How to read scientific papers
Transcript of How to read scientific papers
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How to read papersA biologist’s perspective Holly H. Ganz, UC Davis
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Journals publishing papers in microbial phylogenomics
• Considerations that authors make when choosing where to publish
• Impact Factor
• Audience
• open access
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Learn to read critically, so you don’t just judge a book by its cover• Don’t just assume that a paper
in Science is correct.
• Important to learn how to judge each paper on its own merits.
• And to identify what else there is to be done. What are the unanswered questions?
• This is a lot of what we learn how to do in graduate school.
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Article structure
• What is the format for scientific papers?
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Article structure• Title
• Authors and Affiliations
• Abstract
• (Author summary)
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Literature Cited
• Figures and Tables
• Supplementary Files
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Start by reading the introduction, not the abstract
• The abstract contains the authors’ summary and overall conclusions of their study.
• When I write a paper, I write the abstract last.
• Read it last.
x
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As you read the introduction, ask: What big question is being asked here?
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As you read the introduction, ask: What question is being asked here?
Why should we care?
What is the ecology of buildings? Do buildings affect human health through the microbiome?
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What is the ecology of buildings? !
Environmental selection (such as …) Dispersal of microbes from a source (such as …)
Other factors (such as …)
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Effects of building design on the indoor microbiome !
function, form and organization
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What work has been done in this field already? What were the limitations of prior work?
What needs to be done next?
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How design choices influence the biogeography of indoor bacterial communities
!What specific question(s) are the authors trying to answer?
Were they testing a null hypothesis? What is it?
What are they going to do? Why?
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The methods section• How did they attempt to
answer the specific questions?
• What did they do?
• How/where did they collect samples? How many?
• How samples stored, DNA extracted, PCR methods, sample processing, data analysis
• Be sure to read supplementary info
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Methods!Where? The study site
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The results section
• Try to summarize the results
• Focus on figures and tables
• Be sure to read any supplementary results
• Do they provide statistical analyses, significance values? Do graphs have error bars? Pay attention to sample sizes.
• Do the results answer the specific questions?
• What do you think the results mean?
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• Do the authors refer to their questions/hypotheses?
• How do they interpret their results?
• Can you think of any alternative interpretations?
• Do the authors identify weaknesses or limitations of their study? What do you see as limitations?
• What do the authors propose to do next?
• What would you do next?
The discussion section
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Finish by reading the abstract• The abstract contains the authors’ summary and overall conclusions of their
study.
• Does the abstract match what was said in the paper?
• Does it fit with your interpretation of their results?
• Can also read comments (if any) from other people in the field.