all things scientific writing

Manuscripts

General

•          Always show a manuscript (or revision) to all authors two weeks (unless minor revision, then one week is okay) before submitting it, giving them the opportunity to comment.

•          Go over page proofs carefully, including the references. There is almost always a mistake (ours, or introduced by the publisher).

•          All of your figures should be EPS files with print resolution raster images (at least 300dpi).

•          Always give the senior author the opportunity to look at page proofs (most importantly to make sure they didn’t rasterize the mf figures).

•          Life span or life-span development but not lifespan. Decision making or decision-making task but not decision-making (f you for even suggesting that Word).

•          For intervals and minus signs use en-dash (–) not a hyphen (-). Em-dash (­—) is used to separate out a phrase within a sentence — such as this one right here — but not otherwise. Hyphens (-) are used for joining words as in life-span development.

Naming Files

•          When naming files, always use underscores to separate words, never spaces or dashes.

I generally do not like to get files in email. Share a Dropbox folder (or Box if you have to) that contains the file you want me to edit or comment on. I will track changes but not save it as a new version (since these things have version control/history). I prefer not to have more than one manuscript file, supplement file, etc. in each folder. I don’t want to see 6 versions with different dates. If you want to save a whole bunch of versions separately, please do that in another folder called “versions” or something.

See also: http://www2.stat.duke.edu/~rcs46/lectures_2015/01-markdown-git/slides/naming-slides/naming-slides.pdf

Figures

If we are still trying to work out what a good figure looks like, I’m happy to talk this through with you and look at rough drafts. However, if we have a good idea of what we want in the figure, please send me something as finished and polished as you can make it—this makes it easy for me to give the most helpful feedback. If you give me something that isn’t your best work, I will probably just tell you things you already know.

Most figures should be vector art (saved as PDF or EPS files). Vector-based files don’t suffer the artifacts and poor quality that raster-based images show when magnified. Use a graphing program (such as R, Matlab, or JASP) to export to an EPS or PDF file, and then compile/arrange/modify these elements in Adobe Illustrator or other image-editing program.

Don’t use Microsoft Excel/PowerPoint for your figures! It’s always the worst option and the figures paste terribly into anything else. If you must organize your data in Excel, that’s fine, but then do plotting in a better plotting program (e.g., R, Matlab, Python, STATA, JASP).

Abstracts

Anyone submitting an abstract for a conference, symposium, etc. should clear this with me first, and circulate to all authors at least one week before the submission deadline.

Talks

Anyone giving a talk to a non-lab audience is required to give a practice talk to the lab at least one week before the real talk. If this is your first public talk on a lab project, plan on at least two practice talks (starting at least 2 weeks before the real talk). Practice talks should be mostly finished (final slides, practiced, and the right length) so that our comments will be as helpful as possible. Schedule one or more meetings with me ahead of time to plan or go over your slides, especially if you haven’t given many talks before.

Posters

Anyone presenting a poster should circulate an initial version to all authors at least one week before the printing deadline. Use something similar to another lab member’s recent template so that our posters have a somewhat consistent look to them. If this is your first time using Illustrator or Pages, make sure to leave plenty of extra time so you can learn how to use the software.

Make sure to double check the poster size and orientation for the conference, and the size of the paper or canvas it will be printed on.

For many conferences you will want to bring a sign-up sheet where people can request an emailed PDF or print a QR code that links directly to: https://www.mcablab.science/presentations