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Tutorial 8: Communicating Your Conclusions#

Good Research Practices

Content creators: Marguerite Brown, Zane Mitrevica, Aakash Sane, Natalie Steinemann, Yuxin Zhou

Content reviewers: Katrina Dobson, Sloane Garelick, Maria Gonzalez, Nahid Hasan, Paul Heubel, Sherry Mi, Beatriz Cosenza Muralles, Cheng Zhang

Content editors: Jenna Pearson, Chi Zhang, Ohad Zivan

Production editors: Wesley Banfield, Paul Heubel, Jenna Pearson, Konstantine Tsafatinos, Chi Zhang, Ohad Zivan

Our 2024 Sponsors: CMIP, NFDI4Earth

Tutorials Objectives#

In Tutorials 5-8, you will learn about the research process. This includes how to

  1. Draft analyses of data to test a hypothesis

  2. Implement analysis of data

  3. Interpret results in the context of existing knowledge

  4. Communicate your results and conclusions

By the end of these tutorials you will be able to:

  • Understand the principles of good research practices

  • Learn to view a scientific data set or question through the lens of equity: Who is represented by this data and who is not? Who has access to this information? Who is in a position to use it?

Video 1: Communicating the Conclusion#

Activity: Communicating Your Conclusions#

For the next 20 minutes, break out into groups of 2 or 3 and pick one presentation format and discuss:

  • Who is the target audience of this format?

  • What information is important to include?

After this, come back together as a whole pod and discuss everyone’s suggestions.

Equity in the Science Publishing#

Click here for some information about equity and publishing

There are aspects of our current research culture that perpetuate inequity in the publishing process. Academic institutions and funding agencies often place importance on publishing in peer-reviewed journals. However, they have some drawbacks, including

  • Accessibility

  • Papers in these journals are often kept behind a paywall, making them less accessible to people without the backing of either a university or a company.
  • More and more journals offer the option of publishing open access, but at expense to the submitting authors: fees can often exceed 1000 USD.
  • If you want to ensure accessibility, consider also releasing your results in other formats as well. For instance,
    • Blog posts
    • Podcasts
    • Social media posts
    • Conferences
  • If you know that your research contains results that are relevant to specific populations, it is valuable to find ways to communicate your results to them.
* Peer Review as Gatekeeping
  • At its best, the peer review process enforces scientific rigor.
  • At its worst, it can become a tool for enforcing pre-existing norms, including the biases of its reviewers.
  • REMEMBER: Bad experiences with reviewers and rejections do not mean that your research is bad. There are papers which went on to win Nobel prizes that experienced resistance and rejection during the peer review process BECAUSE they were introducing important new ideas.
  • Further Reading:
    • Campanario, J. M. (2009). Rejecting and resisting Nobel class discoveries: Accounts by Nobel Laureates. Scientometrics, 81(2), 549–565.
    • Bancroft, S. F., Ryoo, K., & Miles, M. (2022). Promoting equity in the peer review process of journal publication. Science Education, 106, 1232– 1248. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21733

Tutorials 5-8 Summary#

In this tutorial, we worked through how to analyze and present research.

  • We learned how to draft an analysis (Step 5)

  • We implemented the analysis that we drafted (Step 6)

  • We learned how to interpret the results of the analysis (Step 7)

  • We learned about how to communicate the conclusions of our research (Step 8)