Category: 1. Research
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Best practices for page numbers in article submissions
Should you add page numbers to articles you submit for review? Absolutely. Why? Because it will make it easier for reviewers to comment. Should you have page numbers in an article you are preparing for submission? Absolutely. Why? Because your coauthors will find it easier to comment. (Not everyone will always be online; I still…
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How not to generate a hypothesis
xkcd is an enjoyable web cartoon, often with a scientific bent. This time they got it wrong, though. Introspection is not a proper research method to generate hypotheses. Rather you generate hypotheses from a theory that you are trying to validate. The development of that theory in turn is (should be) subject to the use…
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Open sourcing research software
In this 15min. video I’ll take you through the basic steps of open sourcing your research software. It covers purpose of open sourcing, the rights situation, license choice, and the actual step of open sourcing. The slides are also available. Please note that the slides and video contain some simplifications so make sure you resp. your lawyers…
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A short critique of CRediT
CRediT is a system for classifying contributions to research with the goal of documenting who did what for a given publication. Ann Barcomb, formerly a Postdoc in my research group, now a professor at U of Calgary, pointed me to it. The system may or may not be used by journals. As a long-time modeler,…
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Making your theory practical
The output of research is theory, initially just proposed, later validated (or invalidated). A theory is a description or model of phenomena of interest, and its main value is to make predictions about these phenomena. No predictions, no theory. Predictions are turned into hypotheses to put a theory to the test. Sadly, the word theory…
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The role of a literature review in grant proposals
Christmas is coming up, so what’s a professor got to do? Hide from the family and work on grant proposals, naturally. Right now I’m upset about the misunderstanding of the role that literature reviews play in grant proposals (by way of reviewer comments). Reviewing literature is just a general activity, but one that can serve…