Storytelling for Science

Pride month just finished... So why is this relevant for academic publishing? I have a conflict of interest, as this is personal to me. This also means I feel obligated to clarify, educate, and mitigate biases whenever possible.  Sex refers to a set of biological attributes in humans and animals that are associated with physical and physiological features, including chromosome expression, hormone function, and reproductive/sexual anatomy. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, and identities of female, male, and gender-diverse people. It influences how people perceive themselves and each other, how they behave and interact, and the distribution of power and resources in society. Terms that define identity Apart from gay men, lesbians, and bisexual people, it is necessary to recognize, Asexual : An individual who experiences a lack of attraction to other persons of any sex or gender. Pansexual : An individual who experiences attraction to people regardless of g...

I was fired on the 8th March. Not this year, a couple of years ago... It was an inflection point in my life. I had never been fired before. I left jobs, turned down some opportunities for others, but nobody had asked me to leave before the end of my contract or project. Before that meeting. I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say this... I signed a NDA at the time, so I cannot delve into specifics. Suffice it to say, I had to change countries again. That day is engraved in fire in my mind, but the rest was a whirlwind. I rallied strength and support from unknown pieces of me. My family and friends were everything at the time. I sketched a plan and stuck to it. It paid off to be stubborn. I learned confidence in my abilities and to trust my capability to judge people's character and worth. I met so many different people. It brought me to a whole new life. I'll always stand up for what I believe in. Money  It can be used as a bribe or a form of punishment. It provides contro...

Yep. I did.  And decided I would write the guidelines for peer review I wish I had been given. In the traditional publishing model, journal editors choose reviewers based on their expertise. Reviewers can now also choose to post comments on preprints that they have a particular interest in, based on their own research experience.  Crowd-sourced models have also begun to flourish. But there is no definition of what a GOOD peer review is and how to recognise it. We aim to provide curated resources for training, define quality standards, and raise pertinent questions that evolved from the current context in the publishing industry.  We want to help maintain integrity in the peer review process, by involving the community in assessing their own training needs.   Together with some colleagues (Gareth and Jo), we came up with a crowdsourced initiative . And we got some ideas, wishes, and plans. We hope to improve transparency and accountability in the peer review ...

It is us! We are supporting others because we care about open access! OASPA is a diverse community of organisations engaged in open scholarship. Its varied membership provides a proven venue for productive collaboration. Open access stakeholders include not only scholar-led and professional publishers of books and journals, but also infrastructure and other services. I believe that authors and other content providers, such as graphic designers and independent consultants, should be informed about the organizations that influence policy-making in their area of expertise. Although my scientific publications have significantly declined in volume (but more are a-coming...), I work with and for authors, helping them navigate their publication journey, be it through help with writing, research design, or publication. It is good to have the help and support of OASPA and Reviewer Credits, and to have learnt so much with Bio-Protocol and Cactus Communications . Soon it will be Love Me...

Why are abstracts so important? A lot can be gleaned from the title and abstract . Most readers only go through the first page to gauge whether an article is of interest to them. ➜ These sections are therefore critical.  The abstract should clearly describe the main idea of the article; however, in papers "produced" by papermills , the abstract often does not match what is represented in the title. Other times, authors add keywords to titles/abstracts ( keyword stuffing ) to pass scope checks, but the actual content of the article is unrelated to the keywords. These discrepancies are even the main cause for declarations of concern by publishers. It is increasingly difficult to discern reality from fiction. A lot of this is caused by the ever increasing rise in submitted papers and lack of formal standards or guidelines for peer review. Moreover, the notion of reviewing as a professional obligation fails to sufficiently recognize or reward the burden it imposes. The rest...

Let's get opinionated... Peer review is still the cornerstone of quality research. This has been repeated by so many during #PeerReviewWeek2023 , it almost lost its meaning to me. I participated in this conversation wholeheartedly, as a freelancer with a variety of roles, from content review to integrity audits.  I’m no longer in academia, but I did my stint there: it’s hard to imagine that many PhD students and postdocs get excited by performing their first peer review. It often results from an invitation trickle-down and, although it can be regarded as a learning opportunity, peer review is hard, time-consuming, unpaid, and often unrecognized work. Open participation is often regarded by researchers as the fairer, more constructive and productive process, leading to improvement in the quality of the finished version of the works. This is the iterative version of having a preprint published in a stable server, with access to all versions of the work, and “comments on”. ...

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...

After you have been inundated with data , tables and figures , images and infographics , you want a take-home message . The discussion section is where you explore the meaning , importance , and relevance of your results . It has been called " the heart of the paper " and " your closing argument ".  You want people to finish reading your paper with a clear idea. Help them think.   Imagem de Colin Behrens por Pixabay . 🚫 Don'ts Restate the results   Introduce new results                       Discuss tangential findings   Criticize marginally related work Unnecessary speculation   Lengthy text   Components of the discussion   Answer ✅  Pick up where you left off in the introduction —remember setting the scene, placing the study in context, and justifying your study's aims?  Answer your own research questions by summarizing your k...

I did a thing... 👀 well, a couple of things! 😅 I became aware of ReviewerCredits just recently. I connected with the Managing Director, Sven Fund , and we had a couple of chats on the different ways in which peer review can advance in the future.  Gareth Dyke , the Scientific Director, invited me to participate in a podcast (you can listen to me from 13:00 here ). I must of sounded ok, because I was invited to join Gareth as the co-host in this event on LinkedIn Live ( Maria and Gareth AMA ), which was an experience like nothing else for me! Look at my face, I'm so uncomfortable!   This taught me something: whatever your profession, jump to the uncomfortable place. 💣Listen to your own voice (yuck! 😝) and watch your own face react (double yuck! 😳). I hope to have even more chances to share what I love doing with the world: promoting clear scientific and biomedical knowledge, accessible to all!      

When the reviewers say “it’s unclear which is the relevance this study may have"...😖 When I first started doing proper research, everybody in the lab I worked in wanted to cure cancer. At least, that’s what all their papers said… Why? Set the scene Cancer is one of the main causes of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, or nearly one in six deaths (WHO).  👆 This is what is called setting the scene. A claim comprised by one or two sentences, often backed up by one or more citations, that highlights the relevance and timeliness of the research. 🕕 It should be within the 1 st paragraph of your introduction , and accurately reflect what the paper is about. Here are some examples of this I wrote myself: Most of us at least know someone that died, survived, or is still struggling with cancer, so curing cancer would make a massive difference in everybody’s lives. But not all research is obviously relevant. Background and research gap In the broad field of...

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists were seen as credible but unapproachable , according to 3M's State of Science Index ( SoSI 2022 ).   So now what?      Let me tell you a story. At the end of his life , my dad decided to not have vascular surgery.  He had a chronic illness that had developed beyond the possibility of cure. That surgery could have limited pain. He worked in healthcare, he knew the consequences. His doctors were incredulous.   A lot of this has to do with misunderstanding.  M y personal experience on how doctors and scientists are perceived is with confusion and fear . 😕 😨   Science relies upon information that is accurate and complete.  While most doctors try to present information in an easily understood language, this does not evoke reactions in most people. 💜    Going to the hospital is scary. 🏥  Staying home is safe.🏡 Doctors were offering the best options. So, how could he decid...