Writing Scientific Publications

In science, your goal is to write a paper that is easy to understand. The art of scientific writing is not in the subtle underlying message conveyed by your prose. Instead, scientific prose is judged by how well it defines the details of the observations that you have made. In a scientific paper, however, your prose style should disappear, and the reader should marvel at the realistic, explicit, and cleanly etched picture that you have painted. To write precisely is to write without adornment. It can be an effort to recognize fluff and imprecision in your own writing, so train yourself to catch and to remove vagaries, emotion, indirectness, and redundancy (M.J. Katz, From Research to Manuscript).

Lots of tips and inspiration came from this event (http://lib.ft.ugm.ac.id/2014/10/02/berbagi-tips-menulis-di-jurnal-internasional-perpusftugm.html). Below are pdfs compilation about writing scientific papers, curated from university’s journal repositories and the great library of the Internet. Hopefully enough to feed your curiosity.

1. Scopus Index List last updated May 2014 (complete excel file list available at http://wibirama.com/scopus/. It’s great to know that several Indonesian journals and proceedings are categorized as publications with impact factor)

2. Effective writing and publish scientific papers (writing tips series from Elsevier’s Marine Pollution Bulletin and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology) http://bit.ly/effectivewritingpublish

3. From Research to Manuscript by Michael Jay Katz (copied and borrowed from the great library of the Internet for low-budget researchers. If you really enjoy it, please support the author by buying this excellent book) http://bit.ly/researchmanuscriptkatz

4. Citation and impact factor distributions of scientific journals (analysis about two-year and five-year impact factors and citation half-lives of journals published in different selected countries, published in Journal of Infometrics) http://bit.ly/citationimpactfactor

5. Contents and time sensitive document ranking of scientific literature (a new link-based document ranking framework, as an improvement from PageRank-like ranking system, published in  Journal of Infometrics) http://bit.ly/rankingscientific

6. Salami slicing – ethics in research and publication (taken from Elsevier’s Guide of Author. Whoops, my bad, it’s not a “salami sandwich” after all) http://bit.ly/salamislicing

7. Common Mistakes in Writing Abstracts in English (Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences) http://bit.ly/commonmistakeabstract

8. Developing Thinking Skills in the Course of Academic Writing (Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences) http://bit.ly/developingthinkingskills

9. Authorder® (determining who should be listed as an author on a publication, and what order they should be listed) http://bit.ly/author-order

Comic illustration courtesy of http://www.nature.com/

How To Survive Your PhD (or Master’s Degree)

EPILOG

(By Jason Karp, received his PhD in exercise physiology after 7 years of doctoral, during which he learn everything you shouldn’t do if you want to have a PhD in 4 years)

Being smart is just one part – maybe even a small one at that – of earning a PhD degree. The larger, more important part is making the right choices, being persistent and understanding how to work the system and the process.

I’ve met many people with master’s degree or bachelor’s degree in my discipline who act as if they have PhDs. They think they have tons of knowledge. They go around referring to themselves as physiologist. Sometimes, if they can, they cite the literature, thinking that impresses others.

But as I learned over the 7 years while going through the process, there is a huge difference between a master’s degree and a PhD. This difference is definitely larger than between a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. There’s the obvious time difference (takes 2 year or more to obtain master’s degree and 4 years or more to obtain a PhD), but time is only the minor difference. There is a large transformation that takes place over the time between your master’s degree and your PhD. You go from reading the research of others to being one of the researchers yourself. You go from reading the works of other scholars to being one of the scholars whose work is read. You go from reading the novels of others to writing your own. You go from being on the outside looking in to being on the side looking out. You go from watching the poker game to sitting at the table with your own set of chips.

Despite all the stress, frustation and anxiety that accompanies the pursuit of this degree, that’s pretty darn cool. If we knew what we’re doing, it would not be called research, would it?

 

Fairness

Alangkah enaknya mapping ke lapangan saat ini. Tinggal bawa hape yg ada GPS-nya (ga usah sewa). Tarif sepuluh ribu per hari bikin bokek :D. Cek peta bisa pake tablet segede talenan. Bisa download peta dari server segala. Foto singkapan bisa dikasi caption ala instagram atau instaplace (I’m HERE!), bikin mapper bisa narsis di lapangan :D. Tabulasi data diinput & diedit pake bejibun free apps yang bisa leluasa didownload. Today we witness the pinnacle of civilization in spatial awareness. 

Beberapa waktu yang lalu, sy ngobrol dengan seorang pengajar di kampus. Beliau termasuk pengajar yang antusias kalo diajak ngobrol tentang Sistem Informasi Geografis. Beliau cerita bahwa sewaktu mengambil program lanjutan (higher ed) di salah satu universitas di Belanda (yang terkenal bagus program SIG dan analisis spasialnya), beliau dapat kesempatan untuk magang di markas pembuat ArcGIS di Redlands, California. Mantap. Kapan ye sy bisa dolan-dolan ke kantornya ESRI…

United We Map!

Today, thanks to tools such as geographic information system technology, virtually anyone can be a geographer. Anyone who use it has the potential of new discoveries every day. We can use GIS to make difference (in a better term). 

Wow. Bisa dibilang tahun ini saya makin jago dalam mapping & kartografi dibandingkan dgn diri saya sendiri tahun-tahun lalu. Practice, indeed, make perfect. Toast for myself. Lol.