Lab notebooks: Are they written in stone?

Researchers use lab notebooks to keep a daily record of their work, exactly as it happened. Lab notebooks are treated as if they are written in stone since you are not supposed to change a previous entry in any way. The lab notebook serves as proof and a complete permanent record of what was done, enabling researchers to write up their work, defend authorship and patents, remain organized, and teach others.notes everywhereBest practices for recording information in lab notebooks were discussed in a “CHEE 687: Research Skills and Ethics” lecture, and consist of:

  • Employing a bound notebook made with acid-free paper;
  • Writing in permanent ink;
  • Dating your entries and signing them at the end of the day;
  • Recording hypotheses, the plan for experiments, step-by-step procedures, all results observed, the use and location of materials, the calibration of instruments if applicable, etc., basically including as many details as possible so that another person can understand and reproduce your work;
  • Never removing pages, rather drawing a line through blank pages if you skipped some, and drawing lines through errors made when writing and initializing the strikethroughs;
  • Consecutively numbering the pages of your notebook;
  • Organizing content using headings and dividing it into sections when appropriate;
  • Attaching images and printouts of raw data to a notebook using glue;
  • Summarizing what you have done periodically; and
  • Reporting discussions with others about your work, including the names of the individuals.

This is the fifth in a series of weekly posts about topics relating to research skills and ethics. Stay tuned for the next post in the series, which will be about effective presentation styles for explaining your work to different audiences.

Image from the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats cartoon strip by Adam “Ape Lad” Koford (creative commons license)

Scientific misconduct: What is the link between cured sausage and dishonest authorship practices?

Salami, especially homemade, is one of my favourite cold cuts. I enjoy eating this type of cured sausage for lunch every once in a while. Some people say the taste of salami is different depending on the thickness of the slices. Salami is also a word used to describe papers in which the authors present very little original content since these papers are mostly a duplication of work already published by the authors. These are called salami publications. Instead of presenting the complete story of the research they conducted in the first article they wrote, the authors may have withheld some details to be able to write a second, third, fourth paper, etc. on essentially the same topic, or the authors may publish multiple papers employing similar methodologies to answer similar research questions. The authors are salami slicing or diluting the presentation of their research work to obtain more publications out of it. Regardless of whether the slicing is thin or thick, this is an example of a dishonest authorship practice that the class discussed in “CHEE 687: Research Skills and Ethics.”

We also talked about other improper authorship practices, such as:

  • manipulating data and/or images so that they look better but misrepresent what was found;
  • stretching the truth about research progress;
  • collecting or reporting data in a sloppy manner that leads to the presentation of inaccurate results;
  • sharing others’ ideas or data that you learned about in a confidential setting;
  • plagiarizing, whether including ideas or text from another’s work or your own previous work without properly citing it;
  • publishing the same work in different journals;
  • having another individual write the paper for you while you take credit for being the author; and
  • listing individuals as co-authors of a paper solely due to their reputations or authoritative ranks, even though they did not make a significant contribution to the research.keyword exposure

Just as you would do on a witness stand in the courtroom, behaving ethically as an author means reporting “the truth [i.e., the real data], the whole truth [making no changes to the real data], and nothing but the truth [not including additional information that is not based on the real data].”

Scientific misconduct encompasses all of the improper authorship practices described above since it includes engaging in any activities that are dishonest or involve lying in the data collection and reporting stages, like fabricating and falsifying data or results. The consequences for misconduct can be disastrous to a person’s career (e.g., student expelled, researcher fired, funding lost).

This is the fourth in a series of weekly posts about topics relating to research skills and ethics. Stay tuned for the next post in the series, which will be about best practices for recording and storing laboratory data.

Image from the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats cartoon strip by Adam “Ape Lad” Koford (creative commons license)

When the Hourglass is Half-Full and Half-Empty

Wooden_hourglass_3How does one become a successful engineering student? By studying, I suppose, in order to get good grades in school, and joining clubs, and attending events and workshops. As well, thinking about the future, and making sure everything productive you do can be written into a cover letter or recommendation letter. Then there is learning to network and socialise, and present, and give elevator pitches. And, well, it doesn’t hurt to give good handshakes and own a blazer. Phew. Look at that list. You’ll need at least 72 hours in a day to get through all that.

There is a joke that people make a lot coming into university. “Sleep, social life, good grades. Welcome to university: pick two.” I’ll say this now: there is no guaranteed time-management routine that will help you do everything you want and have to do. There are literally not enough hours in a day. When I look at my agenda today, there are stars next to items that should have already been done. But when I try to set out a schedule that would involve omitting meals, washroom breaks, and sleeping, there are still not enough hours in a day.

So what can you do? You probably didn’t start reading this post to find out there’s no hope left for you. So here’s what I do. I write down all the tasks that I think of but not because I want to do them all. I just don’t want to have to use the brainpower and time I won’t have in order to recall them later. As well, I try to plan every hour of my day so I don’t have to make decisions at a time where I’m running short on energy. But this is not really one-size-fits-all advice.

Instead, I find that the most useful advice to everyone is to be adaptable. Whether that means just accepting that you’ve completely forgotten about an assignment due tomorrow, and you have to start now or else you lose 10% of your grade. Whether that means realising that if you keep up with your perfect routine, you’ll never have time for friends or hobbies or sleeping in. For now, just accept it and do what you think you have to do. If you’re struggling to complete everything, you haven’t necessarily messed up. It probably means you’ve been doing things that you want to do–that is, things that make you happy. And that’s not too bad a trade-off in the grand scheme of things.

Images from Wikimedia Commons (creative commons license)

Peer review process: Confidential or not?

The peer review process is a method of assessing the quality of an individual (in the case of a grant application, for example) or evaluating the quality of a scholarly work (for instance, in the case of a journal article manuscript). It needs impartial reviewers who are experts in the research area for the process to work properly.

I used to think tanonymoushat the journal peer review process was always double-blinded, i.e., the authors did not know who the reviewers of their manuscripts were and the reviewers, in turn, did not know who the authors were. I learned that some journals have a double-blinded peer review process while others have one-sided blinding, i.e., the authors do not know the names of their reviewers but the reviewers know who the authors are. Blinding on one side should not be a problem if the reviewers perform their task objectively and critically.

What are the responsibilities of a peer reviewer and author towards each other? This was a topic discussed in a “CHEE 687: Research Skills and Ethics” class, the content of which is summarized below.

The peer reviewer should:

  • keep the contents of the grant application or manuscript confidential by not sharing it with others;
  • submit his/her comments to the funding agency or journal editor within the allotted time;
  • refuse the assignment if there are any conflicts of interest that can bias his/her assessment of the work;
  • not use any ideas or methods contained in the document (if relevant to his/her own research) until after the reviewed researcher’s work is published; and
  • conscientiously apply any evaluation criteria (supplied by the funding agency or journal editor) to the work being reviewed.

After receiving comments from the reviewers and being invited to resubmit the manuscript, the authors should:

  • respond to each of the comments made by the reviewers with diplomacy and respect;
  • do some further work if additional experiments are requested, since just altering the text in the manuscript will not be enough in most of these cases;
  • be prepared to rewrite sentences or entire sections if the reviewers did not understand the purpose of the research; and
  • consider the reviewers’ comments as an opportunity to improve the manuscript and make it the best it can be.

The peer review process is not infallible (see Nature article about peer review frauds as an example). However, when it is conducted correctly, I believe that peer review improves the quality of the submitted work before it is published.

This is the third in a series of weekly posts about topics relating to research skills and ethics. Stay tuned for the next post in the series, which will be about scientific misconduct and questionable authorship practices.

Image from the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats cartoon strip by Adam “Ape Lad” Koford (creative commons license)

Another puzzle completed

Sometimes we just need a little amusing distraction. We have a Puzzle Corner in the library to help individuals take a break from their work. It is located on the main floor of the Schulich Library of Science & Engineering, walk past the elevators and turn to your left. Below is the 1,000 piece puzzle that was just completed (minus a few pieces that went missing and which I will have fun recreating).

boat puzzleA new puzzle was set out today and is waiting to be assembled. Enjoy!

Being responsible for research work: Who should be a co-author?

I often see multiple individuals listed as authors for a single journal article in the sciences and engineering. While teamwork is expected in these fields, I wonder who did what for the research discussed in the article when the list of authors is long, e.g., exceeds five. Perhaps, some names were included on the paper for political reasons rather than intellectual contribution to the work. In the “CHEE 687 Research Skills and Ethics” graduate course that I am attending this semester, the class discussed criteria or guidelines to consider when determining who should be a co-author on a paper.

meet the authorsCo-authorship is not automatic; it is earned. An individual would be offered co-authorship on a journal article or would ask to be a co-author. To be a co-author, a person should have done the following:
1) made a significant intellectual contribution to the work by participating in the creation of the research question and plan, the data collection, and/or the analysis and interpretation of the results;
2) agree to be accountable for the entire content in the article (not just for his/her contribution), which means that all authors must communicate with each other so that everyone understands exactly what was done and said in the article;
3) participate in drafting the article; and
4) critically evaluate and double check the content of the final draft.

If someone does not do all of the above, one could successfully argue that the person should not be a co-author but, rather, can be listed in the acknowledgements section if he/she helped in some way. Just communicating ideas to the lead author, providing feedback, editing, or helping with a task does not automatically make a person a co-author.

thought experimentThis is the second in a series of weekly posts about topics relating to research skills and ethics. Stay tuned for the next post in the series, which will be about the peer-review process.

Images from the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats cartoon strip by Adam “Ape Lad” Koford (creative commons license)