Writing retreats

Tags

hiking, writing

One of the things I certainly struggle with now that I’m in a job that involves managing people and programs as much as doing Actual Science™ is finding time to write. About 18 months ago, a colleague forwarded this post from Thesis Whisperer on how to write 10,000 words a day. The secret: turning off distractions, working in a mutually supportive group, and editing later. It’s called Shut Up And Write (or SUAW), because that’s what you do. We’ve merged it with the Pomodoro Technique, and do 25 minutes of writing, with a 5-10 minute break, and repeat 4 times in a morning or afternoon about once every 3 weeks.

But sometimes, that’s just not enough.

In 2015, we had a 6-month expedition to Henderson Island which generated a metric boatload of data. Now, 6 months after the expedition ended, we’d had a preliminary look through the data, and outlined what we thought were the sensible papers that would come out of the trip. We just needed to crunch some data and write some papers.

So I went hiking in Switzerland.

Well, I actually went to a friend’s house, where he, I, and another colleague spent about 2 weeks crunch data, writing papers, and hiking in the Alps and the countryside. We’d get up at about 0630, work for a bit, have breakfast, work for a bit more, and then head outside for 3 or 4 hours, work a bit before supper, and a bit after supper. We still put in at least 8 hours each day on “work”, recharge mid-day (often discussing results, angles for papers, strategies for analysis, and implications of findings along the way). And it was amazingly productive. The last time I had so many related papers in such an advanced stage of preparation (all are now just about complete first drafts for coauthors, if not further along) was in the heady days of my Ph.D.

Now, I realize that I was very lucky in that the only cost of doing this was a train ticket (along with the mental anguish of Paris’s Gare du Nord, and the occasional overly vocal football/soccer fan on the Eurostar), and my boss and workplace was also highly supportive of me basically putting my other work responsibilities largely on hold for 2 weeks (we had only intermittent email, and weren’t checking phones for messages). During my Ph.D. in Newfoundland, especially towards the end, I lamented that there wasn’t a nice saltbox in Trepassey where grad students could go and write up their theses.

So if you’re a PI or department head or anyone else who manages people who need concerted time to write, try Shut Up And Write, and throw in the occasional writing retreat. You might just be pleasantly surprised.

How to apply for a field job

Tags

field work, job applications, jobs

I’ve hired well over a dozen field technicians in the last 10 years, and have just wrapped up this year’s recruitment.  Below are some thoughts on what you can do to increase the likelihood of success in a job competition, and also some advice on whether to apply in the first place.  You should also read this advice from Auriel Fournier, which hits many of the same points.  Like Auriel’s post, these are things I look for when I’m hiring; other places likely differ.

 

Don’t be generic

I receive a fair number of what I call “Dear Sir/Madam” applications.  These tend to go along the lines of “Dear Sir/Madam, I am interested in applying for the advertised position in your organization”.  It’s rather obvious that little thought has likely gone into the application, as it doesn’t mention the job, organization, or other details specifically.  This “fire broadly and see what sticks” approach is a waste of time.  It’s not that difficult to personalize job applications, even within a generic framework, and “Dear Sir/Madam” applications go to the bottom of the pile.

 

The skills

Most job postings are looking for people with a given skill set, whether it be bird banding/ringing, data management, blood sampling, or operating specific equipment.  It’s important in your cover letter to go through each of these and demonstrate how you fit the criteria.  The first thing I do when advertising a job is make a spreadsheet with all the different skills I’m looking for.  When I start looking through applications, I check off which of the requirements each applicant has.  Your chances of getting an interview and being successful are very small if you have the necessary skills or experience the job is looking for (or you don’t clearly demonstrate these in your cover letter).

Use the same wording as the job advert. If the job requires someone with bird banding experience, a paragraph/sentence about how long you’ve been banding, which species/species groups, and roughly how many individuals would be a useful thing to include.

 

Location & wage

The assumption is that, if you’re applying for a job, you would accept the position if it were offered.  I was advised in grad school to “apply for everything”, which is not a strategy I recommend.  As a postdoc, I had no intention of working in the US, so I didn’t apply for any jobs in the US. Doing so was a waste of my (and the hiring committee’s) time.  Likewise, if you have no intention of accepting the position at the wage advertised, then don’t apply.  This is usually determined by an internal salary scale or the size of the grant.

 

Follow instructions

In my most recent job competition, I asked for a cover letter, CV, and 3 references (with phone numbers) as a single PDF, yet about 15% of applicants didn’t follow this requirement.  Multiple files, different formats, only 2 references, no phone numbers, … you name it.  Not only is there likely a good reason for these sorts of requirements, but it can also act as a screening mechanism, much like Van Halen’s “No Brown M&M’s” clause – if you didn’t follow these instructions, it doesn’t bode well for the rest.

 

Check with your referees

I don’t like wasting referees’ time, so it’s unlikely that I’d contact them if you weren’t being interviewed (which generally means you have a good shot at the position).  So make sure your referees are current, and can speak to your strengths for the job required. This might mean (gasp, shock, horror) that your referees differ depending on the job.  While I appreciate that your 3rd-year invertebrate anatomy prof can speak quite highly of your academic abilities, are they the most suitable person when applying for a field job?

Make sure your referees also know you’re applying, either for a particular post, or just generally on the job market, so that they’re aware they may be contacted by potential employers.

I don’t simply ask referees “So, how was X at doing job Y for you?”  I’m interested in their take on your strengths and weaknesses, whether they’d hire you again, and how you stack up against others that held that sort of post before, for example.

 

The interview

If you’re being interviewed, it generally means you have the technical skills to complete the job to the required standard, and the decision is down to other factors, such as personality, how well you’re likely to get on with other team members, or how you’d react in various situations.

Before the interview, think about what questions are likely to come up.  I’m less likely to ask you about your technical skills (I can generally assess those from the application package).  I generally propose a few scenarios, followed by asking “What would you do?”  There’s no wrong answer, and some of the questions may not seem relevant to the job at hand, but they will tell me something of the person that a CV and cover letter can’t convey.

I’m also very likely to ask what you think your greatest weakness is.  This isn’t an attempt to weasel out your flaws, but to get your perspective on your own professional development.

During the interview, take notes of what was asked, and your general answers. This will help you prepare for other interviews in the future, and the task of writing the questions down can help solidify your answers.  You should also be prepared to ask some questions of the interviewer about the post, or the process.  This shows a certain level of engagement with the application, and that you’ve given it thought between the application and interview.

If the interview is by phone or Skype, pick a quiet room where you’re unlikely to be interrupted by pets, family, traffic, or other disturbances, and do your best to minimize any technical glitches.  If in person or video conference, dress professionally.

 

There are many other posts about job interview tips and tricks, and these are just a few that I’ve had come through my mind in this latest round of recruitment that might not be covered as extensively elsewhere.  I think it can be summarized by these three points:

1. Demonstrate explicitly in your application how you satisfy the criteria
2. Provide referees who can speak to the pertinent aspects of your career for the position
3. Be calm, professional, and engaged with the interview process

 

It’s as easy* as that!

 

Footnote – “fit”

My biggest frustration on the job market was being technically qualified, and being interviewed (or at least long-listed), but in the end unsuccessful because of “fit”.  This can be used for any variety of reasons, some more unsavoury than others (like the exclusion of women or people of colour), but for many field jobs, it’s an important aspect as living/working conditions are likely to be very close/demanding, or for a long period of time in isolation. Having a team get on well with each other is very important.  “Fit” should only be considered once the technical skills have been assessed.

 

Footnote the second – online presence

Chances are, I’ll Google long-listed applicants in a professional capacity (are you on Twitter, or Google Scholar? Do you have a website?). I won’t stalk you on Facebook (though other employers may).  Be aware of what you put online.

— — —

*a bit tongue in cheek. For each job, there are far more qualified applicants than there are positions, so try not to despair if you’re not successful.

Canadian government postdocs: revived (well, sort of)

Tags

government, postdoc, postdoctoral fellowship, postdoctoral research pilot program, visiting fellowships

I wrote before about the demise of the Visiting Fellowship program, which placed postdocs in Canadian government research labs, and used NSERC as a middleman (middle-agency?).  Recently, the employment practices around this arrangement, particularly whether postdocs were entitled to benefits.  An employment tribunal reasoned that they were, and the program shuttered (though all current VFs were fine through the remainder of their tenure).

Now, it comes to my attention that an open-ended competition for the Postdoctoral Research Pilot Program (PRP) has been posted on the Government of Canada jobs site.  My guess, and those of some informed government colleagues, is that this is the replacement for the old VF program.  But there has been no announcement, no information page, nothing.

Some other interesting queries… all government jobs are classified based on the broad category and salary scale.  Two important ones for our purposes here are RES and EG.  RES is a Research Scientist, and there are 5 levels (RES-5 being the highest). EGs are scientific technicians, with EG-7 being the highest level.  How are PRPs to be classified?  The old VF program scaled salary to n% of the entry level RES-1 (I think it was 85-90%).  If the new PRPs are to be classified (and they would be, as government employees), an entry RES-1 seems most likely.  This is huge, as the base salary in 2013 (the last year of the current collective agreement) is $53,161 (link; search for “SE-RES-1”).  That’s a big improvement on the $49k of the VF program.  It’s even bigger if it includes benefits, which are quite significant in a government job (pension, medical/dental, etc).  So the actual cost goes up considerably.

Where will this new money be found?  Previously, the VF program paid postdocs from their immediate supervisor’s operational budget.  I wonder if the benefits side of things will be similarly covered, or whether that comes from higher up in the department.  And what about unionization? RES positions are represented by PIPSC, and the current agreement is up for renewal.  Granted PIPSC isn’t known to strike as often as the other major federal government labour union (PSAC), but who knows what the future will bring.

One last, yet troubling, word.  The advertisement linked above excludes two of the most science-heavy departments: Fisheries & Oceans Canada, and Environment Canada.  Sources have told me that there continues to be no internal / government postdoc option in these departments, and no indication that one will be appearing soon.  With an already limited pool of postdoc funding, the loss of the VF program, and unavailability of the PRP in all departments puts further strain on PhD graduates in Canada, and especially those who want experience in the public service.

Possibly pedantic points: scientific names

Tags

pedant, scientific names

When it comes to certain things, I am a pedant. Not the annoying beat-you-over-the-head type of pedant, but the type that has been known to geek out over methods for reporting taxonomic authorities (it’s all in the parentheses).

This weekend, I had two related thoughts about something that many of us biologists use on a regular basis – those agreed-upon names, comprising species and genus, that transcend our own “common names”.  The first question is what, exactly, we should call them?

It’s rather common to refer to “Alca torda” as the Latin name for the Razorbill, but a more proper title would be the bird’s scientific name. Not all scientific names are Latin. Some are Greek, Arabic, or even Swahili. In this case, Alca is Icelandic or Norse for “auk”*. Calling “Alca torda” the Razorbill’s Latin name is akin referring to all lightbulbs as “fluorescent”; some bulbs are, indeed, fluorescent, while others are not, yet they are all lightbulbs.  Some scientific names are Latin, while many are not, yet they are all scientific names.

 

Another oddity, and one for which I don’t have an answer, deals with parentheses around such scientific names (we’ll leave the discussion of brackets and braces for another day).  While it’s all well and good to talk about Alca torda eggs, and Diomedea dabennena diet, or even Alle alle altitudes, it’s more common to call them Razorbill eggs, Tristan Albatross diet, and Dovekie** altitudes.  It makes our science more accessible, even among specialists.  While I know that a Fluttering Shearwater is Puffins gavia, it’s different from a Great Shearwater, which is Puffinus gravis. And someone who isn’t up on their classification of the Procellariidae might be easily confused, or have trouble following along.

So for better or worse, we often use common names, and insert the scientific name at each species’ first mention.  But how we do this is inconsistent, and I don’t know if there is a right way.  Some options are:

• Razorbill (Alca torda)
• Razorbill Alca torda

I tend to prefer the first, as the italicization doesn’t often render well in some typefaces (notably sans-serif), and it’s easier for my brain to parse the scientific and common names.  It also identifies to me that it’s an aside, and we will use “Razorbill” as our collective shorthand for “Alca torda L. 1758″.

I realize that this is likely discipline specific – some taxa simply do not have common names for all species, and some disciplines have a culture of using scientific names.  Some journals insist on one of the styles above, but the decision appears to be editorial or stylistic, and not founded in any actual logic.  I don’t know what that logic is, but perhaps some fellow pedants could point it out.

 

*You can check out Roger Lederer & Carol Burr’s fantastic book “Latin for bird lovers“, and ignore the gross error in the title, as I do.

**we’ll discuss common English bird names later.

Manuscript necromancy: challenges of raising the dead

Tags

data management, manuscript necromancy, manuscripts, necromancy, publishing, students, writing

If you’ve been doing research for any length of time, you probably have data that aren’t doing anything but taking up space on your hard drive.  Stick around a little longer, and you’ll eventually have entire projects with half-written (or even completely written) manuscripts that, for one reason or another (or indeed no reason at all) have fallen by the wayside.  At some time in the future, you’re organizing files, or chatting with a colleague and you suddenly think “Oh yeah. Whatever happened to that?”.  Or, if you’re a PI/manager, you’ve had students write their theses/reports, which should have/could be manuscripts, but aren’t.

I’ve dubbed the process of (re)discovering a dead manuscript, and breathing new life into it manuscript necromancy. I think the comparison works.  And like true resurrection from the dead* manuscript necromancy isn’t without its challenges and limitations, and you might need some … interesting tools to get the job done.

I should point out that in a perfect world, necromancy wouldn’t be needed, and all data would be formatted beautifully with wonderful metadata and reproducible analysis scripts.  But this world is far from perfect.  This is the scientific dark arts. Hold on to your tracked changes, boys and girls, we’re going in, and it could get ugly.

 

Slash and burn

Student theses aren’t often written with tight language, good grammar, and in the style of a journal article.  There’s frequently lots of exposition and background, a verbose writing style, mixed tenses, inconsistent formatting, … the list goes on.  The first step is to go through the current draft with a take-no-prisoners edit to remove unneeded text, straighten out the grammar and style, and to give yourself a general feel for the manuscript.  This is, often, the most labour intensive part of the job.  A recent manuscript we resurrected took me 3 full days of editing, which ultimately reduced its length by almost half.

My next step is to tackle the references.  Theses often cite everything under the sun (Smith et al. 1758), regardless of how useful it is (Jones 1877).** 9 (or 10) times out of 10, the references are incomplete or missing, and almost certainly aren’t in your reference manager of choice (let alone the journal’s style, but that’s another argument for another day).  One trick is to look for references that are only in one place, and ask whether they are truly needed. If they are, keep them. If not, away they go.

The last item on this first step is to look at the tables and figures.  Are they all needed? Are they all necessary?  Are they clear?  Hopefully the answer is yes, or requires minimal changes (though see some spooky possibilities below).

Congratulations! You’re now a Level 1 Manuscript Necromancer (and are entitled to the post-nominals M.N. in certain circles).

 

The festering wound

But a manuscript can still be alive, though severely wounded.  In some cases, you’ll discovery (to your utter dismay) that you need to re-analyze data, or re-draw a figure.  Both of these require necromancy of the most troubling form: data.

Data management has been improving as  whole ***, but student thesis data is not known to be the most friendly for outsiders to wrangle.  You just have to check out #otherpeoplesdata on Twitter to get a taste of the frustrations.

While your initial reaction would be to re-create the analyses done in the original draft, and obtain the same results before moving on, I strongly recommend against it unless the data are well archived with appropriate metadata and explanations of the analysis (in the form of notes, an R script, etc).  You will not get the same results, and you will tear out your hair (and possible scalp) looking for it.  The situation is already less than ideal, so cut your losses, and use what you have.  By all means, cull anything that’s rubbish (and document it!), and then proceed with your analysis/graph.

Level 2 completed.

 

Communicating with the dead

One of the biggest challenges of necromancy is in the final stages. You have a draft with the right analyses & figures, and you’re ready to submit. Assuming that someone else started this science (be they a student, technician, contractor, or sorcerer’s apprentice), I’d argue that there’s an obligation to include them as a coauthor.  The exception might be if the end product bears no resemblance to the original, but that is less about manuscript necromancy, and more manuscript transfiguration (a topic for another post).

Make every effort to get in touch with the originator so they can a) see what changes you’ve made, b) approve of them, and c) know your plans for the paper.  This means old email addresses, good old Google searching, contacts through third parties (e.g., friends of friends) and the like.  And keep records of these in case you can’t track them down.  If you can’t, and have made every effort to find them, they should still be listed as a coauthor. Most journals require you to state that all authors have read and approved the submission, so in this case, my pragmatic argument is that, unless there were major changes to the conclusions, their first draft is implied approval****. If there were major changes, you absolutely must track them down, or remove them from the authorship list.

 

Rest and recharge

Manuscript necromancy can be more work and is certainly more exhausting than writing a manuscript yourself.  Don’t resurrect more than one manuscript at a time, and don’t do more than two or three in a row.  You need time to recharge your mind, and to many resurrections in a short period can lead to botched necromancy (and no one wants that) because of reduced effort, particularly in the Slash & Burn phase.

 

Preventing (manuscript) death in the first place

The best solution, though, is to avoid necromancy in the first place. This isn’t always possible, though, and just because something doesn’t get written up doesn’t make it less Science.  Some things, though, can vastly improve the chances of successful necromancy, and are good research practices to boot:

• encourage good writing. This isn’t easy, and Terry McGlynn has some good thoughts on this issue more broadly.
• give good, timely feedback (which increases the chance of a successful manuscript before it dies for the first time)
• encourage good data management.  The easier it is for someone else to piece together the analysis, the better chances of necromancy, especially when deeper techniques of the academic dark arts are required.
• encourage good data management.  Have I said this yet? It’s sort of important.

 

Glass houses, stones, and all that

One last note – manuscript necromancy need not apply to just someone else’s work, but is equally applicable to your own work from the past that’s being revisited. The same tools and techniques (and problems) apply. In this sort of case, your familiarity with the manuscript may be overwhelming to your necromancy techniques.  Having an outsider read it over as a friendly reviewer is strongly recommended.

 

Wishing you all much success in your exploration of the scientific dark arts.

— — —

*well, not exactly “true”, sensu stricto, but more widely known

**see what I did there? Not exaggerating either.

***or at least I hope it is.

****ONLY in the absence of actually approving it, mind you, and as an absolute last resort.

Barriers to open access publishing at a scientific not-for-profit

Tags

journals, open access, publishing

Things have been going rather well lately. Lots of science, days are getting longer, and I made an awesome curry last Thursday.  Wary of falling into complacency, I thought I’d open a (possible) can of worms. Please, be kind.

 

Open Access is a wonderful thing.  I appreciate this as someone working at a not-for-profit with a total journal subscription of <40 titles. If we don’t subscribe to a title, or to the full back-catalogue, it’s £12 to the British Library, and one working week if I can’t find a stashed copy on the interwebs.  I’m a classic example of the sort of person who benefits from OA publishing – a practitioner on the ground, working with local partners on applied conservation issues.  But here’s the crux: it’s not easy for me to publish OA.

 

Now before y’all go for the pitchforks and high tempo bluegrass, hear me out.

 

I’ve been thinking about this for the last number of years, and I can break down the reasons why I don’t publish more OA papers into the following:

1. Money
2. Audience
3. External forces

Let’s begin.

 

1. Money

I’ll distinguish between the two types of journals that publish OA – those hybrid journals that let you pay for the option of OA, but will publish your article behind a paywall if you don’t pony up the cash, and those journals that are entirely OA.

Hybrid journals tend to charge significant sums of cash (thousands of your currency of choice).  The same goes for some OA-only journals.  Recently, Zen Faulkes highlighted his lab’s experience publishing many articles in OA journals.  Some journals had complete waivers, while for the majority, the fees were paid by a variety of sources, including research grants, departmental budgets, coauthors, and even apparently his own pocket (!).  I have no external grants, as my work is funded mostly through our core funding.  This core funding does not include covering page charges of any kind (OA or not), and I certainly don’t have the means to shell out for OA from my own pocket (were that it so!).  I’ve lobbied to have *some* publication fees included in our future budget, and we’ll see if that comes to pass, but for now, I am , financially speaking, stuck.

And yes, it’s true that there are several OA journals without any fees.  This recent study on journals indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) found a mean fee of $964, and many with no fees at all.  While the DOAJ might seem like a nice dataset with which to work, it presents two problems.  The first is the inclusion of known predatory publishers.  Many of the publishers appear on Beall’s List.  When I reached out to DOAJ via Twitter, they told me that they are in the process of upping the standards for inclusion in the index, and that essentially all journals will have to reapply.  Which is great, but for now, the problem remains.

The second issue is one that falls under #2.

 

2. Audience

I’m in a fortunate position (but see #3 below) in that I have a permanent full-time job, and one that isn’t (yet) harping on Impact Factors, which means I tend to publish in journals where I think my research best fits, and had the right target audience.  If I’m writing about plastic pollution in the oceans, I’d tend towards Marine Pollution Bulletin, but if I’d rather discuss gull diet, Waterbirds is a better bet.  Last night, I scrolled through the 108 journals listed in the DOAJ under Zoology, and the 393 listed under General Biology.  Many (most?) titles were ones I had never heard of, and were of very local interest in places where I don’t work (Acta Biologica Malaysiana, anyone?).  After filtering out the predatory journals (see #1 above), and those of exceptional local interest, there wasn’t a whole lot of choice aside from the “mega-journals” like Plos One, or PeerJ.  And what few did remain often had considerable fees.  It seems counter-intuitive if I want to publish an article OA, but resort to doing so in journals so obscure, you probably haven’t heard of them (perhaps we could call these “hipster journals”?).

 

3. External forces

For the overwhelming majority of my papers & projects, I’m not the only one involved, and a number of other folks have a stake.  In some cases, they’re prioritizing different things than I am, such as Impact Factors.  A colleague at a large research university had her department chair tell her that anything published in a journal with an Impact Factor < 4 was a waste of time, and wouldn’t count towards departmental/funding totals.  Collaboration involves negotiation.  In some cases, as in Zen Faukles’ case, coauthors have the funds or departmental support to cover OA costs, but this isn’t that common, particularly when things start running into four-digit invoices per paper.  This is particularly true when we consider that there are few “high Impact Factor” strictly-OA journals in ecology (though most/all? operate on a hybrid system).

Colleagues looking for jobs are also concerned that publishing everything in Journal A, an example OA journal, will reflect poorly on their CV (not because it’s OA, but because of the volume of papers in a single journal).  Whether it’s right nor not, people with power and who make decisions still care about where things are published.  Heck, so are most of us.  I have yet to meet an ecologist who was as excited about their paper in Ecology Letters as they were about one in Southwestern Naturalist. I will be keenly watching (and interested in hearing about experiences) as the “Open Access generation” (roughly those with PhDs since 2010, which is when I’d guess the OA movement gained significant mainstream attention) enters the job market.

 

I’m well aware of the philosophical arguments for Open Access, and I agree with them.  The concept of OA publishing is a good thing.  My hang-up is in the execution.  Yes, research grants are starting to include / require OA publication as a budget item*.  But if I look at my CV, I’d have a hard time coming up with suitable OA journal equivalents (or thousands of dollars / pounds / euros / pesos / dinari).

 

Would I like all my papers to be Open Access? Heck yes. But can I make that happen? Not yet.

 

Before everyone decries my possibly ill-informed orthodox maintenance of the inadequate status quo, here are two questions to kick things off:

1. What steps have I missed in achieving a goal of OA publishing on a limited/no budget? Are preprints the answer?
2.  This obviously doesn’t solve the problem of limited access.  What can we do to improve access to already-published literature, particularly for those in the not-for-profit sector?

 

Please, be gentle.

 

*And yes, I’m aware of fee waivers, but I’ve had colleagues & coworkers have their waiver requests turned down on a fair number of occasions, or large fees turned into smaller-but-still-large fees.  Hybrid journals also don’t tend to offer such waivers. I don’t see this as a viable solution.

The Ward Test, and the importance of metadata

Tags

data management, Ward Test

On 31 August 1869 in Birr (then Parsonstown), Ireland, Mary Ward met an untimely demise.  She is the first motor vehicle  accident mortality, having fallen off a steam-powered car built by a relative, and dying of a broken neck.  But Ward was also an amateur scientist, and being relatively young when she passed away, no doubt had unfinished investigations or projects that remained unfinished.

“But!” I hear you saying, “what on earth does a 19th-century Irish road accident have to do with science?”.  The answer is metadata.

I recently started a new position where I inherited some projects from me predecessor, which is certainly not unique.  A post-doc starts a project/experiment, and leaves before it’s finished, or a grad student builds upon some previous work in the lab, or uses data collected by a summer student.  All common phenomena in the scientific world.  And whenever one starts to use data collected by someone else, chances are, there will be problems.

On Twitter, this is often expressed using the #otherpeoplesdata hashtag.  and Christine Bahlai even started a fantastic blog, Practical Data Management, about some of the data issues she’s encountered, and how to avoid them.

At a team meeting today, we spent some time talking about the challenges of working with other peoples’ data, which is something we do quite frequently here.  The conversation then turned to the challenges I’ve had accessing, interpreting, and analyzing data from my predecessor, and that’s when I thought of the Ward Test.

 

Take a look at a particular dataset (where “dataset” is defined as what you need to write a paper).  If, like Mary Ward, you were shmucked by a car, would someone else be able to access, interpret, and analyze your data?  This is the Ward Test.

 

For many of us, the answer will be a resounding “NO!”, and the reasons for this are diverse and many, and not what I’m going to get in to here.  But what I do want to emphasize is the importance of metadata and organization.

Metadata are the bits of information that provide context for the data.  In my line of work, this could be where a bird was banded, it’s band number, species, age, sex, measurements, etc. that accompany some tracking data.  Technically, all the data are the positions recorded by the tracking device, but without the metadata, it’s utterly useless.

Even simple spreadsheets (do such things exist?!) could do with some metadata.  It also helps for when you go back to re-analyze data, or use data for a different project, or collaborate with others.  And as the culture of data sharing increases, this data about data (metadata!) will be increasingly important.

 

So, my goal is to include the metadata for each new dataset I generate.  In a spreadsheet, this can be included on an extra tab with definitions of what the columns mean.  In other cases, it would be a text file explaining what certain files are, and where the required information can be found.  I’ve written before about the importance of having a plan for what to do with data when a scientist passes away – the trick is making sure the data passes the Ward Test.

The same applies when sharing data – including metadata, and having data that pass the Ward Test will maximize the chance that whoever tries to use it has what they need to succeed.

How to calculate #MyGenderGap for publishing scientists

A recent article in Nature looked at the gender gap in scientific publishing among a variety of countries.  There’s lots of good stuff in there, but the one metric I want to focus on is the ratio of women/men authors.  In Canada, it was 0.459, meaning that for every woman author, there are 2.17 male authors.

There’s lots out there on womein in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the challenges they face, and the degree to which they are under-appreciated (including historical figures).

So what can I, a white man, do?

Well, the data in the Nature article had to come from somewhere.  So as an actively publishing scientist, I contribute to this phenomenon (regardless of whether my data were included in Nature).

After a bit of musing, I pulled up my current CV and decided to look at the gender gap in my own academic record.

• Male thesis/postdoc supervisors: 5
• Female thesis/postdoc supervisors: 0

• Male thesis committee members/examiners: 10
• Female thesis committee members/examiners: 0

• Male field crew members: 4
• Female field crew members: 2

• Male coauthors: 45
• Female coauthors: 27

That gives me a female/male coauthor ratio of 0.60 (i.e., 27/45), which though an improvement on the national 0.459, still shows the lack of parity.  Granted, some of these numbers were beyond my control (e.g., thesis examiners, existing collaborations to which I contributed).

But it’s a simple way to do a little academic introspection.  If you’re a PI and supervise students, that’s another ratio that’s easily calculable.  Some might argue that certain disciplines have an inherent gender bias in their composition (e.g., engineering tends to be a male-dominated field), so the tendency might be to compare our own F/M ratios to those in the field.  But achieving a ratio of under-representation isn’t success (or even mediocrity), and will do nothing to change the status quo.

“But I’m a successful PI, and this will take a lot of time!” some might say. I think taking 30 minutes (or substantially less) is a perfectly acceptable time to look at one’s collaborative and mentoring gender inequality.  Divide the number of women by the number of men, and hopefully Tweet your stats using #MyGenderGap

My F/M coauthor ratio: 0.65. Canada: 0.46 #MyGenderGap http://t.co/gBan8WEmFY

— The Lab & Field (@thelabandfield) December 12, 2013

 

How do I find a postdoc? A practical guide for biology & sustainability science

Tags

grad students, hiring, jobs, NSERC, postdoc

Finding a postdoc isn’t easy.  In fact, it’s probably the number 2 or 3 search term that brings people to The Lab and Field.  As much as I might lament the postdoc experience, it can also be a very rewarding part of an academic career (or a career destined for industry, government, the private sector, NGOs, or any other organization that does or uses scientific research).

But as a PhD students, I had no idea what a postdoc was, or where to find one.  I just knew that I needed to have one.

Fast forward three years, and two postdocs later, and I, along with a couple of other local postdocs, presented a workshop to graduate students today on how to find a postdoc, focusing mainly on ecology/biology, but also sustainability & social science.

We put together a resource of current programs, mostly in Canada, but also covering the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and some overseas programs.

The presentation is on figshare for all to see!

This is a workshop we’ll likely give again in the years to come, so additions, corrections, and any other input is welcome.

A postdoc isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t for every career path.  But for those going down the postdoc road, we hope our collective years and experiences can be beneficial.

Иностранная литература (or, just because it’s not in English doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant)

Tags

foreign literature, literature, publishing, writing

Less than 6% of the world is considered “English speaking”, and there are somewhere between “a heck of a lot”, and “good heavens – that many?!” languages worldwide.  Yet science has almost universally adopted one – English – for its lingua franca.  As one of the <6% native English speakers, and also a scientist, this is a huge relief.  I have enough trouble expressing scientific thoughts in English; I can’t imagine doing so in another language (or even another alphabet).

But, throughout the world, there are heaps of non-English speaking scientists doing science in non-English, and reporting their results in non-English publications and conferences.  That doesn’t mean us Anglos should ignore that rich corpus of scientific thought.  And never before in the history of humanity has it been easier to work across languages in science (well, except before stuff went down, literally).

The general term for non-English scientific publications is often “foreign literature” (the English translation of the Russian “Иностранный литература” in the title of this post), which I dislike for a few reasons. Chief among them is that in Canada, we are ostensibly a bilingual nation yet less than one third are conversant in French.  So while a Québecois(e) researcher is decidedly not “foreign”, their research remains largely inaccessible* to most Canadians.  But in the absence of something more suitable (non-English literature doesn’t have the same ring to it), I’ll work with what I’ve got.

*I hope to show otherwise, but this is the prevailing thought.

Finding foreign literature

In the age of the internet, the search engine is king.  Databases like Web of Knowledge have excellent coverage of foreign literature (Scopus less so, but that’s also an artefact of the years it covers; see below).  Google Scholar is also quite adept at picking up non-English articles.

This obviously becomes more challenging when searching for concepts (e.g., species-area curves) rather than particular species (Linnean binomials FTW!), but all it takes is one reference to show you that what you want is “Curva espécie-área” in Portuguese.  Wikipedia can also be a fantastic reference if there are two articles on your topic: one in English (or a language in which you know the term), and another in the target language you’re after (just click on the links under “Languages” over on the left-hand side).

But many non-English papers also contain an English title and abstract (sometimes found at the end of the article), and some include English table and figure captions.  This obviously depends on the journal, and to a lesser extent, when it was published (the practice was less common in the past).

By and large, my main point of contact with a particular bit of foreign literature is that someone else has cited it.  Much like the wardrobe that leads to Narnia, a single paper in Dutch will likely be peppered with many and sundry Dutch references.  Classic texts and reviews can be good places to start.

Reading foreign literature

Not everyone is a polyglot (though many of us might aspire to be; again, more on this later), but there are a few strategies that I’ve found to work rather well over the years (presented in order that I used them).

First off, there might be someone at your university/agency/workplace (not necessarily your department), or in your community that’s conversant in the language you need.  Colleagues elsewhere can also be a fantastic resource.  But, reading, translating, and interpreting a scientific text from one language to another is a fair bit of work.  As an example, I had one paper in Russian (Lobkov, E. G., and A. P. Nikanorov. 1981. Гибель животныхот вулканических газов в верховьях реки Гейзерной на восточной камчатке (Death of animals from volcanic gases in the upper reaches of the R. Geysernaya (eastern Kamchatka)). Byulleten’ Moskovskogo Obshchestva Ispytatelei Prirody Otdel Biologicheskii 86:4-13) and I had a particular set of questions (e.g., where was it, what are these species names, what was the main conclusion, etc) that I could take to my Russian colleague.  Even this took us about an hour to go through (and as a note, I found this through Web of Knowledge initially, and it had an English title, though poorly translated, and an English summary).

Google Translate is your friend. Unless you get exceptionally silly, it’s often enough to at least convey the general ideas.  To use Google Scholar, your non-English paper should (ideally) be in a PDF, and have undergone optical character recognition (OCR) processing.  This will be the case for many, but if it’s a scanned PDF, then you’ll need to OCR it yourself (easily done in Adobe Acrobat; but not Acrobat Reader – note that many universities have an educational discount for this software, and there may be other alternatives available elsewhere).  Even then, there may be some glitches (lowercase “f” and “l” are often confused, for example) that might require some manual intervention.  It’s also best to work in small chunks (1-2 paragraphs at most).  This is usually where I start.

If you end up delving into a fair deal of foreign literature, eventually you’ll be able to pick out key phrases, like concepts of species names.  It’s amazing how quickly it can happen.

Examples from ornithology

As someone who’s primarily an ornithologist, my examples will come from that field, but are equally applicable to anywhere.

Much of my work has been on community ecology and breeding biology of seabirds, and often including species that are found in both North America, and Russia (both the Atlantic and Pacific sides).  There are a few “classic texts” in seabird ecology from the 1950s-1990s in Russian (some of which have been translated into English):

• Dementiev, G. P., R. N. Meklenburtsev, A. M. Sudilovskaya, and E. P. Sapengeberg. 1951. Птицы Советского Союза (Birds of the Soviet Union, Volume 2). USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
• Kozlova, E. V. 1957. Фауна СССР: Птицы. Том. II, Вып. 3: Ржанкообразные, подотряд Чистиковые (Fauna of the USSR: Birds. Vol. 2, No. 3: Charadriiformes, suborder Alcae). USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
• Uspenski, S. M. 1958. The bird bazaars of Novaya Zemlya (English translation). Russian Game Reports 4:1-159.
• Belopolskii, L. O. 1961. Ecology of sea colony birds in the Barents Sea (Экология морских колониальных птиц Баренцова Моря). Israel Program for Scientific Translations, Jerusalem.

• Flint, V. E., and A. N. Golovkin. 1990. Птицы СССР: Чистиковые (Birds of the USSR: Auks). Nauka, Moscow.

These all contained information that I needed, and I’ve cited them all in various papers.  Thankfully, the (now-defunct) Israel Program for Scientific Translation covered some of these, but the translation isn’t perfect (some species are mixed up in figure/table captions, for example).  These are all books/monographs, and I found them because others had cited them.

Much of the ornithological work in the Neotropics occurs in Spanish- (and Portuguese-) speaking countries, and can be found in journals like Ornitologia Neotropical or Revista Brasileira de Ornitologia.  Neotropical migrants (those that winter in South America/Caribbean and breed in North America) link English and Spanish/Portuguese researchers, and they have largely been successful in bridging the communication divide.

Lastly, the proportion of non-English journals in ornithology appears to be decreasing.  Journal für Ornithologie, of the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft (German Ornithologists’ Society) is now Journal of Ornithology, and published entirely in English (with German Zusammenfassung).  Similarly, Acta Ornithologica, a publication of the Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, is now in English.  Don’t get me wrong – there are still heaps of non-English bird journals, but their number (and scientific influence) is dwindling.

En cas d’urgence…

During my PhD, it became readily apparent that, because the birds that were the focus of my studies were also found in Russia, and that there was a significant amount of research in Russian, that I’d have to pick a bit up.  More than I could get by using Google Translate, and pestering my poor Russian colleague (sorry Andrei!).  I was lucky enough to find someone who gave 1-on-1 lessons,  who tailored them to my ornithological needs, and charged a reasonable rate.  I was exceptionally lucky.  After about a year, I became somewhat proficient, at least enough to read and pick out key words that I could pair up with Google Translate as a second step.  I recognize that this may be seen as an extreme step, but I don’t think it was.

As scientists, we invest considerable time learning new analytical techniques, new programming languages, and understanding new systems.  New languages can benefit all of these aspects of our research, both directly by making more information accessible, and indirectly from the general advantages of learning languages.  I know this isn’t possible for all, but I bet it’s more possible than one might think (why not audit a language course at your home institution, for example?).

Final thoughts

For some of you, this post provides nothing new, but for many living in largely-monolingual North America, accessing foreign literature hasn’t been the norm in the past, at least not as much as it is in Europe.

As our search strategies for scientific literature change (both as a community, and individually), it’s important to not neglect science that’s not in English (or even–gasp!– not available as a PDF online).  Non-English academics have enriched our world considerably.  Ignoring these parts of the science literature is no excuse.