Let Knowledge Grow

The Life of a Nature Paper

2012-10-14T20:01:00.000+05:30

Thanks to the Nature Editorial team (and my friend Jaya for sending me the link!), you can see how a Nature paper moves from submission to publication:

Reference Management Tools: Zotero

2012-07-16T22:58:00.000+05:30

As a professional academic writer, using and citing sources of information is one of the most irksome tasks I have to contend with. Scholarly publications across the subject spectrum have their own reference formatting requirements - APA, MLA, CMS, Harvard, Vancouver are but a few of these. Often, I find a really great paper published in an obscure journal, book or conference proceeding, and must then scramble to find the citation information so as to cite that paper in my work. Sometimes, part of the required information will be missing e.g. the issue number, or the page ranges. It's incredibly frustrating when you have good information but cannot cite it because the citation would remain incomplete.

In this respect, I have found a remarkable friend and ally: Zotero. Zotero can be downloaded and installed as a plug-in to your web browser. Whenever you find an article that you want to cite, simply click on the Zotero plug-in button and Zotero will retrieve all the pieces of information necessary to create a citation. The article and citation information will be stored in Zotero's database where you can organize, sort and review the data at will.

But here's the clincher: Zotero will actually export all your citations in the reference format you choose! So assume that you have a list of fifteen scholarly references stored in Zotero; you can now export these into a Word file in say, APA style, in a single click. Essentially, you can create your end-list references in a few seconds as long as you have used Zotero in the course of your research. I use this nifty little tool everyday, and it has become a much-needed crutch!

St. Xavier's Faculty Workshop (April 16, 2012)

2012-04-17T17:04:00.001+05:30

St. Xavier's Faculty Workshop (April 16, 2012), a set on Flickr.

On April 16, 2012, Let Knowledge Grow and Sirius Interactive conducted a workshop for St. Xavier's College faculty on Communication Skills (CS) for Science students. This 'Train the Trainers' workshop will help faculty members deliver the CS course to their students during the academic year 2012-2013.

Workshop on Academic Writing and Publishing

2012-02-27T11:26:00.003+05:30

Resources for Researchers: AuthorAID

2012-02-24T01:50:00.001+05:30

The lack of a cogent research funding policy in India results in a litany of woes for Indian researchers. For conducting scientific research, at a bare minimum, investment in infrastructure, laboratory equipment and glassware, consumables (reagents/chemicals/enzymes), and trained staff is necessary. This investment is provided to varying degrees of adequacy by institutions of higher learning in India. However, those are only the essentials. Funding and support are needed for the following equally important activities:

Providing researchers with access to subscription journals and paid databases
Formal training on research methodology and writing skills
Publication support (from journal selection to editing to managing the submission process, and paying the associated fees to the journal)
Attending scientific conferences (and presenting posters and other material at such conferences) both domestically and internationally
Building credible repositories of published and unpublished research for intra-institution sharing
Conducting workshops on topics of concern to researchers
Networking with researchers around the world and creating mentor-mentee relationships

These activities are often neglected and chronically underfunded. Outside top-tier institutions like the IITs, India has therefore not been able to reach a critical mass of world-class researchers in any field. The same is true of many developing nations.

An initiative called AuthorAID, run by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), seeks to provide some measure of relief to researchers. In its own words: “AuthorAID is global online network that provides support, mentoring, resources, and training for researchers in developing countries.” Researchers in developing countries can sign up for the program, and derive the following benefits:

·         Community forums for discussions and questions
·         Finding mentors to guide and support your research and publication work
·         Resources on research methods, writing, and many other topics
·         Grants for publication, attending conferences, and organizing workshops

The program encourages researchers in developed nations to act as mentors, synthesizers of resources, and guides in general to researchers in developing nations. AuthorAID coordinators conduct seminars and workshops across Asia and Africa, and all resources are hosted on the website.

A great website for researchers to explore!

Poll: When should you publish?

2012-02-17T16:40:00.000+05:30

Please share your opinion:

Resources for Researchers: BioFlukes

2012-02-17T14:31:00.004+05:30

The website BioFlukes has an interesting take on research. The owners of the website have started a journal called ‘The Journal of Errology’. According to the description given on the website, “JoE serves as a repository for researchers to share the story of their struggles and disappointments behind their successfully published papers. Research is a process of trials and errors and we consider sharing of these attempts to be essential for the expansion of human knowledge and acceleration of discoveries and inventions.” Make no mistake, this is no attempt at levity; it seems a rather serious endeavor. While I cannot comment on how successful it will be in attracting researchers, it is a refreshing change from the usual researcher worldview!

The website makes have two sections that may further be of interest to Indian researchers: Innovators4Hire and Lab Critics. Though these projects are in their nascence, they’re well worth a visit, especially for MSc and PhD students looking for gainful employment.

Writing Samples

2012-02-17T14:19:00.000+05:30

Please use the link in the navigation bar or click here to view samples of my writing. These have been written for a younger audience (up to high school), in order to get them interested in science. I hope to do more work in the field of Science Education in India soon!

Manuscript Writing Resources

2012-02-13T18:04:00.000+05:30

Researchers around the world are taught that one of their most important research goals is publication of their research. If your research is not published, it might as well not have been done. Harsh, yet a true picture. Some important stages in this process are:

Literature review and framing of the research question
Undertaking the research
Analysis of the results
Shortlisting journals for eventual publication
Writing the manuscript
Submitting the manuscript
Post-submission revisions (if necessary)

In Indian academia, there is little emphasis on #1; the research question may be dissonant with the general direction of contemporaneous research. The resulting manuscript may, therefore, be of little interest to high-impact journals in the field. I would advise prospective researchers to undertake a thorough literature review before framing their research question.

Similarly, there is little guidance available to Indian researchers on #3 through #7. Here are some resources that may be of help, courtesy of Edanz:

State Funding and Research Access

2012-02-12T19:12:00.000+05:30

In the United States, 60% of research funding is provided by the federal government and its agencies, departments, and branches (Source: National Science Foundation). Funding for biomedical sciences alone runs into billions of dollars. What this essentially means is that the taxpayer pays for cutting-edge research across almost all scientific disciplines. However, the results of this research are published largely in subscription-based journals, which are shielded from the public by paywalls. You pay for the work to be done, but you don’t get to see the results!

As an example: Sally, through her tax dollars, pays for research on advances in cancer care. However, she has to pay separately just to read what that research implies for her sick father. Note that I am not attempting to use emotion to sway the reader; rather, I am trying to point out the absurdity of the situation. The problems with the present system are:

1. State funding: As a libertarian, I am ambivalent about state funding of research to begin with. However, I do not have a fully evolved position on this at present, and wish to explore the arguments on either side in more depth. State funding may be required on a large scale in countries like India.

2. Double payment: If the principle of state funding of research were to be accepted, then the results of such research should be available to the taxpayer at no further cost.

3. Subsidy: The preponderance of state-funded research being published behind paywalls means that the publishing industry (Elsevier, Springer, and the like) effectively enjoys a subsidy from the State. That this is by accident rather than by design is not a strong enough argument in favor of its continuation.

Is there a solution? The Federal Research Public Access Act, a proposed law in the United States, seeks to make the results of federally-funded research freely available to the public within a reasonable timeframe of its publication in a peer-reviewed journal. There seems little chance of the passage of the proposed Act through the US Congress, but one can always hold out hope.

Do Indian research funding bodies require any mandates from grantees to make the research publicly available?

Research4Life

2012-02-11T14:00:00.000+05:30

Despite the recent move towards open access publishing, no more than a fraction of the scientific research published worldwide is published in open access journals. The majority of original research is still published in subscription-based journals, access to which is controlled by paywalls. In developed nations, institutions of higher learning purchase bulk subscriptions to journals, and make this research available to their faculty and students through their libraries and online information management systems (like Athens). However, as I have written earlier, institutions in developing nations often do not provide such access to their students and faculty.

Consequently, researchers in developing nations are behind the curve with respect to the latest research in their fields, of course through no fault of their own. On a very small scale, individual efforts are being made to remedy this problem. Solutions like emailing the author to get a copy of the paper, requesting free access from the journal, or asking a colleague working in another nation to retrieve a copy of the article are widely used. When I was studying in Sheffield, I would sometimes get articles for friends back in India, since our University offered excellent access options! Of course, much more is needed to make research available to those in developing nations, and one such initiative is Research4Life.

Research4Life is a collaboration between various international aid agencies (WHO, FAO, among others), Universities (Cornell and Yale), and journal publishers. It seeks to make available articles published in more than 8,000 journals to researchers in developing nations. Access is managed through institutions in these nations – the institution needs to apply to be part of the program. There are two levels of access, free and low-cost, based on the nation’s wealth. For example, institutions in Nepal get free access, while those in Sri Lanka have to pay a fee of $1,000 per year to make research available to their students.

However, don’t get too excited. India is excluded from the Research4Life program (as is China), ostensibly because it does not fall within the income criteria defined for inclusion in the program. I think the real reason is that publishers view India and China as lucrative markets for their products, and do not wish to compromise on potential profits! I propose a third level of access to Research4Life for researchers from countries like India and China, at an elevated institutional cost. Perhaps tiered pricing bands depending on the kind of institution (local, State, or National) could be made to work. Research4Life, will you listen to and help Indian researchers?

Careers in STM Publishing

2012-02-07T18:10:00.000+05:30

What the atom is to nuclear physics, the scholarly journal is to research i.e. indispensable. The scholarly journal is the primary venue of publication of the bulk of research that is undertaken by academia worldwide. If you are a researcher, then you must publish your research in a journal – the old adage “publish or perish” still holds true. The four basic aims of journal publishing are:

1.    Establishing authorship and precedence of ideas
2.    Ensuring quality of research through the editorial/peer review process
3.    Spreading knowledge worldwide
4.    Archiving knowledge for easy retrieval after years and decades

Of an estimated 24,500 journals (Source: STM Reports) published worldwide, the majority is published by large conglomerates like Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, Taylor and Francis, ACS, etc. These companies refer to themselves as the Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishing Industry – or STM Publishing for short. As the amount of research output has grown globally, so has the STM Publishing industry.

The STM industry employs over 100,000 professionals, largely in the US and Europe. However, with the advent of outsourcing in recent years, many functions have been outsourced to India – these functions are known as pre-press functions. In addition, the sector of the STM industry that caters to Indian journals has grown in recent years. What these developments mean for the Indian researcher or student is that she can consider working in STM as a viable career choice. The options are:

·         Academic Editing (covered in an earlier post) or Pre-Press Copyediting
·         Core pre-press functions like typesetting, formatting, pagination
·         Design functions and DTP
·         Client servicing and business development
·         Marketing
·         Directly working for individual journals as members of editorial staff

If you are interested in a career in STM publishing, please email me on request@aniketsharma.com or call on +91-9820570544.

Tip: Email the Author

2012-02-04T15:37:00.000+05:30

Stymied by a paywall that blocks access to an article you really want to read and cite? Email the author, says The Scholarly Kitchen.

Tools for Researchers: Reference Management Software

2012-02-04T13:44:00.000+05:30

One of the most important non-laboratory activities that a researcher has to contend with is reviewing scientific literature pertaining to one's research interests. This is not so much a task as an ongoing endeavor, since the results and conclusions of existing research should impact the direction of your own research. Additionally, when the time comes to write your paper, citing this literature that you have reviewed is imperative.

Unfortunately, our country does not seem these skills important enough to make them a part of the pedagogy in institutions of higher education. As a result, students in India find referencing difficult, and approach it with a grudging reluctance akin to that experienced when visiting a dentist to have one's tooth extracted!

So why is literature review important for you?

1. You need to know the current state of knowledge in your field, including what other research teams are doing.

2. You need to know the results obtained and conclusions drawn by others, so that you can design your own hypothesis and experimental set-up.

3. Your research will be deemed more credible and publication-worthy if it is backed up by not only your own results, but research conclusions drawn by others.

4. Modern research is collaborative and incremental. Your research needs to fit into the whole scheme of inquiry that is being adopted by the research community worldwide in your field. The days of lone rangers are long gone!

There are many Reference Management tools to help researches navigate the minefield of scientific knowledge. Some of the most popular ones are paid, like EndNote or Reference Manager. However, there are free, web-based tools available for researchers. One such tool is CiteULike:

If you want more exposure to literature review and referencing technique, please email me on request@aniketsharma.com or call +91-9820575044 for a personal consultation.

Social Networking for Researchers

2012-02-02T22:20:00.000+05:30

In the years since the launch and sucess of MySpace, Orkut, and Facebook, entrepreneurs have tried to cater to the networking needs of the academic research community. Many websites have fallen by the wayside, but some have endured.

Among those that have survived and indeed flourished is ResearchGate, with over one million researchers as members till date. Medicine and the Life Sciences are especially well represented in the ranks of members. So what benefits do these research communities provide to Indian researchers?

You can:

1. Connect with peers from other cities and countries. Share contact details, discuss your research, and contribute to the spread of knowledge.

2. Read research papers posted by members. Post your own papers.

3. Find potential peer reviewers for your own work.

4. Get tips and advice from peers and seniors. Ask questions and initiate discussions.

Of course, you can do all this on sites like LinkedIn, but there is a lot of irrelevant clutter as distraction. On the other hand, sites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu are essentially closed communities of researchers.

Even if you are still a student, it would be worthwhile to sign up and start connecting.

Why Open Access?

2012-02-01T23:22:00.000+05:30

Despite reservations by traditional journal publishers, open access journals provide unique opportunities to Indian researchers. At the outset, I should clarify that by "open access" I mean the absence of article access paywalls, and not the absence of a peer review process or stringent editorial policies. It is all too easy to dismiss open access journals by stating that the quality of research must not be very good if the articles are free - this is clearly not the case.

Inadequate funding for research and its supporting activities (publication, conferences, networking), and lack of institutional support are problems commonly faced by Indian researchers. While these problems should no doubt be recognized and addressed, Indian researchers can work within these constraints by making active use of open access.

How does open access benefit cash-strapped grad students and lecturers on a budget?

1. Full-text articles are freely available, and not hidden behind paywalls. Since many Indian colleges and Universities do not provide an Athens-like access system to their students and faculty, researchers have to rely on citing articles published in open access sources, or which are made available online on author websites.

As open access publishing becomes more prevalent in academia, the pool of research papers freely available to Indian researchers increases.

2. Other researchers are more likely to find, retrieve and cite your paper if it is published in an open source journal of good repute. I cannot prove this empirically, but it stands to reason that ease of access plays a role in citation-worthiness, especially for researchers working with funding constraints.

3. In general, open source journals have author-friendly submission and copyright policies.

If you're convinced, here's a good place to start exploring: The Directory of Open Access Journals

Careers in Academic Editing

2012-02-01T12:11:00.000+05:30

Academic editing is a viable career choice for linguistically-inclined students of the natural and physical sciences. If you do not want to work in a laboratory or research centre, and yet wish to hold on to your links to academia, you may want to consider becoming an Academic Editor.

In Mumbai, the two most prominent organizations that train and employ Academic Editors are:

Crimson Interactive

Cactus Communications

For a more detailed exploration of Scientific Communication as a career choice, please email me on request@aniketsharma.com. I would be glad to organize a seminar/workshop in your college or institution on "Careers in Academic Editing".

Introduction to Scientific Journals

2012-01-30T20:51:00.000+05:30

On January 13, 2012, I had the privilege of addressing Biotechnology faculty members of the University of Mumbai. My talk covered latest developments in the world of scholarly publishing, including the move towards fully electronic journals. Even though the honorable professors were quite positive about e-publishing, they still felt a twinge of nostalgia for the world of print journals!

Using the Internet as a Learning Resource

2012-01-30T16:12:00.000+05:30

The Internet has forever changed the way we create, share, acquire, and transmit knowledge. It has brought new opportunities to Indians who hitherto relied on traditional, slow forms of knowledge transmission, like books, journals and encyclopedias. I have been using the Internet for all my research work since 1998, and can attest to its life-changing effects (no, I'm not being melodramatic). To put it succintly, I am a devoted fan. For a developing country like India, the Internet provides an avenue for its citizens to level the information asymmetry with the developed world, and to engage globally as equal players.

Recognizing the transformative power of the Internet, developed nations provide institutional support for knowledge acquisition through online media. During my time in the United Kingdom, as a postgraduate student at the University of Sheffield, we had mandatory course modules on Research Methodology. Much of these modules addressed using online repositories of knowledge to further our own research; online research has almost entirely supplanted traditional methods of knowlege aquisition. As a result, every student at a Western institution of higher learning knows how to trawl the Internet for the latest research, connect with peers in other institutions, start informal and formal academic networks, and therefore contribute to the spread of knowledge.

This is an area where Indian institutions of higher learning fall behind - there is little or no support for moving to the digital age. To the best of my knowledge, Indian colleges and Universities do not even provide institutional email access to their students, much less anything less. Faculty members want hard copies of published papers as evidence of publication; therefore, submission to electronic journals is frowned upon. The glacial pace of Indian academia is antithetical to the fast pace of the digital world.

The present situation is crying out for change - we must act!

Let Knowledge Grow!