Publication bias and reproducibility are two of the key challenges facing the future of science. While certain initiatives have been implemented—for example, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) requires clinical trials to be pre-registered in a public registry database from the start—we shouldn’t rely on such incentives to drive change. It is only […]
Writing a paper: 3 key aspects to focus on
Focus on the “take-home” message What is the core message of your paper? What is the most important thing you want readers to remember after reading your paper? Can you describe the core message of your paper to a colleague in one minute? Can you condense the paper into 3 to 5 highlights? Can you […]
Publisher data sharing policies
Many journals (PLOS One, Nature, The Royal Society, et al.) now have mandatory data sharing policies. This means that researchers must make their datasets publicly available, whereby readers can “reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript” and “replicate the reported study findings in their entirety.” [1]. Datasets can be made publicly available in three ways: In the […]
Conflict of Interest
What is Conflict of interest? “Conflict of interest is a set of conditions in which professional judgement concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) tends to be unduly influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain).” [1] What do you need to declare? It is better to “err […]
How to write an effective abstract
An abstract is a short but fully-contained summary of a study. Its purpose is to entice readers into wanting to read the full paper. This poses a challenge, given the ever increasing volume of documents and texts. As such, an effective abstract is key for the dissemination of your research. An effective abstract should be […]
