Hi all!
One of the secrets to real behavioral change is accountability, and one way to hold your self accountable is to announce your goals – which is why I announced in last week’s post that I had “professional photos” on my to-do list for all of 2019 and wanted to change that in 2020!
It worked – we’re only 10 days into January, and I researched local photographers, contacted one, and booked an appointment! The absolute biggest change for me has been making sure my to-do list is action steps. This makes it much easier to pick up and do a “next step” even when my brain and willpower are tired.
I hope everyone else is working on their to-do lists this year and getting things done, especially after last week’s post! It IS possible! And if you missed that post, you can find it here -> https://butlerscicomm.com/make-your-to-do-list-work-for-you-this-year/
Anyways, I know its a bit late for my monthly reading list, but I wanted to get the New Year’s post out first to make sure everyone could start the year with a great to-do list.
But with no further ado, here are my favorite finds from Nov and Dec 2019:
- Here is an great tool to help you identify your key message for your audience when doing any form of science communication. It’s going to help you ask the right questions and make sure you are saying the right things for your specific audience -> https://www.compassscicomm.org/message-box-workbook
- This is a fantastic Nature career feature on secrets to a winning grant application. Pay special attention to the last three sections (“The Write Stuff”, “Science Storytelling”, and “What not to do”) for great, quick reminders for what to be sure you include and what to definitely not include in your proposals: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03914-5
- Love this concept, and especially love that publishers are starting to think in new directions for how we can improve the peer review process – PLOS is going to start checking community comments on prepublished manuscripts and taking them into consideration during the editorial and revision process. What do you think? https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2019/11/community-comments-and-peer-review-a-preprint-commenting-pilot-at-plos/
- Were you working on papers over the holidays? According to this article in the NYT (and all of the papers I am getting!), you weren’t alone. How is the work/life balance in your lab? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/science/scientists-holiday-work.html
- Don’t be reviewer 2 – a new study finds that rude paper reviews are pervasive and sometimes harmful. How can we constructively criticize to improve science and lift each other up instead of attack and bring others down https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/rude-paper-reviews-are-pervasive-and-sometimes-harmful-study-finds
- Why can’t more scientists write like Darwin? A blog post begging to bring back science writing that engages a reader: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-cant-more-scientists-write-like-darwin/
Those were my favorites…what did you find?
