The importance of communication skills in the National Weather Service
As part of an online discussion forum, Wes Browning, Meteorologist in Charge of the National Weather Service Forecast Office in St. Louis, had this to say about the importance of communication skills. …as an NWS hiring official, I’d like to point out the critical importance of communications skills and training in operational emergency management (NIMS). […]
TMA (Too Many Acronyms)
Something’s happening here. Something either has been increasing in frequency recently or has started grating on my nerves more: the tendency of authors to introduce numerous and unnecessary acronyms in their manuscripts. This example comes from George Bryan. Clearly, this one is over the top. “Comparing each composite MLqv to their respective distribution means, FA […]
Chinese translation of “How to Research and Write a Case Study in Meteorology”
Hai-Jiang Kong of the Henan Meteorological Observatory was kind enough to translate my article “How to research and write effective case studies in meteorology” in the Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology into Chinese: “如何做有效的天气个例研究”. That article is made available here: PDF. Thanks Hai-Jiang! Schultz, D. M., 2010: How to research and write effective case […]
First for Eloquent Science
Matt Bunkers has just published a paper in the National Weather Association’s Journal of Operational Meteorology. The acknowledgements read: “The book, Eloquent Science, was an in- dispensable resource during the many revisions of this paper.” This is the first time I am aware of an acknowledgement in a journal article. In an email, Matt told […]
How to give feedback to colleagues and students on their writing
One of the perpetual difficulties with providing feedback to others is the tendency to coat the paper in red ink, leaving the author having to plow through all the comments. While not inherently bad in itself (I’m guilty as charged!), it can leave the author thinking that the 30 errors in punctuation exceed the one […]
Advice on providing better feedback…
Our advisors coated the drafts of our writing in red ink. And, we, in turn, coat the drafts of our students’ writing in red ink. Does the volume of red ink challenge students to improve their writing, or do they just shrug it off (for any number of reasons)? I was just reading an article […]
Improving communication skills through writing groups
April 30, 2014 Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Presentations, Writing
Liveblog (Vienna, Austria): Later today and tomorrow, I’ll be talking to ClimateSnack‘s Mathew Reeve about improving communication skills for scientists. This got me thinking more about what ClimateSnack is trying to do. This graphic shows it well. It is about getting scientists to become better communicators with other scientists through short Climate Snack blog posts. […]
Speaker tips
April 28, 2014 Filed under Blog, Featured, Presentations
Liveblog (Vienna, Austria): We’re four talks into the European Geosciences Union General Assembly (#EGU2014). Already we have seen how some speakers could improve their presentations. 1. Too many graphs on one slide that are spoken about too quickly, if they are spoken about at all. 2. Font sizes too small to be seen, even when […]
I’ll be blogging the European Geosciences Union General Assembly
We’ll be blogging and tweeting (@EloquentScience) away at the 2014 European Geosciences Union General Assembly next week in Vienna, Austria. Get tips on how to improve your presentation. Find out who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. 😉 You can follow me and all the other bloggers and tweeters at http://geolog.egu.eu/general-assembly-blogroll/.
Thoughts on the impact factors and other metrics: Royal Meteorological Society journals
March 31, 2014 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing
Recently, I’ve been having some discussions with people about the impact factors for the Royal Meteorological Society journals (Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Weather, Meteorological Applications, Atmospheric Science Letters, and International Journal of Climatology). The issues of how to raise impact factors for journals are not simple. The impact factors of nearly all […]
