Academia

I have presented my thoughts on Open Research at many different institutions and for various groups over the last few years. One question that tends to come up repeatedly in various forms is: “Isn’t it much more time-consuming doing Open Research?”. The short answer is yes. It does require more of a researcher (or research group, lab, centre, department, or institution) to work openly. For example, sharing data openly typically requires cleaning and documenting it so others can understand it. But then again, isn’t that necessary to perform solid and evidence-based research in the first place? ...

After reading close to 50 term papers in the last couple of weeks, I see that many small things impact the grading. So to all students out there, here are a few hints to what will most certainly improve your grade (next time): Spelling errors: using modern word processors, there is really no need to have any spelling errors in your documents at all. A few are acceptable; several per page is too much. This will most likely irritate the reader, and your grade will certainly drop. Division of words: this has become a huge problem in Norwegian in recent years. As we get more influenced by the English language, more people have started spelling words apart. Sometimes this is semantically harmless; other times, it ends up being involuntary funny, but it may also change the meaning entirely. Anyways, dividing up words still counts as spelling errors. Style: it is always more pleasant to read documents that are well written. I am not a particularly good writer myself, so I am constantly trying to remind myself that it is OK to think about writing as a tool to convey a message. If you are struggling with writing, write shorter sentences. Then check that the sentences make up a logical structure. Informal: a term paper is a formal document, like a research paper or a book, and the language used should be formal. Informal language, which is often acceptable in e-mails or blog post, should be avoided. Punctuation: there should be no space before a punctuation mark and one space after. Parentheses, on the other hand (like this), should have space both before and after. This is really a part of the basics of writing, so I am very sorry that I have to mention this… Layout: a nice-looking document will certainly always give a good impression. Receiving poorly formatted documents, e.g. with 1 cm margins, ugly looking and odd-sized fonts, etc., does not help your grade. Remember to use the same font type and size throughout the document. Line breaks: use either double line breaks or one line break and indention. Mixing them makes for a chaotic visual impression. Of course, the most important is the paper’s content, but that is a totally different story. Here I would just come with one advice: ...