that might not otherwise have a great forum. I think it’s an excellent tool to engage a community with a very easy to use interface that generates great discussion between authors and reviewers. In total, it was the most supportive peer review process thus far, and allowed me to engage in great scholarly discussion with my reviewers in an open and transparent way.”

“The Winnower is paving the path to the future of science communication in the most radical, exciting way. Scientists can finally put a name and a story to the research they publish; this is the definition of “open and transparent.””

“The Winnower is one of the first that rightfully recognizes the educational value of both transparent peer reviews and open access scientific material. It is a modern scientific publication in the truest sense of the word”

“Re-imagine scientific publishing, unhindered by external pressures, with the sole focus to communicate science. Don’t be surprised if you end up exactly at what The Winnower is doing.”

“Although I did not ever think I would aspire to have my work highlighted in a section referred to as “The Chaff”, I find the idea of your new journal interesting and likely informative for the scientific community”

Curated from The Winnower | Open Scholarly Publishing

So without further ado….Today we are happy to announce that you can now assign a digital object identifier (DOI) to your WordPress.org blog via The Winnower. This is a first step of many that we are taking towards bringing scientific publishing into the modern era (we’ll soon be releasing an interface for Blogger blogs and WordPress.com blogs).  We hope you’ll help us create this “agora of the modern age” by participating and by letting us know what you think needs changing or improving.  Of course, one way to do that is to publish with us and another is to write a blog post!  Together we can create an archived virtual library that is accessible to not only those that can pay thousands of dollars to publish but to all.

Scientific research requires a free and open dialogue to thrive. Scientists must communicate their ideas through scientific journals for debate, testing, and often retesting. Today, this is the standard process by which new ideas advance in science. Currently, one major barrier to co… …

The 2013 Wolf Prize in , often referred to as the Nobel Prize in agriculture, was awarded earlier this year to Dr. Joachim Messing. Messing’s work over the years has spanned many fields but what may be considered his most important work was the development of a seminal te… …

Science publishing is a multi-billion dollar industry that brings investors and owners a spectacular 30% profit annually. How are they able to maintain such high profits and what does this mean for science? Pretend you’re a scientist who’s made an important discovery. Your next step… …

The value of blogs and bloggers in science is well recognized.  Blogs serve as an excellent form of post-publication peer review and host much of the scientific discussion that occurs on the web today.  Indeed, it is probably true that more interaction between scientists and between scientists and the public occurs away from traditional scientific articles themselves and in “alternative” forums such as Twitter, Facebook, and of course, blogs.  These mediums are becoming increasingly important in scholarly discourse and often times shape what is written in traditional scholarly articles themselves (i.e. they are often cited).  But for all the benefits blogs provide they are not afforded an equal footing.  They are superfluous and can disappear without a trace.  We want to change that. The content of these discussions can sway opinion and act as authoritative sources in their own right.  Blogs are without a doubt valuable and as such deserve to be archived and aggregated, just like traditional scholarly publications are.  They deserve to “count,” to be elevated to a level that is not viewed as something extra but as something integral to scientific communication (Nicholson 2014, Nicholson 2015).  We need to get around the notion that where you publish actually matters.  It doesn’t.  It is the content, not the wrapper, and the sooner we act accordingly, the better.

Curated from The Winnower | Open Scholarly Publishing

The Journal of brief ideas

We think that that there is an inherent inefficiency in scientific publishing due to the quantum (or minimum publishable amount) of research being too large. It can takes many years to do enough research for a publication in a top-tier journal. Meanwhile, all that intellectual capital is tied up solely in the heads of the researchers rather than circulating where it could be doing some good. Also, many research ideas and results are not publishable because they are small, negative, partial, or just don’t fit the criteria of other journals. But many of them can be expressed briefly and could aid other researchers.

Primarily because it is part of being a good scientific citizen but you also might get the feedback you need to improve your research. Entries in the Journal of Brief Ideas are permanently archived, searchable, and citable, so they have the same publication status as in any other journal. That means that you can get credit for your idea as soon as you have it. You can put the entry on a CV, attach it to your ORCID profile, or use it as you would any other publication.

In addition, if you are a good researcher, you have more ideas than you can pursue at length. Wouldn’t you rather be credited for those ideas and see somebody else build on them than have them disappear from the research community completely, or have somebody later come up with the same idea and have them get credit for it?

For something as brief as 200-words, wouldn’t you rather just judge the quality of an idea yourself rather than have that judgement proxied by an anonymous peer reviewer? It is impractical to have 200-word ideas reviewed pre-publication so we choose to have a post-publication review system. There is a rating for each idea and for each researcher so you can judge quality by those ratings if you don’t trust your own judgement.

The Journal of Brief Ideas is a research journal, composed entirely of ‘brief ideas’. The goal here is to provide a place for short ideas to be described – in 200 words or less – for these ideas to be archived (courtesy of Zenodo), searchable and citable.

Curated from The Journal of Brief Ideas

The Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal

The Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal publishes all outputs of the research cycle, including: project proposals, data, methods, workflows, software, project reports and research articles together on a single collaborative platform, with the most transparent, open and public peer-review process. Our scope encompasses all areas of academic research, including science, technology, humanities and the social sciences.

Curated from Research Ideas and Outcomes

Brevity of Communication

THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR

CAN YOU EXPLAIN A HARD IDEA USING ONLY THE TEN HUNDRED MOST USED WORDS? IT’S NOT VERY EASY. TYPE IN THE BOX TO TRY IT OUT.

Curated from The Up-Goer Five Text Editor

The 1000 Word (or ten hundred word to be exact) Challenge was born out of the XKCD comic strip Up Goer Five, a very successful attempt at using only the 1000 most common words to describe the blueprints of the NASA rocket Saturn V. Geneticist Theo Sanderson created a text editor that tells if each word typed is one of the 1000 most common words (and thus allowable), and soon scientists around the world were challenging each other to describe their own research using only these 1000 words. The Burke Museum was already planning an end-of-the-quarter happy hour and invited FOSEP to hold their 1000 Word Challenge during the event.

FOSEP received almost 40 individual entries from across the campus, from researchers in atmospheric science to biology, from anthropology to applied materials science. David Domke (professor and acting chair for the Department of Communication at the University of Washington (UW)), Alaina Smith (Director of External Affairs at the Burke) and Andrea Cohen (Museology Program Assistant at the Burke) served as the judges for the event.

On Friday afternoon, the judges narrowed down the entries to the top 15. These 15 contestants were then each given an opportunity to share both how they would normally describe their research at a scientific conference and how they describe their research using only the 1000 most common words in the English language. Contestants were judges on three criteria: Language – Does the entry convey the work of the grad student in a clear and concise manner, using the 1000 words in an economical and grammatically correct fashion? Style – Does the entry go beyond clear word choice to incorporate humor, prose, rhythm or other elements of style to good effect? and Presentation – Does the candidate present their entry effectively?   Considerations are enunciation, volume, posture, and dress?

Yasmeen at a scientific conference: I study the link between sperm chemotaxis and fertilization success. Eggs in animals such as sea urchins release chemicals that act as sperm attractants. Sperm use chemotaxis – that is, orientation towards the source of a chemical gradient – to find the eggs. However, it is unknown whether sperm chemotaxis directly contributes to reproductive success.

Last Friday the Burke Museum hosted FOSEP’s inaugural 1000 Word Challenge with fantastic results. Just under 200 people were in attendance, and the grand prize winner by Yasmeen Hussain included, “Some man things are better at listening than others. I want to know if the man things that are better at listening are also better at making babies.”

Curated from Inaugural FOSEP 1000 Word Challenge Was a Great Success! | The Seattle Forum on Science Ethics and Policy

 

Research Fellowship Training -Career Planning 31/7/2015

31st July 2015 Life as a at Cranfield and

Nice to see 20-30 of us attending. Despite being an established Research Fellow it was useful refresher training for me.

It all boils down to a triad of academic Papers (out), research student PhDs (out) and Pounds (in). The ages old maxim publish or perish.

To some extent your job is what you want it to be if you begin to bring in funding, excel at what you like and are good at and do the least you can get away with for the rest.

One of the interesting messages is the for every four hours meeting the Research Customers needs two and a half could be spent advancing ones career with papers and items of esteem, one and a half seeking new research grants, 1 hour teaching and supervising students, and 1 hour of citizenry and giving back to the quality of life of your work community. Most of us spend most of our time chasing our tails and leave the advancing ones career stuff too much to chance.

It was interesting that hands-on teaching peaks mid career with lecturers and senior lecturer. Readers and Professors are more broadly focused on the intellectual stewardship of their fields and its strategic resources such as the funding and intellectual outcomes

Life can be a roller coaster of ups and down – you need to be able to handle failure -grant rejections -paper rejections, etc. You need to stay grounded in reality and not get over hyped or devastated. Respond to challenges and setbacks with solutions and don’t allow yourself to become a toxic moaner that everyone resits helping.

There are multiple paths to success, but don’t expect the rules and goal post to be written or set in stone. Luck and intelligent understanding matter as well. Know your skills and leverage your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses.

Esteem and publications are like social media they are an ecosystem that grows out and grow on itself and starts to show exponential influence with time.it

Most research fellows struggle because they:
lack a plan to become a Professor
Most promotion cases are flawed because the candidate:
Lacks a clear and distinct intellectual vision

The Academic Reputational Development Plan has moved here to the PLAN

health check and plan
health check and plan

Scholar profiles

Follow me on Academia.edu
Follow Me on ResearchGate
See Me on
orcid.org/0000-0002-6560-8258
ResearcherID: B-1686-2008

Publons

I am a working at Cranfield (United Kingdom). I research change (newer, greener, different or better) on ‘s decisions and and environmental systems.

The Winnower…I’ve not used it yet, but have registered a profile out of curiosity.

Operational (Operations) Research, , Environment, Systems Thinking, Decision Modelling, , (LCA), Novelty, Innovation, Policy impact, Climate change, Land-use change, Sustainability

Curated from The Winnower | Open Scholarly Publishing