Back in August, the first copies of Mark Vellend’s book The Theory of Ecological Communities were released. I got one of them and found out from the publisher and from the Twitter-sphere that the books were in high demand. A couple people on Twitter suggested forming a book club, and being a compulsive organizer, I …
Category Archive: Doing science
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/11/30/how-to-run-an-online-academic-book-club/
Thoughts on preregistering my research
Last week, I submitted the methods for the project I’ve recently started to the Center for Open Science’s Preregistration Challenge. Briefly, the goal of the challenge is to get more scientists to preregister their research, and it’s got a monetary incentive. The goals of preregistration itself are to increase transparency and reproducibility in scientific research. …
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/11/16/thoughts-on-preregistering-my-research/
Open data, authorship, and the early career scientist
About a year ago, my coauthors and I published a huge dataset of more than a million annotated images of animals from a camera trap network in the Serengeti. The lead author, Dr. Swanson, and I are both early career scientists, and we both put a ton of time and effort into this dataset. We …
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/06/15/open-data-authorship-and-the-early-career-scientist/
Experiments in efficiency: cooking while peer-reviewing
In computer science, laziness is a virtue. The term “lazy” is basically used as a shorthand for saying you should strive for efficiency so you don’t spend time writing code you could have avoided writing if you’d been smarter about your coding design. I’ve always generally keep an eye towards efficiency in my work, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/06/08/experiments-in-efficiency-cooking-while-peer-reviewing/
Pie charts: seldom or never?
So, the other day, I was casually browsing Twitter when I saw that Meg Duffy had posted some preliminary results from her latest survey on authorship over at Dynamic Ecology. “Oooh, pretty graph,” I tweeted of her pie chart. To which, I received this reply: @margaretkosmala really? It’s terrible. Pie charts should just die @duffy_ma …
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/05/04/pie-charts-seldom-or-never/
Observation as an essential ecology skill
In the past few weeks, there have been several posts on ecology blogs about what is ecology — and science more generally. What makes us scientists? What is valued within our profession? I often think about these questions in the context of citizen science. What makes us ‘professionals’? What are we able to do that …
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/03/16/observation-as-an-essential-ecology-skill/
Reflections on my first first-author pub (and the seven years it took to get there)
Coincidentally coinciding with my birthday, my first first-author publication came out this week. A nice birthday gift. Considering the paper has been seven years in the making (and that I’ve only been in the ecology field for a little more than nine years), this publication is also a moment for reflection for me. I’m hoping …
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/02/10/reflections-on-my-first-first-author-pub-and-the-seven-years-it-took-to-get-there/
Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to “read more”
You hear the self-indictment again and again: “I really should be better about keeping up with the literature,” “I need to read more,” “my goal for the year is #365papers”. Do you know anyone that says “I read too much”? How about, “I’ve got it all down pat and read just the right amount to …
Permanent link to this article: https://ecologybits.com/index.php/2016/01/20/maybe-we-shouldnt-be-trying-to-read-more/
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