5 How to be a modern scientist
Jeff Leek wrote a book called How to be a modern scientist that is available through Leanpub. This book compiled and re-arranged advice and ideas Jeff generated in the prior years and shared through the Simply Statistics blog. While the book is written with academics in mind, particularly graduate students and postdocs, nearly all of the advice in this book applies to us as well. We actively participate in writing academic papers and software, and we work very closely with graduate students and postdocs. We might even advise some through our Data Science guidance sessions. Hence being familiar with this knowledge that Jeff curated and developed is important for us.
In the book, Jeff explains why something is important and also provides specific advice on tools he liked to use (in 2016) for implementing these ideas. Most chapters can be read independently, with “paper writing” directly linked to “reading scientific papers”. After reading the introduction, choose whichever chapter appeals to you the most in the moment. For some of the chapters, we have more specific information on this book such as:
- reading scientific papers and scientific talks are something we practice weekly on the Team meetings
- career planning was the basis for Career growth
The full list of chapters is:
- Introduction
- Paper writing
- Publishing
- Peer review
- Data sharing
- Scientific blogging
- Scientific code
- Social media in science
- Teaching in science
- Books
- Internal scientific communication
- Scientific talks
- Reading scientific papers
- Credit
- Career planning
- Your online identity
- About the author
We do everything in this book, though to different degrees. This book is actually a key part of our internal scientific communication. I’ve also done several of the things Jeff advises not to do ;) and maybe that’s why they are listed there hehe. Hopefully I’ve learned over the years though.
5.1 Bootcamp session
Below you can watch the video of our training session.
For more information about Jeff’s Leanpub materials, check this link.