Open Science Framework (OSF) is a fully open access tool, for use in any discipline, which can be applied to virtually all stages of the research lifecycle from the planning and design phase all the way through to publication, access and reuse. Before diving into OSF, let’s back up a bit and talk about open science which refers to a set of principles and practices … Continue reading Open Science Framework (OSF)
I am a collaborator in my institution’s Responsible Conduct in Research instruction. After one recent session on data management best practices, a postdoc participant requested a consultation with us. He wanted guidance about how to establish and maintain a lab culture that fosters reproducible science. This question has taken on special urgency in the wake of the highly publicized case of former Stanford University President … Continue reading Lab manuals for data management and reproducibility
DrugBank Online is a free database that provides information on FDA-approved drugs and drug targets. The database started in 2006 in Dr. David Wishart’s lab at the University of Alberta, Canada. The database is now managed by OMx Personal Health Analytics and the University of Alberta (Wishart et al., 2018). DrugBank is described as a “… bioinformatics–cheminformatics database with a strong focus on quantitative, analytic … Continue reading DrugBank Online
I work for an institution that is commonly referred to in a dozen different ways, among them University of California Berkeley (also with a hyphen, comma, or “at” after “California”), UC Berkeley (also with periods after the initials), UCB, California, Cal, Cal Berkeley, and just plain Berkeley. Even institutions that are referred to in less variable ways can change names, merge with another organization, split … Continue reading Research Organization Registry
FAIRsharing.org is a curated, searchable registry of metadata standards; databases and repositories; and funder and journal policies that are relevant to specific domains or types of data. Figure 1. FAIRsharing.org home page. Accessed 28 November 2022 at https://fairsharing.org/ Background: The benefits of data sharing have been powerfully demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic: shared data made possible the rapid development of public health policies, treatment guidelines, … Continue reading FAIRsharing.org
Systematic reviews, more broadly, evidence syntheses, collect and synthesize primary evidence in healthcare. Not only do these comprehensive documents save medical professionals’ time, they can also provide a higher level of evidence than individual studies do on their own. However, the sheer number of evidence syntheses (meta-analyses, systematic reviews, scoping reviews, rapid reviews, and more) published each year is beginning to render these time saving resources unmanageable. A simple search for epilepsy and cannabinoids on PubMed, limited to Systematic Reviews or Meta-Analysis, yields 37 results, 34 of which have been published in the last 5 years (since 2017). Continue reading “Epistimonikos: Dig in to Systematic Reviews”
Welcome to a somewhat normal start to the academic year! I am thrilled to see the students walking around campus again, but a bit overwhelmed by the mountainous piles of information flooding my inbox. I would imagine that I am not alone in that sentiment, so I promise to only add one rock to that mountain today – this post recommending two “explainer” websites. Shall … Continue reading Explainers
Retraction Watch Revisited The Retraction Watch website was highlighted in a 2020 Inside Science Resources post (Kipnis, 2020). Several features of the website were mentioned including the blog, the Retraction Watch Leaderboard and the Retraction Watch Database. New features of the website include the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker, a list of retracted papers on COVID-19 as well as the continued growth of the Retraction … Continue reading Retraction Watch Revisited
The COVID-19 pandemic has made health disparities in the United States starkly apparent. Age-adjusted deaths per 100,000 people among Black, Latino, and Pacific Islander populations are more than 1.5 times greater than those of the White population, and among Indigenous populations are more than 2 times greater than those of the White population, according to APM Research Lab’s analysis of CDC data in the Color … Continue reading Resources on Race and Racism in Medicine
Writing and communication have not historically been a focus of STEM programs in higher education. Many students concentrate solely on the technical skills required by their program without developing these “softer” skills. A student’s lack of writing and communication skills can lead to trouble once they graduate and enter into the work environment that requires reports to be written, ideas to be presented to various … Continue reading The Online Technical Communication Center
News Yakaja Resources 