Presentations, Writing, and Publishing

Printing your poster at UT-Austin

• Poster Printing (Harris Lab specific; restricted access)

• UT Brand Guidelines - UT logo, color pallet, etc.

  • For the UT logo, go to "Identity". Then under "Logos", read and follow the usage guidelines carefully. Click "Download Assets". This will open a shared UT Box folder. "1_Primary.zip" or "5_Informal_Horizontal.zip" will fit the best for your poster. Use a PNG (for PowerPoint or Photoshop) or EPS (for Illustrator) file in RGB.

Presentations

• Designing effective scientific presentations (Susan McConnell, Stanford Univ.)

• Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation

Conference presentation opportunities for undergraduates

• Within UT-Austin

  • CNS Undergraduate Research Forum: https://cns.utexas.edu/info-undergraduate-students/events-recognition/undergraduate-research-forum

  • Capital of Texas Undergraduate Research Conference (CTURC): https://senateofcollegecouncils.utexas.edu/cturc

• Outside UT-Austin

  • Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium: https://gcurs.rice.edu/

  • LSU Discover Day: https://www.lsu.edu/discover/events/index.php

Writing papers

Writing

• Writing Strategies

• Strunk W. The Elements of Style. (New York: bartleby.com, 1999)

• Preparing a Manuscript for Submission to a Biomedical Journal (ICMJE)

• So you're writing a paper (Nature Methods14, 1115 (2017))

• How to Write an Accurate, Concise, and Meaningful Significance Statement (Society for Neuroscience)

• Living Science: Love Writing (eLife 8, e45734 (2021))

• Heard SB. The Scientist’s Guide to Writing (Princeton University Press)
  
  

• Best practice for text recycling

• Check your manuscript for plagiarism with iThenticate (UT EID required)

• Select key words using the US National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) browser list at www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh.

Figures and videos

Image manipulation

• What's in a picture? The temptation of image manipulation (J Cell Biol 166, 11 (2004))

  • Potential fabrication in research images threatens key theory of Alzheimer’s disease

Data Visualization

• SuperPlots: Communicating reproducibility and variability in cell biology (J Cell Biol 219, e202001064 (2020))

• Violin SuperPlots: visualizing replicate heterogeneity in large data sets (Mol Biol Cell 32, 1333-4 (2021))

• SuperPlotsOfData—a web app (Mol Biol Cell 32, 470-4 (2021))

• Raincloud plots: a multi-platform tool for robust data visualization (Wellcome Open Res 4, 63 (2021))

Accessibility

• Making graphics accessible to those with color vision deficiencies (Nature Methods 8, 441 (2011))

  • Color Universal Design (CUD) - How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people -

    • Refer to the Figure 16 – When generating an image in Reconstruct, use RGB values (0-255).

  • If you are using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop: View → Proof Setup → Color blindness to set up color proof. Then View → Proof Color to turn it on/ff.

How to Make Figure Plates

• A basic workflow for putting together a figure

• Reconstruct Color Scheme

• Adobe Illustrator for Scientists [YouTube]

Reporting requirements

• Get your ORCiD.

• Use the CRediT taxonomy to describe author contributions.

• The ARRIVE Guidelines for Reporting Animal Research

• RRID: for unique, persistent identification and tracking of key biological resources (e.g., antibody, software, etc.)
  
  

• Reporting and reproducibility in microscopy (Nature Methods)

  • A guide to accurate reporting in digital image acquisition – can anyone replicate your microscopy data? (J Cell Sci 134, jcs254144 (2021))

  • A guide to accurate reporting in digital image processing – can anyone reproduce your quantitative analysis? (J Cell Sci 134, jcs2541 (2021))

Data availability

• Sharing Data through 3DEM.org (Harris Lab specific; restricted)

Submitting

• Comparing documents

Writing grants

• Grant-writing blog by Parker Derrington Ltd

Reviewing papers

• Tricks of the Trade: How to Peer Review a Manuscript (Society for Neuroscience)

• Step-by-step guide to reviewing a manuscript (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

• Rookie review

• Reviewer Mentoring Program (Society for Neuroscience)

Food for thought

• "Why Is It so Hard to Do Good Science?" by Ray Dingledine

• "What Is the Question?" by Leek and Peng

• "On Fallacies in Neuroscience" by Christophe Bernard

• Promoting Awareness and Knowledge to Enhance Scientific Rigor in Neuroscience (Society for Neuroscience)

• Considerations and recommendations for experimental designs by Journal of Neuroscience

• Consideration of Sample Size in Neuroscience Studies by Journal of Neuroscience