Outline

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Outline

• Goals

1. Searching scientific journal articles
2. Taking home messages from a scientific article
3. Components of a scientific article and review
   process
4. Scientific research presentation

• Choose your article consult mentor
• 10 min presentation, 5 min for questions
• Post (at least 2 days ahead of) and read articles
  in advance rest of the class
• Sign up your presentation date (CD or thumb
  drive, ppt file)

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The Scientific Journal Article Searching Machine
keyword1 AND keyword2

• Title ref
• Abstract
• Full text

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The Scientific Journal Article Searching Machine
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Reading a Scientific Journal Article
1. Types of scientific journal articles

• Original research/report new findings/data
• Reviews summarize and suggest new directions
• Meta-analysis analyzes existing data from
  different articles to address a set of related
  research hypotheses
• Fast communications breaking news, short

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Reading a Scientific Journal Article
2. How to read a scientific journal article?

• Start from updated peer-reviewed review articles
  if you are new in the field
• Original contributions critical and objective

• New findings, exciting points?
• Appropriate methods Ctrls?
• Solid results?
• Conclusion drawn appropriate follow the
  results?
• Comments and additional conclusions according to
  the results?

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The Scientific Journal Article
Components of original contributions

• Title key point
• Abstract summary of the new findings
• Introduction why you did it
• Materials and Methods how you did it
• Results what you found
• Discussion why we care
• Acknowledgement, references
• Figures and tables

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 2. Abstract
• Miniature version of intro, methods, results,
  and significance
• Self-contained without reference to text
• Brief and catching novelty
• I prefer 3rd person exclusively in abstract
• No footnotes or abbreviations
• Literature references must be complete citations

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 3. Introduction
• States the purpose of the current study
• States the current deficiencies in knowledge
• Directly relevant background only (not a
  review)
• Remember to acknowledge potential reviewers

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 4. Materials and Methods
• Theoretically sufficient for others to repeat
  work
• Reality is that you wont find that much info
• Do not detail previously published procedures -
• reference previous papers (the original!)
• Break into subheadings, e.g. Chemicals,
  Site-Directed Mutagenesis, Protein Expression

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 5. Results
• Think long and hard about figure content
• Third person, stick to the facts, point out the
  new findings
• Tables and figures
• make your findings more visible
• should not overlap in content
• Use symbols (e.g., arrows) in figures
• Supplementary data can be appended

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 6. Discussion
• Draw together results and show interrelationships,
  point out the novelty
• You are allowed to speculate a bit, but not too
  much
• Avoid literature reviews but you can pat a few
  backs, or points to discrepancies
• What did you learn and how does it fit into the
  existing picture

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 7. Acknowledgements
• Material gifts, advice, technical assistance,
• secretarial assistance
• Funding agencies
• Avoid thanking the academy and your first
  grade teacher

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 8. References
• Must format to journal style
• Only articles accepted can be cited in
  references
• Others - go as unpublished results or personal
  communication

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The Scientific Journal Article

• 9. Figures and Tables
• Figure legends must have symbols, and state
  result succinctly
• Figures need to be perfect
• Tables formatted to journal specifications

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The Scientific Journal Article

• Review Process
• Generally 2-3 reviewers
• Options are accept w/o revisions, accept w/ minor
  revisions, accept only after major revision
  (usually reviewed again), or reject
• Authors can suggest suitable reviewers and
  disqualify others dont review