S5E6: Writing Impactful Publications

In the fifth Season of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Building Up the Nerve podcast, we help you strengthen your science communication skills with tools and advice to use throughout your career. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help—it's our job!

In the sixth episode of the season, we talk about Writing Impactful Publications, focusing on how to structure and write a paper, choose a journal, and craft engaging and accessible figures.

Featuring Bang Wong, MA, MS, Senior Director at Vertex Pharmaceuticals; Marina Picciotto, PhD, Professor at Yale University; and Tanya Garcia, PhD, Associate Professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Resources

• Referenced paper by Dr. Amy Arnsten: 
  • Wang, Min, et al. "α2A-adrenoceptors strengthen working memory networks by inhibiting cAMP-HCN channel signaling in prefrontal cortex." Cell 129.2 (2007): 397-410. https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(07)00344-3?large_figure=true 
• Referenced Papers by Bang Wong:
  • Wong, B. Design of data figures. Nat Methods 7, 665 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth0910-665 
  • Wong, B. Color coding. Nat Methods 7, 573 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth0810-573
  • Wong, B. Points of view: Color blindness. Nat Methods 8, 441 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1618
  • Check out more of Bang’s papers: https://www.nature.com/search?author=Bang%20Wong
• Color Contract website:
  • Example: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
• Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded. By Joshua Schimel: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/writing-science-9780199760244 
• Experimental Design Editorials in the Journal of Neuroscience https://www.jneurosci.org/collection/experimental-design-editorials

This episode has been edited since its original publication.

Transcript available at http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/.