Tag Archives: University

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

 

Project AC0114 – Data synthesis, modelling and management

WP 3 Farm Practice Synthesis

This work package will develop an archive of farm practice or activity data for representative farm systems in the UK, including information on fertiliser inputs; fertiliser and manure management; livestock feeding and breeding practices; and industry trends on the adoption of key mitigation practices such as anaerobic digestion and increased efficiency of nitrogen use.  These data will be key to representing the impact of changes in farm practice on methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Whilst the work package intends to make best use of existing national surveys and industry monitoring data, it is recognised that not all aspects of UK are adequately surveyed. Therefore, we will also scope a UK wide systematic survey of farm practices targeted at meeting the future needs of an improved gaseous emissions calculation methodology.

The first stakeholder workshop was held in March 2011 in Birmingham, with the aim of gathering feedback on the farm systems proposed for inclusion within the inventory and to gather recommendations on the mitigation methods that will need to be captured through the reporting:

Project AC0114 is managed as a collaborative project through an Expert Steering Group made up of the following principal investigators from the project partners:

Dr Steven Anthony (ADAS UK Ltd – Project Manager) Dr Tom Misselbrook (North Wyke Research – WP 1 Lead) Dr Kairsty Topp (Scottish College – WP 2 Lead) Dr Adrian Williams (Cranfield – Science Director and WP 3 Lead) Dr Ulli Dragosits (CEH Edinburgh – WP 4 Lead) Professor Andy Whitmore (Rothamsted Research – WP 5 Lead) Mr Laurence Smith (Organic Research Centre – WP 6 KE Lead) Dr Eileen Wall (Scottish Agricultural College – WP 7 Lead) Professor Pete Smith (Aberdeen University) Dr Catherine Watson (AFBI-NI) Dr Les Crompton (Reading University) The AC0114 project will span January 2011 to June 2015 and is composed of 7 separate work packages:

 

 

Research Blogging

This site gets my interest. Yes I do blog about peer-reviewed research, especially papers I am cited by or may cite. Yes that is as much a form of science communication as it is my own personal reflective thought. Done well it could add to and digital footprint.

Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.

Research Blogging
Research Blogging

If you’re a blogger who writes about serious research, Research Blogging offers you a way to distinguish your serious posts from news, politics, family, bagpipes, and so on. We can direct your regular readers — and new readers — to the posts you’ve worked the hardest to create. All you need to get started is a blog and a peer-reviewed research report that you’d like to discuss.

Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.

Do you like to read about new developments in science and other fields? Are you tired of “science by press release”? ResearchBlogging.org is your place. ResearchBlogging.org allows readers to easily find blog posts about serious peer-reviewed research, instead of just news reports and press releases.

How it works

  • Bloggers — often experts in their field — find exciting new peer-reviewed research they’d like to share. They write thoughtful posts about the research for their blogs.
  • Bloggers register with us and use a simple one-line form to create a snippet of code to place in their posts. This snippet not only notifies our site about their post, it also creates a properly formatted research citation for their blog.
  • Our software automatically scans registered blogs for posts containing our code snippet. When it finds them, it indexes them and displays them on our front page — thousands of posts from hundreds of blogs, in one convenient place, organized by topic.
  • Our editors identify the notable posts in each major discipline, publishing the results on our news page.
  • Other services like PubGet index our database as well, so every time readers search for a journal article, they can also locate blog posts discussing the article.

 

The Plan

The   Development Plan (work in progress)

Reputation is social mental construct that lives a very real existence entirely outside of you. It is the other person’s perception of another person’s perception of you. Essentially, it is social proof of trust in you. It can be influenced, it can be destroyed, but it can’t be explicitly created. It is slow to grow and readily damaged.

Reputation can inspire those around and motivate you to reach great fulfillment of self. Reputation precedes you and can make people far away defend your name as well as being a great marketing asset.

1a) What area of research do you want to be recognized for?

I want to be best known for research into the impact of better, novelty, innovation, and change on farmers’ decisions and systems

Analysis of the peer-reviewed citations I give and I get supports this

and b) which specific aspects of that area are key to defining your contribution?

I model for a living. My two main contributions are:

  • 1) the development of predictive (or prescriptive) decision modelling of systems using optimizing techniques such as , and
  • 2) to fully grasp the environmental burdens of decisions I develop agricultural system model-based Life-Cycle Assessments (LCA). These are quantitative hard-systems engineering approaches.

2) Do you want to be known as a specialist or a generalist?

Operational researchers are interdisciplinary generalists. I am a relative specialist with my core competence at the interface of , decisions, and the environment. I can be flexible and already extend towards modelling connections out to waste water treatment and renewable energy systems


3) Which academics around the world do you admire and why?

In no real order I admire the following academics

Laura McLayLaura McLay (Punk Rock Operations Research Blog) I admire because I enjoy her accessible and witty insights into OR theory, practice and profession and I am impressed with her social media presence and strategy. Laura McLay is Professor of , ISyE dept at of Wisconsin-Madison
Ian FrommerIan Frommer (@or4green) came to my attention several years ago as a prolific blogger and tweeter of Operational research for Green. Ian Frommer is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy* in New London, CT with interests in energy and the environment. I admire Ian for bringing the area of and the Environment to greater prominence on social media
Professor Stafford BeerI first came to read Stafford Beer‘s works in the 1990s and gained many of my formative influences as an Operational Researcher. I liked that he was a good communicator, a conceptual thinker on management cybernetics, and a of bit left field character
Eric AudsleyEric Audsley I admire for his thought leadership in my field in the UK and Europe, for his stewardship of the same and for the numerous models and programs of his that I use. He has been my line manager and or project manager since October1996 at the former Silsoe Research institute
Andres WeintraubCarlos RomeroAndres Weintraub (left) a Professor in the department of industrial engineering in the University of Chile and Carlos Romero (right) a professor of economics at the Technical University of Madrid I first met at The Euro Summer School on Operational Research in Agriculture and management in 2009 in Lleida and Solsona, Spain. I admire both for their career long prestige and international stewardship of my field, best embodied as two of the four editors of The Handbook of Operations Research in Natural Resources 
Lluis PlaLluis Miguel Pla is a personal friend and coordinator of the Euro Working group on Operational Research in Agriculture and Forestry Management. I admire him for his stoical long standing stewardship of my field in Europe. He is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Lleida, Spain
Richard DawkinsI admire Richard Dawkins fierce integrity in challenging society’s preciously held eternal truths and his broad spectrum skills at communication of science via many different media
Lluis PlaChristopher Ryan, PhD really impressed me by having an idea that changes the way we can see the world. I was impressed that he wrote it up as a New York Times bestseller and presented it a TED conference. His academic and communication skills are impressive and as is his fearlessness in confronting taboos, norms and beliefs with science.
Brian Camm, David Morris, and Bill Dilke from Seale Hayne College and Paul Webster and Nigel Williams from Wye College all helped inspire and teach me quantitative approaches to farm planning and control. A big shout out goes to Professor Jim France and Dr Les Compton for their stewardship of Agricultural Research Modellers Group

What are my take outs for top role model traits: Thought & opinion leadership, stewardship, communication skills, advocacy, perseverance, honesty, integrity, & trustworthiness.

What doesn’t take prominence: I know nothing of their private wealth nor if they wield political power. I am more aware of their intellectual achievements, but I can’t often say that they are directly useful to me. The later point is a bit like Antarctica…it feels good to know it exists, but I’ve never been there.

What matters here is that reputation is a natural outgrowth of one’s self and one that is easily damaged if you are caught faking it. Trust is fragile and social proof of trust can turn against you.

4) What key activities do you want to do that define who you want to be?

  • a) Research: Applied agricultural systems decision modelling
  • b) Communication: Written, oral and digital channels to peers, clients, industry & public
  • c) Leadership: Contribute ideas and coordinate networks
  • d (a) Educator & Trainer
  • d (b) Life long learner

5) What is your publication strategy?

Journal Reason? Number of papers to date? Number of papers you want?
1? Journal of the Operational Research Society 0.91 2013/2014 journal impact factor – Kudos and contribution to my profession 1  7.5%
2? European Journal of Operational Research 1.8 Kudos and contribution to my profession  17.5%
3? Biosystems Engineering 1.4 Kudos and contribution to my profession  1  25%
4? Agricultural Systems  2.5 Kudos and contribution to my profession  1 planned  10%
5? International Journal of  3.1 Contribution to profession/ area of application  1  15%
6? Journal of Environmental Management  3.2 Contribution to area of application  10%
7? Journal of Cleaner Production  3.6 Contribution to area of application  7.5%
8? Climatic Change  4.6 Contribution to area of application  1  7.5%

Other contenders Environmental Science and Policy (3.5), Bioresource Technology (5.0 -1 paper), Journal of Applied Ecology (4.8 -1 paper)

See also an analysis of the journals I cite and get cited by

6) Which key conferences best reflect your professional development?

  • a? Agricultural stream of the EURO conference
  • b? LCA Food conferences
  • c? MACSUR climate change and food security conferences and workshops

6b) What is you (academic) networking strategy?

7) What strategic grants will you bid in the next 5 years to help define who you want to be?

  • a Defra
  • b EU
  • c Technology Strategy Board

8) What items of esteem/ activity do you value?

9) What items of esteem/ activity do you NOT value?

None of these are bad per se, but one needs to carefully balance costs with benefits.

  • Excessive membership of Professional societies
  • Excessive refereeing of papers and grant proposals
  • Onerous conference/ session organization

10) What is your dissemination strategy?

The outcomes of my work tend to best inform the thinking of scientists, engineers, the policy community, and the more progressive innovative section of the farming community.  The dissemination ‘ecosystem’ is in a state of flux with the advent of open access journals and digital & social media bringing everything to within a Google mouse click. The trend maybe away from print to digital, but face to face is important. Being out there is good, being found above the white noise is better.

a) Peer-review papers

Increasingly there are opportunities to create multiple media hooks to help increase the impact of research. These can be in the form of graphical and  video abstracts. A bellwether example might be the journal of Environmental Research Letters

b) Trade Press

The are a few learned targeted at farmers

c) Social Media
I use Academia.edu and ResearchGate.net to make preprints available. I have a blog to post a more narrative discussion. I use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn to promote links back to my work. I do have a ResearcherID, Google Scholar, and an OrcidID to further increase exposure. For supplementary material I can use slideshare, Youtube, & Prezi.com.

My Social Media Klout score is in the 45-55 range

d) Influential opinion formers?

Bonus Question) Is your plan appropriately aligned with the University’s 415i plan?
yes

Career evolution
Career evolution

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