How to determine authorship order quantitatively
Feuding coauthors on your paper? Petty arguments about who did more work? Colleagues whining because you didn’t include them in the author list of your latest Nature paper? I recently discovered the following paper, which reminded me of several articles that produce a quantitative approach to determining author order. Authorship of scientific articles within an […]
A note on good research practice: Dooley (2013)
April 8, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing, Reviewing, Writing
An editorial in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control is entitled “A note on good research practice.” Dooley states: By far the most common issue we editors of this journal are seeing in terms of poor scientific practice in submissions is the failure to appropriately cite the work of others. Sadly, we see numerous […]
A subjective discussion of the meanings of “subjective” and “objective”
Scientists are objective. Personal bias is not acceptable and interpretation that is subject to the observer is frowned upon. The above statement is the ideal to which we presumably strive to attain as scientists. The reality that we construct in our research is independent of the person doing the research. So, when someone performs some […]
An example of why hyphens are necessary
The following is an excerpt from an email sent to staff at the University of Manchester. As part of the University’s commitment to creating change in gender equality across the University we are running a half day unconscious bias training session focussed on recruitment and promotion. The following is how it should have been punctuated […]
Reviewer wants “media-friendly schematic”
This comment appeared in a review of a paper for which I am serving as Editor. “I suggest creating a media-friendly schematic showing the basic conclusions of how ….” Given all the recent publicity about …, I believe this paper will attract media interest, and a schematic like this will be useful for explaining the […]
An example of an excellent figure
I had been showing this figure to several students recently about an effective way to plot a lot of spatial data without the figure looking cluttered. I think this is one excellent way to do it. The plots are all ordered around the perimeter of the map, yet the points take you to the locations […]
Can you explain your science using the 1000 most-used words in the English language?
Give it a shot here: http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ (The title Up Goer 5 refers to xkcd’s comic of trying to explain the Saturn 5 rocket blueprint using only those 1000 words.) (From Jim Steenburgh and his student John; Image from xkcd.com.)
How to Prepare a Really Lousy Submission: Water Resources Research Editorial Team
Sent to me from colleagues at the University of Utah. [PDF]
“Utilize” versus “Use”
December 18, 2012 Filed under Blog, Featured, Uncategorized, Writing
From The Telegraph (sent to me by Jamie Gilmour): When the American writer David Foster Wallace died four years ago, he left behind the following fragments: notes towards a dictionary all of his own. Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn’t do, its extra letters and syllables don’t make […]
Automation of literature reviews
A recently published paper in Scientometrics raises the specter of an automated tool that would search through existing citations and “facilitate novices to perform tasks that are usually carried out by trained professionals.” The tool was then used for students to create literature reviews and these were submitted to conferences. The tool was so successful, […]
