Storytelling for Science

How was it for you? I'm tired, but I liked it... 😳 Listen... I made an effort! I really wanted this to come to the world fully formed yesterday...  It didn't happen. Too much information and "zooms" make me groggy... So, here we are. End of #PeerReviewWeek2023. My first full one.  How was it for you? I'm tired, but I liked it...      I promised a post a day, so I'm due one. This one. I want to tell you all about how I do this thing. Peer review is not an art form. It's work. We can break it down into a process. How do you become a good peer reviewer? Not to brag, but already doing it, I'm quite good 😎 ( did you see this? ) Here are some top tips: Read. In your area, in areas adjacent, sometimes in completely unrelated ones.  It's good to be aware of different styles and conventions, as they all have features we can learn from .  Reading keeps you up to speed with the latest developments in your field, and it is a good habit to maintain if you wan...

I've had a busy couple of weeks, and it seems I'm just over the hump today. For someone such as me, used to dealing with a cat and not much more, attending conferences —even if virtually— is quite exhausting. But it's been worth it. I've learned a lot and got to know wonderful humans.   Dr Ana Persic is Programme Specialist for Science Technology and Innovation Policies and Open Science at the UNESCO Headquarters. She gave a very detailed and engaging presentation on what is open science.  According to the recommendation produced by UNESCO , This is all very well and good (really... it is!), but nobody would pay attention to it. Do you know how the audience felt attracted? With infographics .👇 If you say that the content is the same, you'd be wrong. Although it's the same text, this visual representation provides a stronger storytelling structure for a summary. And here, at Storytelling for Science, we really like those! This infographic also displays the ot...

There is a new beast in town... In the age of short form social media posts and lack of time to read, visual representations are extremely valuable. A new entity, called graphical abstract was born.  A graphical abstract is a single image designed to assist the reader in quickly gaining an overview of the manuscript. It accompanies the written abstract but does not replace it.   I would never dream of expanding on design concepts I know nothing about. So, I'll defer to the experts.👇 A lot of cool designs are available from some of the most well-known platforms, such as BioRender , Mind The Graph , and Animate Your Science . Given the complexity of making design concepts work for summarising the main take-home message of a scientific paper, these are typically used on social media and journal websites. They usually have little to no text at all, and communicate with other elements of the scientific paper, whilst still being self-explanatory. The purpose of a graphical abs...

It's Peer Review Week 2023! This is the second post of this week, so we're discussing how reporting of methodology came to be regarded as an asset to the reproducibility initiative. Stick around and follow daily! If you want to read why the scientific method was developed, check it here . If you want to know why you should care, read on.   Promoting Reusable and Open Methods and Protocols ( PRO-MaP ) is a set of recommendations aimed at improving the reporting of protocols in the life sciences.    I first heard of this initiative through my work at Bio-protocol . This is an online peer-reviewed protocol journal that curates and hosts high quality, free access, step-by-step protocols across the life sciences. Although relatively recent, it's by no means unique . The expansion of protocol sharing led to the establishment of detailed guidelines for preprints, and validation sections were introduced in protocol articles. The detailed features of these protocols, structur...

It's Peer Review Week 2023! This is the first post of this week, so we're discussing reading other researchers' work, how this impacts our own, and the broader community. Stick around and follow daily! If you want to know how i do it, check it here . If you want to know why you should care, read on. Eleftherios Teperikidis is the lead author of the first AI-powered systematic review .   One of the most interesting articles I read in recent weeks has been one on using artificial inteligence (AI) for research... It's called Prompting ChatGPT to perform an umbrella review . For me, the most remarkable feature of this publication is it dispassionate analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of using AI tools in scientific writing.   ChatGPT was successfully prompted to execute nearly every step of the systematic review process, by using PICO (Problem, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) as a universal technique to approach the scientific writin g process. There has bee...