research in progress bulletin is an example of

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Research-in-progress (rip): tips.

Making the Most of RIP  

Powerpoints by Fellowship Alumna, Neda Ratanawongsa, MD, MPH

What is RIP?

A forum where fellows can talk about their research idea, designs, and results and get feedback in an informal, comfortable setting.

At what stages of my research can I present?

All stages: starting a project, planning the design, analyzing the data, or getting ready to present your results at conferences or in manuscripts.

Why are we talking about this?

• Different objectives (& skills) for presenting research-in-progress vs. completed work
• Necessary to do this throughout your career
• It doesn’t have to be scary – can it even be enjoyable?!
• We want to encourage you to present often and feel more comfortable each time.

Setting Your Objectives

You will never get through as much as you thought you would – set a reasonable agenda.

Starting a research project

• Present what’s been done
• Identify the gap(s) in the literature
• Present/refine your conceptual framework
• Identify possible research questions/hypotheses
• Discuss pros/cons of research methodologies
• Identify potential datasets
• Solicit ideas on mentors/collaborators/funding sources

Research design or data analysis

• Briefly present what’s been done as it affects your design
• Identify your specific aim(s) and hypotheses
• Present your research design
• Focus on 1-2 issues / dilemmas – for example: Research design: • Are these appropriate inclusion / exclusion criteria? • How can I improve recruitment? • Please pilot my questionnaire. • How can I get my protocol through the IRB? • How can I collect data on other variables in my conceptual framework? Data analysis: • Do the variables in my model make sense? • Here’s an interesting finding – what do you think of my conclusions? • Are there other confounders I haven’t considered?

Presenting for conferences

• Explain the venue / audience / constraints for your future presentation
• My talk is too long.
• I talk too quickly.
• Do my slides make sense? 
• I’m worried about fielding questions.
• Present as if you are at the conference (including Q&A time afterwards)
• Allow ample time to get feedback on the style, content, and your responses in Q&A

10 Ways to Make the Most of Your RIP Presentation

1. Present early and often.

• Better to reconsider your design before submitting the IRB, collecting data, or writing the manuscript

2. Present weeks or months before key deadlines.

• You'll be more willing to incorporate major changes and have time to present again

3. Invite faculty.

• Ask your mentor(s) to come.
• Invite faculty who are not working with you but who have experience with the methodology / content (use your mentors to help you identify and invite them)
• Allow enough lead time so you can coordinate with faculty schedules

4. Prepare for 20 minutes/20 slides.

• Allow enough time for questions while you present and discussion after
• Avoid the temptation to present lots of background
• Go over your slides and objectives with your project mentor in advance to optimize the structure of your talk

5. State upfront and explicitly your (one to three) objectives for the session (see above). 6. Consider how to manage your audience when they:

• If they question something upstream of your objective (e.g. research design), go with the flow for a period of time,
• But redirect your audience back to your objectives when necessary: "These are all great points, but I’d like to move on to …"
• You can ask the audience to hold questions during part/all of your talk,
• But try to practice managing interruptions (which may occur at a conference or job talk): "That’s an important question, and I think my next few slides will address that issue. If I don’t, please remind me to come back to that before we end."

7. Convert comments into constructive criticism.

• "That's a great point that I've struggled with - do you or does anyone else have suggestions on how I could do this differently?"
• Let the audience know in advance the type of feedback you want (content vs. style)

8. Assign a note-taker.

• Save your energy for thinking about and fielding questions
• Have someone bring a laptop to write down what others say and how you respond to their comments / questions

9. Set time aside that day to process the feedback.

• Look over the notes and/or talk about them with your project mentors
• Don’t necessarily act on every suggestion, but keep track of why you don’t (great for anticipating questions at future presentations and writing the limitations section)

10. Solicit feedback on how you present.

• Assign someone to take notes on how you can improve your format, speaking style, responses to questions, the way you redirect the audience
• Hand out a form asking for feedback on both content and presentation style.

When You’re Not Presenting in RIP

• You will learn by hearing others’ critiques and suggestions.
• You will learn by thinking critically about other presentations.
• Better to hear from a variety of viewpoints.
• If you don’t understand something from the presenter or from an audience member, chances are that someone else doesn’t understand either.
• You don’t have to have an answer to a concern that you raise; someone else may have one.
• Better to receive constructive criticism here now than everywhere else later.
• Consider writing down suggestions that don’t relate to the session’s objectives and are not immediately pressing.

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23 Alerting Services: Concept, Need, and Techniques Current Awareness Service (CAS)

I.  Objectives

•     To keep the information seeker up-to-date in his/her field of interest or specialization; save the time and financial resources on subscription and storage of primary information sources.

II.   Learning Outcome

After reading this module, you will be able to:

•     Know about the manual as well as computer-based methods and techniques to keep the information seekers up-to-date in their field of interest or specialization,

•     List the various alerting services in modern library/information centres,

•     Provide current awareness services in information organisations,

•     Understand how to save the time of the user, and

•     Learn how to save the financial resources on subscription and storage of primary information sources.

III.   Module Structure

1.  Introduction

2.  Current Awareness Services (CAS)

2.1  Definition

2.2  Factors influencing on Current Awareness Service

2.3  Steps in Current Awareness Service

3.  Need for Current Awareness Services

3.1  Growth of literature

3.2  Interdisciplinary nature of research

3.3  Types and forms of documents

3.4  Users’ help

4.  Characteristics

4.1  Approach not in response to specific query

4.2  Continuous need

4.3  Retrieval not the only intention

4.4  Diverse requirements

5.  Categories and types of CAS

5.1  Categories of CAS

5.1.1  CAS for all the users

5.1.2  CAS for homogeneous group of users

5.2  Types of Current Awareness Services

6.  Selective dissemination of information (SDI)

6.1  Objectives of Selective dissemination of information

6.2  Components of SDI

6.2.1  User profile

6.2.2  Document profile/database

6.2.3  Matching user profile with document profile

6.2.4  Notification

6.2.5  Feedback

6.2.6  Modification

6.3  Benefits of SDI

7.  Methods and Techniques of Providing CAS

7.1  Current Awareness Bulletin/List

7.2  Routing of Journals

7.3  Display

7.4  Research in Progress Bulletin

7.5  Contents by Journal Service

7.6  Newspaper Clipping Service

8.  Computer-Based Alerting Services

8.1  Alerting Services, RSS Feeds & Email

8.2  Table of Content Alerts

8.3  Search Alerts

8.4  Citation Alerts

8.5  New Publication Alerts

8.6  Software packages for CAS

8.6.1  CAS provided by the External Agencies

8.6.1.1 The Online Hosts

8.6.2  By Database Producers

8.6.2.1 ISI Alerting Service

8.6.3  ISI Profile- based Alerting Services

8.6.4  E-mail and Bulletin board service

9.  Summary

10. References

All types of libraries/information centres are organized to provide some basic services which are rendered either in anticipation or on demand from the users. For example, a typical library brings to the notice of its users new documents accessioned and new issues of journals received to attract its potential users. It also helps to find a specific document, or a part of the same. The information services provided in anticipation are termed as alerting services as this alert the users about the new information of their interest. Broadly speaking, the same is also termed as current awareness service though there are some more services falling under the scope of alerting services. It may be noted that the term ‘alerting services’, besides containing general names of the information services, may also assume some specific names like company profiles, notification of contracts, product information bulletins, etc. in the context of a business or industrial library/information centre.

Alerting services usually referred to as Current Awareness Services have been important means for keeping the users up to date in their areas of interest. A current awareness service may be as simple as copy of table of contents or a bulletin containing bibliographic records, of articles selected from the current issues of journals and other material, and usually organized by subjects. These services satisfy the current approach of the users and have several characteristics. These characteristics have been described in this module.

In this module, we will learn the various current awareness services offered by modern library and information organisations. The various CAS covered include both the manual and computerised CAS. The computer based solution offers better services, with more flexibility and easier maintenance of the resources along with lower costs.

Alerting Services are also termed as Alert Services or Current Awareness Services or CAS. These services assist the library users in keeping up-to-date with current research in specific areas of interest. In this context, current awareness refers to a way to stay up-to-date on the latest information from journals in a field, to receive automatic alerts about new information/articles in a specific research area and using modern technology that helps a user to organize and mediate the information that is required to conduct research.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, ‘the purpose of a current-awareness service is to inform the users about new acquisitions in their libraries. Public libraries in particular have used display boards and shelves to draw attention to recent additions, and many libraries produce complete or selective lists for circulation to patrons. Some libraries have adopted a practice of selective dissemination of information………….’

The CAS is in-house services offered by information organisations. A successful CAS involves knowledge of subjects or topics to be covered, which users require what information, knowing the sources for obtaining the latest information and making available required information timely, regularly and reliably. The major benefits of CAS include providing the users latest information on desired topics, saving time and leading to creation of new ideas.

The CAS has several advantages over other information services, which are:

•    Keeping users better informed

•    Providing access to needed information/documents

•    Supporting academic, professional and managerial tasks

•    Automating the process of searching for retrieving relevant information

•    Providing information in a preferred format

There are several definitions for CAS and it has been defined by several prominent library and information science professionals. Some of these are mentioned below:

Ranganathan defined CAS as ‘documentation periodical, listing the documents appearing during the period covered, and without being, selected to suit the requirements of a particular reader or of a specific topic under investigation. This is of the nature of a general appetizer. It endeavors to keep the clientele informed promptly of all the nascent thought created in their fields of work and related fields.’

Guha defines it as ‘a device of the information system through which the users of information can be informed promptly, as soon as possible after publication but before absorption into the comprehensive secondary sources of current literature on a broad subject field or on an area in which a group of persons are interested, and presented in a manner, a volume, and rhythm  intended to facilitate or cultivate current approach to information. In the context of a library, the time limit should be after the receipt of the publications but well before the receipt of the secondary publications contains them.’ According to him, CAS is ‘a system of informing the users as soon as possible after publication.’

Lucille J, Strauss and others have defined it as “the establishment of a system for reviewing publications immediately upon receipt, selecting information pertinent to the programme of the organisation served, and recording individual items to be brought to the attention of those persons whose work they are related. It involves a combination of processes including the selection of pertinent information from periodicals, books pamphlets, patents and reports, in fact, anything of serious content that is received

Alasdair Kemp defines CAS as ‘a system for reviewing newly available documents, selecting items relevant so the needs of an individual or group, and recording them, so that notifications may be sent to those individuals or group to whose needs they are related.’ According to him, CAS is “a system of informing the users as soon as possible after publication.’

From the above definitions, it can be seen that CAS is the process of reviewing selected items according to the information needs of the users, selecting the relevant items according to the information needs of the users’ recording the items systematically, and sending the notifications to the users who need it.

CAS is influenced by the following factors:

•    Current Approach : It is necessary for every information professional to keep abreast with the current literature or the latest development of subject. He/she must know all the important areas of research in a subject as soon as published or generated.

•    Continuous need : CAS is very much required where there is continuous need of current affairs and developments by the users. More the continuous need, more Current Awareness service.

•      Direct demand : For many specific research areas the user may not be immediately interested but some of the references may be demanded by them later onurgent basis. For such needs, some of the references are recorded in diaries or personal file kept with the library or information professionals, so that when need arises they may be supplied with latest developments.

The steps in the provision of CAS are given bellow:

a.       Review or scan documents immediately upon receipt.

b.      Select information and record individual documents pertinent to the information requirements of the individual users or groups being served. This may be done by comparing the documents/information with the needs of users being served.

c.       Send notification to the users about items or information of interest to them.

Current awareness process is basically the opposite of the retrospective search. The retrospective search begins with a need to locate information on a specific topic for a specific purpose. The goal of current awareness on the other hand is less specific. It is the need to understand current developments in order to do one’s work more effectively. In view of this, following needs for alerting services can be identified.

The published scientific and technical information has grown rapidly on account of large expenditures on research and developments (R&D)by the government. The enormous growth of scientific information has caused serious problems of accessibility, storage, retrieval and dissemination for the researchers, scientists, etc. This results in many problems in accessing the information and keeping the researchers up-to-date in their areas of interest. CAS enables the researchers, scientists, etc. to keep themselves up-to-date and well informed in their field of specialization. Thus, CAS aims to serve the current information needs of the users.

The interdisciplinary nature of research, nowadays, results in the scattering of information in different sources. Same type of information is available in different journals. Further, the information relevant to a given discipline may also be found in journals of other related disciplines. For example, information relevant to the Biochemistry may appear in the Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research, or Indian Journal of Chemistry, etc. It is very difficult for user to find relevant information and hence there is a need of CAS.

Although the journals are the main source of current information, useful information for researchers may appear in various types of documents such as journals, reports, seminar papers, etc. Documentation and information centers are providing a variety of information services in order to solve this problem. Providing CAS service is one of the important services which alerts the users about the current developments in their area of interest.

A user himself may not be able to scan literature as widely, timely and regularly as could be done by CAS, because its coverage may be wider. Also, there may be some users who do not possess the ability or willingness to do scanning of sources. In this case, CAS will help the users to keep them abreast with the latest documents on the subject of their interest. It also helps to bridge the time interval between the publication of an article and the inclusion of an abstract. Ultimately, the function of CAS is to reduce the time taken by the specialists to scan the documents in periodicals.

Characteristics of CAS are as follows:

For any active user, it is necessary to be up-to-date with his/her field of work and interest. Further, as no field of study can progress in isolation, one has to keep abreast of the developments in a broader field also. So far as one’s specific field of work is concerned, one has to be very thorough regarding any important work as and when published or generated. As the current approach is not meant for any specific information, it implies that a user may not have a specific search formulation while approaching the information system.

Another characteristics of current approach is the continuous need irrespective of the stage of research work in hand, its findings, etc.

This is an important characteristic which emphasizes that it is not always necessary to go to the original document as retrieval is not always the intention. In most of the cases, the user is satisfied to know that a particular piece of work has appeared in print or somebody is working on a particular problem or the results of a particular work is expected to be published in the near future and so on. Further, for most of the times, the user may get the information from abstracts only. For many of the items the users may not be immediately interested but some of the references may be noted by him/her in a diary or a personal file so that when the need arises the same may be retrieved.

CAS keeps the users well-informed and up-to-date about the current developments which take place in their areas of interest. This is a continuous service provided to the information seekers irrespective of the stage and progress of their research. There are some of the diverse requirements and prerequisites of CAS as described below:

•    CAS is an announcement mechanism and not a pin pointed information; or a tailor- made or customized information service.

•    CAS is provided to meet the current information requirements of the users.

•    CAS is usually provided to a group of users (researchers, scientists, etc. having homogeneous information requirements), and not to the individuals.

•    It may be available in a printed, electronic or any other appropriate form acceptable to the user.

•    It is to be provided within a time frame (deadline) much before the information is published in secondary sources such as indexing and abstracting sources.

•    It should be brought to the notice before the notification in secondary sources of information, e.g., abstracting and indexing services,

•    Getting feedback is not a prerequisite in CAS.

•    Speed, currency and ease to use are three factors to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of CAS in any organization.

There are generally two kinds of Current Awareness Services that may be recognized.

Services which may be provided to all the users to keep them up-to-date. These services include a list of recent additions in the libraries, compilation of bibliographies, indexing and abstracting services, table of contents of journal received in the library, etc. This may be provided in the following forms:

•    Contents pages of journals

•    Library bulletin

•    List of new additions or accession list

•    Newspaper clippings

•    Routing of periodicals

These are provided to a homogeneous group of users, i.e.,users having samesubject interest. These may include communication of information to individuals or group through various means such as by telephone, conversation, email, routing of journals, etc. These may also include circulation of materials in anticipation to individuals, keeping in view their information needs.

Those services, which are directed towards all users of theorganisation include accession lists (a list of recent acquisitions), bibliographies, indexing and abstracting services, bibliographic surveys, literature surveys, table of contents of periodicals received in the library, Current Awareness bulletin, etc.

Different kinds of current awareness services are offered depending upon the requirements of individual users. Listed below are main types of current awareness services offered by most of the libraries.

•    Title announcement services

•    Announcement of research in progress

•    Notification of forthcoming conferences

•    Selective Dissemination of Information (SDl)

•    Newspaper clipping service

•    Current awareness bulletin

SDI is a type of CAS which keeps the users in touch with the latest developments in the field of users’ interest. In other words, it is a personalized service meant for the individuals or a group of users having identical information needs. The characteristics of SDI service are:

•    It is concerned with the published information.

•    The source of current information may be available both within and outside the organization.

•    It is a computerized assisted service.

There is urgent need for selective dissemination of information service for technology enabled academic, research and other special libraries as:

•   The literature output at present is multiplying at a fast pace.

•   The volumes of record information are growing exponentially.

•   The users do not have time for reading the available voluminous literature in their respective fields.

•   Modern technologies can help to satisfy the researchers’ information requirements and their needs.

•    To provide current information on a particular subject, To receive, scan and provide the literature to right users,

•    To notify the latest information about the particular subject clearly, To delegate the computer base technique for relating current profile of information to the interest of users,

•    To achieve current requirements through the scan of journals, current awareness bulletins, and other important resources, and Expeditious service/time saving.

6.2  Components of SDI  6.2.1  User profile

It contains a file describing the subject field of the researcher by indicating proper indexing terms as keywords. The process of its creation includes the users’ identification, as individual or a homogeneous group. The objective is to define the information needs properly. The requirement of information is collected by using questionnaire which is converted in to machine readable form (user profile).

It is a bibliographical record of the documents related to user’s information needs and areas of interest. It may be in-house or a commercial database. Both the systems have relative advantages and disadvantages. For example, coverage and scope of commercial database may be more than the in-house created one. On the other hand, in-house database despite being  very time-consuming as compared to commercial database, may ensure pin-pointed and better customization of information requirements

It consists of matching the user’s profile (UP) with the document profile (DP), i.e., contents of the DP with those of UP with the help of a computer. It is advisable to use computer rather than manual work if users are more than 100 or so. The task of the librarian/information professional is to translate the information requirements of user in to descriptors taken from the controlled vocabulary or thesaurus as it helps in perfect searching of documents/information stored in the database.

It is based on the match between the user’s interest profile and the document profile. At the first instance, the individual user receives notifications from the system.If any loose match is observed between his/her profile and any document in the database, the same may be taken care of. Further, the user may indicate the usefulness of the documents/information disseminated to him/her. The notification may be sent by taking printouts along with the covering letter and feedback form. The same may be sent by e-mail or by using Bulletin board service, if the request from users is common.

The user is expected to provide feedback to the SDI providers in a prescribed feedback form indicating whether the documents/information notified is most relevant, relevant but not needed, or not relevant at all. In case most of the items of information are found useful, then it can be concluded that the user profile has been properly prepared. On the other hand, if most of the information is not found useful, then it can be said that user profile does not match with the user’s interest areas and hence must be modified.

In case, the user indicates through the feedback form that the output is not useful, the SDI provider takes action to modify the profile on the basis of the results provided by the user. The reasons for disseminating information that is not useful are analysed which may result in revision or modification of the user’s profile. In some cases, the users’ interest may also change due to the change in research projects or so. In such cases, the modification of user’s profile itself is required. An active interest and personal contact between the user and the researcher is of great importance to ensure modification of the profiles.

In SDI, an accurate representation of a user’s interests is crucial to the performance of personalized search as this leads to a perfect match of user’s information requirements and the information/document provided to the user.The following are benefits of SDI service.

•    In  view  of  users  interest,     it  encourages  the  research  scholars  to  utilize  current literature.

•    Satisfies the researchers requirements and their information needs.

•    Enables access to latest and particular subject information very quickly.

•    Motivates research mindset and knowledge skills.

•    Provides quality and current awareness literature.

Current awareness services alert scholars, researchers, and other users to recently published literature in their fields of specialization. Librarians who provide these services use various methods to keep current with academic and professional literature. Traditional methods include routing print journals, distributing photocopied journal tables of contents, and simply browsing professional publications. Newer methods include conducting saved searches in preferred databases and creating email table of contents alerts.CAS can be provided by the following methods:

This is one of the most popularform of current awareness service provided by libraries. In this type of service, the library or documentation center scans primary journals and other sources of current information received in the library. It may be provided in the form of library bulletin. It consists of a list of recent additions or a list of periodicals or indexing periodical (a list of articles from periodicals).The typical bulletin may contain all or some of the items which are given below:

•    Library publicity and announcements in general

•    News items (selected from news in the form of clippings)

•    Announcements of forthcoming conferences/seminars and meetings

•    List of current acquisitions (such as books, periodicals)

•    Details of contents of recent periodicals

•    Publication details from the secondary sources in original or as the reproduced one

The objective of CAS is to keep the R&D activities of the organisation and other interested organisations abreast with the current developments in their respective field of interest. For example, Chemical Titles of the Chemical Abstract Service produced by American Chemical Society, a professional body. The simplest form of a library bulletin is a list of recent additions. A list of contents based on journals is a quick and cheap method. Sometimes, it is used as an alternative to routing of periodicals in many of the areas, especially in science and technology. There are excellent international indexing and abstracting services, but there is very often time lag in receiving these. Therefore, local indexing and abstracting services (another name of documentation list) may have to be brought out. Very often, these services may be found more useful because these are tailor-made or customized. The scope of the bulletin depends upon the needs of the organisation and the resources made available to the library.

Routing or circulating the journals is an important means of dissemination of information. Generally in special libraries/information centers, the bound volumes of journals are circulated, but the current issues are also routed. Before the current issues of periodicals are  issued, the library/information professional can scan these current issues and mark certain articles to draw the attention of individuals. In this method the library sends the current issues to the first person on the list, who passes it on to the next name in the list, ultimately the last person returns it to the library.

Display is considered as an important method of offering CAS.It is a general practice of a library to display either all or selective items of recent acquisitions as part of their publicity programme. The item may be a book or periodical. It may be the jacket of a new book. This enables users to be aware of recent developments in their field of interest or related areas.

It is an alerting service which alerts the users about the new research projects and the progress made in the projects already in progress. This type of service generally requires joint efforts of more than one organisation or institution working in similar or closely related research areas. A parent body which funds or controls a group of research organisations could also bring out research-in-progress bulletin. For example, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), etc. bring out such bulletins in India.

Research in progress contains information about the organization/laboratory at which the project is being carried out, name of the researchers, sources of funds, duration of the project, etc. It also includes information about the status of the research in terms of the progress achieved and thereby keeps the interested researcher up-to-date.

This service can be provided in-house or by commercial publishers. In this service, the library or documentation centers or commercial publishers distribute a publication which consists of content pages of the journals in various subject areas. For Example, in humanities, social sciences, etc. In this service, photocopies of the content page of the selected journals can be circulated to the users. There are some agencies such as Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia (now Thomson Reuters) which publish the content pages of journals entitled Current Contents which is a rapid alerting service database.

The main idea behind publishing the content pages of journals is that journals are important medium for communicating new information. If the users can be regularly informed of articles appearing in current journals in broader or narrow areas, they would come to know of recent developments that are taking place in their fields of interest. The simplest way is the duplication of the content pages of the journals and sending to the users. Another reason of providing this type of service is that this service enables the users to quickly know the titles of the articles which they value very high. Once they identify useful papers relating to their field of interest, they can then go to the library and read the papers.

Alternatively, they can also write to the author of the paper and can get copies of that paper. In this way, the user can build up good personal collection of articles of his area of interest. For example, Current Contents published by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) in the  USA. The Current Contents—Physical Science, published weekly reproduces the contents pages of over 700 journals.

Nowadays, creation and maintenance of research in progress databases in computer readable form is available. Such databases can be used both for retrospective search before a new project is formulated and for CAS too. This will be further discussed in section on Computer-based services.

Newspapers are considered as a valuable source of current information as these are the current awareness media. They publish news of recent happenings in various fields such as in politics, health, sports, business, etc. Newspapers carry useful information for everyone from housewives to top management. They are of various kinds such as regional, national or international. Some newspapers specialize in particular subjects such as in Economics and allied fields, for example, Economic Times, Financial Express. They contain an in-depth knowledge of industry, trade, banking, etc. Important information available in the newspapers may be useful to the users. Newspaper clipping covers the clippings of daily newspapers, weeklies, current magazines, etc. Clippings may pertain to different languages.

Various libraries and documentation centers provide information services based on these newspaper clippings, known as the newspaper clipping service. For providing newspaper clippings, libraries/documentation centers subscribe to several newspapers, which may be daily or weekly newspapers. Each of these newspapers is scanned and any items of interest to the user groups are clipped, i.e., cut and pasted on a sheet of good quality paper. One or more clippings are then assigned sub-headings or class numbers or some code. At periodic intervals, i.e., daily or, weekly, the clippings are arranged by subject headings or some code and disseminated to the users. In smaller organisations, batches of clippings in one or more groups may be circulated to users. In large organisations or where the circulation is wide, a bulletin containing news items with or without an annotation may be circulated. The clippings themselves are filled in verified or in file folders for use at later date.

Electronic current awareness uses a computer-based technique for matching the contents file of the information product with the interest profile of the user. The computer based solution offers both a better service, with more flexibility and easier indexing and maintenance of the library’s database in the longer term, coupled with lower costs. In ICT-enabled environment, information organisations can compile current awareness bulletins using predefined search strategy and search directly from the databases either on CD-ROM or online for getting the desired output. Subject to copyrights, the output can also be stored on a local system, and disseminated online (internet, intranet) and offline (print, CDROM, email). Table of contents of most journals are available free from the publishers’ sites. Some publishers even offer free email update of table of contents. A large number of electronic publishing sites or portals now offer current information via email to registered users. Internet has also enabled a lot of innovations in contents, methods of production and distribution of current awareness products.

Given below are some examples of computerised current awareness services.

At one time, librarians regularly scanned manually through new journal issues, comparing contents against index cards submitted by uses listing areas of interest and typing up bibliographies of potential matches. Now alerting services (current awareness services) can provide such lists automatically. Alerts can be sent from publishers, article-indexing databases, or third parties that combine these sources.

Alerting services are offered by many databases that allow the users to keep up-to-date with new research in a particular field of study. For this purpose, one has to get himself/herself registered in return of which the alerts via email straight to the inbox or via an RSS feed are received. RSS, or ‘Really Simple Syndication’ is a family of formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds, journal alerts or podcasts. With an RSS reader (or aggregator) one can subscribe to many feeds and read the new entries all in one place, without having to visit individual Web sites to find them. Many publishers are using RSS feeds to provide an alerting service to advice on new information as it becomes available. Various types of journal alerts are available.

Examples of Alerts via RSS & Email

SCOPUS                                            Multidisciplinary

ISI Web of Knowledge                     Multidisciplinary

EbscoHost                                         Multidisciplinary

PROQuest                                          Multidisciplinary

Pubmed                                              Nursing; Medicine; Health Sciences IEEE Xplore

Electrical & electronics engineering; IT

EI Engineering Village                     Engineering, IT, Earth Sciences

Some of the Useful websites are enumerated below:

•    Feedly RSS Reader – create your own account: http://feedly.com/#discover

•    Google Alerts (email alerts): http://www.google.com.au/alerts?hl=en

•    Obtain details of other RSS readers: http://allrss.com/index.html http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Clients/WWW/Feed_Readers/

•    Subscribe to the FeedMyInbox Service from here: https://www.feedmyinbox.com

•    TicTOCs – Journal Table of Contents Service: find scholarly journal TOC’s and export the RSS feeds straight to your reader: http://www.tictocs.ac.uk

There are several kinds of alerts one can receive, through email or RSS feeds as listed in subsequent sections.

One can receive the table of contents of newly published journals which have been selected, often with links to the publisher’s site with the article. However, it may not be from the location from where one can obtain the full article. These are often available well before the print issue is published.

These are also called Saved Search Alerts or Keyword Alerts. A search is created that is periodically re-run, with new matches to one’s search criteria already sent. A well-focused search is then constructed to limit the number of results sent and to ensure results are on- topic.

One can track when a specified article or author is cited in newly published articles with citation alerts. Most publisher sites limit results to citations appearing within their own journals, while databases can provide citations from many sources.

In this case, notification of new publications (other than journal issues) from a publisher or professional organization are received. This could include books, proceedings, newsletters, standards, etc.

Many journal and other academic publishers provide alerting services for their publications. Most publishers provide this service for free (so a library subscription to their publications is not needed), though registration is typically required. As is often the case, one can receive alerts to publications to which the library does not have a subscription, or for which access from another source is received. For details of publishers, databases, RSS feeds, and books the URL http://www.lib.vt.edu/help/alerts/ may be visited.

Many of the databases provided by the academic institutions, e.g., University of Washington (UW) Libraries offer alert services that automatically send email notifications for new citations or table of contents that match a requester’s interests. These are termed as alert, auto alertorsaved search and the procedures for setting them up vary among vendors, but they generally operate in the same way. By specifying the search terms or the journal titles, the database automatically provides with updated results via email. One has to register with a password and establish a profile or personal account besides providing email id. Some alert services limit the number of searches one can save.

The received items can be scanned through electronic means in order to make CAS more efficient and current. For example, the same can be put on the LAN of the organization. This service can be updated more frequently in the computerized mode than the manual mode.

This type of service has more flexibility, currency and fast delivery of information to the end users. It can be generated as information product of an in-house database. The basic advantage of this mode is that a number of different information products in printed, and electronic form, can be generated from the same database. Computerized in-house service offers flexibility and easier indexing and maintenance of database.

There are number of software packages available commercially which are suitable for the generation of computerized CAS. Some of the examples are as below:

Software Package                 Vendor/Supplier

DATAFLEX                          Data flex

ORBIT                                  Maxwell on-line Inc

TINLIB                                 Information Made Easy Ltd.

STATUS                               Harwell Computer Power

Besides the above, a number of personal bibliographic software packages are also available, which support users creating their own database on PCs for storing and displaying of desired records. Some of the examples are: Reference Manager, ASK SAM, Notebook, etc.

This type of CAS is provided by some external agencies also. These are available from two main sources:

8.6.1.1  The Online Hosts

Services provided by online hosts are primarily generated from databases mounted by these hosts. This type of CAS service is available with almost all online hosts in a variety of subject areas. Notification is received from these hosts in print format, machine readable format, CD- ROM or directly to the computer of the user.

The following features have made this service more valuable.

•    Downloads and stores records for future use on the basis of the contractual agreement.

•    Avoids duplicate records received from various bibliographic databases.

•    Handles graphics, chemical formula structure, trademarks, design and other complex figures.

•    Offers  cross-file  searching  ability  to  use  one  profile  across  several  databases  is available with online host.

CAS are also provided by database producers. There are a large number of publishers and database producers worldwide who offer CAS online. On the basis of subject coverage, libraries and information centers may select appropriate database.

Some of the important producers and their services are as follows:

8.6.2.1  ISI Alerting Service (http:/ / altertrng, http://isinet.com).

It is an alerting service that includes both profile-based and Tables of Contents (TOC)-based alerting service. It delivers current bibliographic information. It includes full length, English language author abstracts in the field of science and technology, social sciences, arts and humanities directly to the desktop of the user via web or e-mail. It is selected on the basis of the information sources selected by the user. Users may receive daily or weekly alert service by accessing the web or e-mail Users can also place order for full text documents from ISI Document Delivery Service

Personal alert : It is a highly customized, profile-based service. It covers literature in over16,000 science and technology, social sciences and humanities journals, books and conference proceedings.

Discovery agent : It is a web-based alerting service. It can be used by the individuals for disseminating customized information A user can create and manage personal research profile. The profiles are filtered against current contents database over good journals.

Research alert : This is a print-based altering service that delivers complete bibliographic information. It is based on the personalized profiles developed for specific users.

Links alert by Springer : It is a free e-mailing CAS that delivers the table of contents of books and journals brought out by Springer.

Besides the above, there are a number of publishers and professional agencies offering CAS in various areas, e.g., DEAL Alert; IEEE-What’s new?

A number of networks offer e-mail and bulletin board services. These are useful for communicating new information and sharing of research output. These services may be operated within an organization for free flow of information. A Bulletin board services is meant for making general announcement to all users of a network and is used for publication of newsletters and other information services.

One of the basic functions of the libraries is to keep its users in touch with its information resources for maximum utilization. The same are accomplished by way of providing various information services in anticipation of demands of users. These are collectively termed as Alerting services and also broadly known as Current awareness services (CAS). The main reasons for providing these services are because of tremendous growth of literature, interdisciplinary nature of research, various types and forms of documents. The characteristics of alerting services have been described under the heads of ‘Approach not in response to specific query’, ‘Continuous need’, ‘Retrieval not the only intention’, and ‘Diverse requirements’. The typical services under the category for all users are Contents  pages of journals, Library bulletin, List of new additions or accession list, Newspaper clippings, and Routing of journals. In the second category i.e. Services for homogeneous group of users include communication of information to individuals or group through various means such as by telephone, conversation, routing of journals, etc. The various traditional methods of CAS have been identified as Current awareness bulletin/list, Routing of journals, Research in progress bulletin, Display, Contents by journal service, and Newspaper clippings. Lastly, brief accounts of some of the computer based alerting services have also been described. These are categorized as Alert services; RSS feed, Email and Bulletin board services. Typically the users can keep themselves in touch with not only the table of contents of journals, but also the citation and search alert as per their needs and requirements in a more efficient and effective way. Apart from journals they can be in touch with new publications alerts. Many database producers and online hosts provide these types of services such as SCOPUS, Thomson Reuters (earlier Institute for scientific Information) – to name a few.

10.    References

• Fourie, I. “Empowering users – current awareness on the Internet”, The Electronic Library,  17 (1999), no. 6, 379 – 388
• Guha, B :Documentation and Information : Services, Techniques and Systems. The world Press, Calcutta, 1983, 380pp
• Guha, B. “The current papers in Physics and the state of current awareness service” Annals of Library and Information studies 13, no. 1 (1966), 34-37
• Joshi, Meera G and Narayana, GJ. “Current awareness service- what it is?” Annals of Library and Information Studies 19, no. 4 (1972), 179-84.
• Leggate, P. Computer-based current awareness services. Journal of Documentation, 31 (2005), no. 2, 93 – 115
• Ranganathan, SR. Documentation and its facets. Asia Publishing, Mumbai, 1963, Chap B3
• Weisman, HM. Information Systems, Services, and Centres, Becker, New York, 1972
• http://feedly.com/#discover
• http://www.google.com.au/alerts?hl=en
• http://allrss.com/index.html
• http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Clients/WWW/Feed_Readers/
• https://www.feedmyinbox.com
• http://www.tictocs.ac.uk
• http://www.lib.vt.edu/help/alerts/

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Research in Progress papers

What exactly is demanded in a Research-In-Progress (RIP) paper? Specifically, how do they differ from other types of paper submission? A sample call can be found here: http://www.ecis2016.eu/en/RESEARCH-IN-PROGRESS-PAPERS.html

Is it merely sufficient to clearly outline a research question, the background and proposed solution, without any substantive results? I am curious because many of these sort of calls have relatively long page counts (around 6, which seems fairly typical of a journal paper). Is the difference that a RIP paper may talk about the entire scope of one's research, while with many other types of submission it would be prudent to merely focus on a single aspect of one's research?

• publications
• paper-submission

• 1 "around 6, which seems fairly typical of a journal paper". In my CS domain, a journal paper is significantly larger than 6 pages. –  Alexandros Commented Apr 20, 2016 at 9:22

I would give a research-in-progress paper the same format as a typical research paper (using a typical format such as introduction-methods-results-conclusion). However, the content of some of the sections would be different . Using this format as an example:

• Introduction This would probably be similar to the introduction on your final paper, but it should also give a bit of context on the progress of the project, so the reader knows how far along it is.
• Methods Depending on the progress of the project, talk about what have already done, what you plan to do, and/or any decisions that still have to be made about what methods to use.
• Results If you have preliminary results that you are comfortable sharing, definitely include them. However, "results" can also be about progress so far on the project. e.g. "We have successfully completed three out of the seven ice cream launches", "We have recruited fewer accordian players than expected, but so far the drop out rate has been only 2.7%", and so on.
• Conclusions You might reach tentative conclusions based on preliminary results. But more likely the "conclusions" should be reflection on the overall progress of the work, as well as lessons learned so far.

For scope, use your judgment. As with any paper, the key is to make it tell a good, clear "story" that will be interesting to the audience. Focusing on one aspect of the work, or giving a broad overview of the project, are both possible approaches.

Beyond this, refer to the call's specific guidelines. The page or word limit is usually a good guideline to how much detail they are looking for.

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Research Progress Report

Report generator.

Progress reports . You heard of them, you may even think they are useful or useless. You may also think that as a student, you don’t have to write them. However, this is not always the case. A research progress report is nothing short as one of the necessary reports you need to make. When it comes to writing reports, a lot of students may feel the need to complain due to the fact that writing reports can be boring or simply a waste of time. What they don’t know is that giving a report is useful for their professors, especially when it is used as a way to know the progress of their performance, school projects, or research activities. So take a good look at these examples to help you out with your research progress report.

10+ Research Progress Report Examples

1. research progress report template.

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2. Summer Stipend Research Progress Report

Size: 31 KB

3. Biomedical Research Progress Report

Size: 150 KB

4. Research Performance Progress Report

Size: 76 KB

5. Weekly Research Progress Report

Size: 103 KB

6. Printable Research Progress Report

Size: 681 KB

7. Research Fellow Progress Report

8. Human Research Progress Report

Size: 117 KB

9. Editable Research Progress Report

Size: 113 KB

10. Candidate Research Progress Report

Size: 290 KB

11. Annual Research Progress Report

What Is a Research Progress Report?

The progress of your research . Whether that progress will be a lot or not as much. The report consists of the detailed progress you give to your superior or for students’ cases to their professors on how their research assignment or research project is going. In addition to that, a research progress report not only consists of the exact progress, but it also consists of what you have been doing, how the research is going, and of course the information you are going to be giving or the evidence whether positive or negative. Everything is written there. A research progress report is a document that clearly states what it is supposed to state.

How to Write a Research Progress Report?

To write a research progress report , there are a lot of ways to do so. Regardless of how you plan it out, draft it out and finalize it, there are still some things you have to think about when you want to proceed. Here are some tips that will get you started with your research progress report.

1. Write the Title of Your Report

The title of your report should at least be about what your research is about. It does not have to be something too fancy that the whole point of the report is lost or too obvious that would make the report redundant.

2. State the Achievements That Have Been Done

Any achievement that has been done or recorded should be written down, no matter how minuscule or large these achievements are. Progress is progress and it should also be recorded.

3. State the Name of the Researchers

The researchers names should also at least be a part of the report, especially if it is a group research. It is always best to add the names of the people involved in helping you with the progress of your report or the progress of your research. Give them some credit.

4. Give the Expected Publication for the Research

There are some who may be asking for the expected publication of your research . If this were the case, at least give the expected date of the research; however, as for the report, when you are done writing it, you should immediately check if you have everything written for it to be presentable.

5. Add the Statistics and Evidence to Support Your Report

The statistics and evidence to support your report should also be present. The reason for having to add evidence for a progress report is to show your professors or your superiors enough to compare the previous progress reports to the current report, regardless if there is any progress or the lack of it.

What is a research progress report?

A research progress report is a document that summarizes the progress of a research made by students. In order for their professors to know the exact ongoing of their research, the students are tasked to write about what is going on with their report and how far are they to achieving it.

Are there other ways to write a research progress report?

There are other ways, but the most common is writing it in an essay form. Of course, you can also fill out a form that states a research progress report form. But it is usual to present it in paragraph form in order for your professors to see the details of the statistics given.

Is a research progress report short or long?

A general research progress report is expected to be a page long. However, this would depend on how much progress you have made throughout your research and how much reports you have done in order to compare from your previous ones.

We are taught to write progress reports while we are still in school, so when we are out there in the real world, we are able to understand the reason and the purpose of writing these kinds of reports. A research progress report is simply just another kind of progress report that we are taught to write. It helps your teachers know where your progress is at the moment and how long are they going to expect your research project to be completed.

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Generate a report on the impact of technology in the classroom on student learning outcomes

Prepare a report analyzing the trends in student participation in sports and arts programs over the last five years at your school.

What is Current Awareness Service (CAS) - Library Science

Current awareness service in library science.

To provide information service to the growing publications, the Library and Information Center provides a special type of service, these services are called Current Identification Service (CAS) and Selected Broadcast Service (SDI).

CAS (Current Awareness Service)

Characteristics & Features of  CAS (Current awareness service)

Methods of  cas (current awareness service), type of cas (current awareness service).

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Literature Review: Work in Progress

• Literature Review
• Purpose of a Literature Review
• Work in Progress
• Compiling & Writing
• Books, Articles, & Web Pages
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Departmental Differences
• Citation Styles & Plagiarism
• Know the Difference! Systematic Review vs. Literature Review

Process of a Literature Review

The process of writing a literature review is not necessarily a linear process, you will often have to loop back and refine your topic, try new searches and altar your plans. The info graphic above illustrates this process.  It also reminds you to continually keep track of your research by citing sources and creating a bibliography.

• Know what the review is for; each assignment will offer the purpose for the review.  For example, is it for “background”, or a “pro and con discussion”, "integration", “summarizing”, etc.
• Create a “search plan”, decide where you will search for information, what type of information you will need.
• Research   - Preform Searches; choose sources and collect information to use in your paper.  Make sure you cite the sources used.
• Think  - Analyze information in a systematic manner and begin your literature review (e.g., summarize, synthesize, etc.). Make sure you cite the sources used.
• Complete  - Write your paper, proof & revise and create your finished bibliography.

Analytic Reading

Analytic reading is when a skilled researcher evaluates their sources and evidence very carefully by asking questions of the readings.

For example, they ask such questions as:

• For example, finding articles about crime in a Shakespearian Journal would not necessarily offer valid research for a criminal justice paper.
• Who is the Author(s)? What do you know about them?
• For example, is it reporting on an experiment? a new theory? reviewing previous research? a literature review?
• What is already know about this topic? Is it pointed on in the article?
• Are there known gaps in research?
• For example, A study of the biological effects of microwave radiation done in the 50s or 2000s?
• For example, what credence can be given to a study on tobacco safety sponsored by Phillip Morris or RJ Reynolds?  Is this the ONLY study showing these results?
• Who actually performed the research?
• For example, what should a researcher conclude about medical experiments performed in Nazi Germany?
•   For example, a study that showed that slaves brain size made them want to escape, not the conditions they lived under.
• For example, The teaching of Creation in school was expected, and as late as the 1980s laws were passed that required “creation science” to be taught in public schools together with evolution.
• What specific problem does this research address? Why is it important? How will it relate to my research?
• Is the method used a good one? The best one? How does it compare with the other research I have found?
• What are the specific findings?
• Are the findings supported by persuasive evidence?
• Is there an alternative interpretation of the data that the author did not address?
• What specific problem does this research address? Why is it important?
• How are the findings unique/new/unusual or supportive of other work in the field?
• How do these results relate to the work I’m interested in? To other work I’ve read about?
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Improving transparency and scientific rigor in academic publishing

Eric m. prager.

1 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken New Jersey, USA

Karen E. Chambers

Joshua l. plotkin.

2 Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook New York, USA

David L. McArthur

3 Department of Neurosurgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles California, USA

Anita E. Bandrowski

4 Center for Research in Biological Systems, University of California at San Diego, San Diego California, USA

Nidhi Bansal

Maryann e. martone, hadley c. bergstrom.

5 Department of Psychological Science, Program in Neuroscience and Behavior, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie New York, USA

Anton Bespalov

6 Partnership for Assessment and Accreditation of Scientific Practice, Heidelberg Germany

7 Valdman Institute of Pharmacology, Pavlov First State Medical University, St. Petersburg Russia

8 John Wiley & Sons, Oxford UK

Associated Data

A preprint of this paper, which includes a roadmap to follow when preparing original research manuscripts and comments made during the review of the paper can be found at https://osf.io/5cvqh/ .

Progress in basic and clinical research is slowed when researchers fail to provide a complete and accurate report of how a study was designed, executed, and the results analyzed. Publishing rigorous scientific research involves a full description of the methods, materials, procedures, and outcomes. Investigators may fail to provide a complete description of how their study was designed and executed because they may not know how to accurately report the information or the mechanisms are not in place to facilitate transparent reporting. Here, we provide an overview of how authors can write manuscripts in a transparent and thorough manner. We introduce a set of reporting criteria that can be used for publishing, including recommendations on reporting the experimental design and statistical approaches. We also discuss how to accurately visualize the results and provide recommendations for peer reviewers to enhance rigor and transparency. Incorporating transparency practices into research manuscripts will significantly improve the reproducibility of the results by independent laboratories.

Significance

Failure to replicate research findings often arises from errors in the experimental design and statistical approaches. By providing a full account of the experimental design, procedures, and statistical approaches, researchers can address the reproducibility crisis and improve the sustainability of research outcomes. In this piece, we discuss the key issues leading to irreproducibility and provide general approaches to improving transparency and rigor in reporting, which could assist in making research more reproducible.

1. INTRODUCTION

Progress in basic and clinical research is strongly dependent upon asking important research questions, attempting to answer those questions with robust methods, and then communicating the findings. Persuading colleagues that scientific results are objectively obtained and valid involves a willingness to report accurate, robust, and transparent descriptions of the methods, procedures, and outcomes, which will allow for the independent replication, or reproducibility, of those findings (see Box 1 for definitions).

Box 1. Definitions

• Open Science —the process of making the content and process of producing evidence and claims transparent and accessible to others 41
• Methods Reproducibility —complete and transparent reporting of information required for another researcher to repeat protocols and methods 2
• Results reproducibility —independent attempts to reproduce the same or nearly identical results with the same protocols under slightly different conditions
• Rigor —applying the scientific method in the strictest sense to ensure an unbiased experimental design, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of results
• Transparency —the process by which the methodology, including the experimental design, data collection, coding, analysis, and tools used in data analysis are clearly visible to all readers
• Randomization— the random allocation of participants/subjects to different experimental conditions or the order of sample collection to minimize the possibility of subjective influence in the assignment of subjects or unmeasured variables that might influence the outcome
• Blinding— the investigator and study staff are unaware of the group to which the subject was allocated from study onset through data analysis

Publishers have the responsibility of providing a platform for the exchange of scientific information, while at the same time it is the responsibility of the authors, journal editors, and peer reviewers to ensure that the published manuscripts are accurate. While many editors and peer reviewers expect that research published in their journals should be potentially reproducible, there are no set procedures to empirically test whether a finding can be independently reproduced. What's more, other barriers to reproducing results exist, including the laboratory environment, apparatus and test protocols, and animal strain. 1 A major source of irreproducibility also includes substantial systematic error, which can occur while scientists are conducting the experiments or during statistical analyses. 2 Systematic error can occur for a variety of reasons, including lack of scientific skill (e.g., two people performing the same experiment may not have the same level of experience) or variability in subject populations or reagents. 3 In addition, when a researcher has inadequate statistical knowledge or there are honest flaws in the experimental design and statistical output, the errors generated might inappropriately influence the interpretation of the results. 4 , 5

Efforts to improve research transparency (and, subsequently, reproducibility) by funders, researchers, and publishers have led to the development of checklists and new author guidelines (see, for example, Cell Press' Structured Transparent Accessible Reporting [STAR] Methods and the Journal of Neuroscience Research (JNR) Transparent Science Questionnaire ). However, checklists often go unchecked or unenforced by the publishers, editors, and/or peer reviewers 6 and compliance by the authors is not always wholehearted (M. Macleod personal communication). Publishers cannot always ensure that the results are reproducible, but they can help the authors to present a transparent account of their work, including providing full details of the experimental and statistical procedures and results. Transparent and rigorous accounts of how an experiment was performed, why the authors used specific statistical approaches, and what limitations arise from such work will allow the reviewers, editors, and subsequently readers to better judge the quality of the science.

In this commentary, we offer an update to basic approaches in reporting a thorough account of the experimental design and statistical approaches and provide an overview of data visualization techniques. 7 It is our hope, as publishers and editors, that these guidelines will help the authors adhere to specific reporting guidelines that promote rigor and transparency in scientific research, which will ensure an accurate and complete account throughout their experiments and discourage publication bias. This, in turn, will promote better, more reproducible science.

2. BARRIERS TO REPRODUCIBILITY

Many factors can lead to irreproducibility of scientific results. Oftentimes, these trace back to flaws in the experimental design, statistical analyses (and a lack of understanding of fundamental statistical principles), including low statistical power or inadequate sample sizes, basic reporting of the information essential for labs to independently reproduce results (e.g., biological reagents and reference material), and selective reporting of data/results (e.g., p‐hacking). 4 , 8 , 9 These factors and others might contribute to between 50% and 90% of the published papers being irreproducible. 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 Attempts to reproduce published results costs the United States approximately $28B annually, 9 , 18 yet poor descriptions of the published studies lead to a majority of studies becoming non‐replicable. 11 The next subsections will break down some of the more common barriers to reproducibility.

2.1. Neglecting the methods and materials section in manuscripts

The Methods and Materials section of the manuscript is an often neglected area. Journals and authors often limit the methods section to brief descriptions of the procedures or place more complete methods into supplemental materials, or for journals moving away from supplemental material, to online methods that are separate from the article; these are not often critically reviewed by referees and can go unread by the experimenters. Furthermore, reviewers might not be able to adequately review methods and tools and subsequently might fail to notice that key details are missing. This can lead to a lack of complete and transparent reporting of the information required for another researcher to repeat protocols and methods. 2 Similarly, journals requiring a subsection on statistical analyses rarely ask the authors to provide a full account of the statistical approaches, and the authors may also fail to include a full account of the statistical outputs in the results section. Without a rigorous description of the methods, materials, and statistical approaches, experimenters lack the necessary information to independently replicate or nearly replicate results with the same protocol under similar conditions. 2 , 13

2.2. Aiming for novelty and impact

Current publication trends place emphasis on the pursuit of novelty and innovation, 19 which leads to a collection of reporting problems in how data were obtained. 8 At the most extreme, pressure to publish may lead individuals to rush their experiments, cut corners, make unintentional errors in statistical outputs, or overinterpret the findings, 20 which can lead to irreproducibility of the scientific findings.

To publish in “high impact” journals, scientists may resort to submitting only their most novel and impactful findings and avoid presenting nonsignificant or incremental findings, 19 though the latter also have important implications in driving scientific progress. The pressure to publish sensational findings has even led some “high impact” journals to state in their submission forms: “negative results are not accepted”. 21 This emphasis might encourage scientists to pursue nonlinear lines of investigation in search of statistical significance (e.g., p‐hacking), and may be one driver of scientific misconduct, including falsifying and fabricating data to increase its impact or statistical significance. 5 At the very least, it leads researchers to omit nonsignificant or incremental findings leading to a bias in the literature, and reinforces the perception that negative findings carry a low priority for publication. 22 , 23 This publication bias has led science reporters and the public to declare that it has become more difficult to trust scientific findings. 24 , 25

2.3. Inadequate training in experimental design, manuscript writing, and reporting tools

Even with the most rigorous reporting guidelines and stringent publication standards, including the precise application of the scientific method to ensure robust and unbiased experimental design, methodology, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of the results, 26 it is not guaranteed the authors will fully comply. Reporting guidelines cannot overcome poor training in experimental design and statistics, both of which may be responsible for many of the challenges leading to irreproducibility. 27 , 28 Indeed, investigators all too often make errors in designing and performing their research, in selecting statistical tests, and in reporting the results. 29 , 30 The problem can be exacerbated by errors being passed down by the primary investigator to students, by reviewers not catching these mistakes, and editors not having the expertise to catch specific errors. However, tools to reeducate scientists at all levels in the experimental design and to employ correct data visualization techniques 31 , 32 are available (see the National Institutes of Health education modules designed to train students or retrain scientists on the responsible conduct of research, https://www.nih.gov/research‐training/rigor‐reproducibility/training or the National Postdoctoral Association's Responsible Conduct of Research Toolkit ). Moreover, many institutions have statistical consultation available to investigators, which should be used; JNR and Brain and Behavior both hired statistical editors to review the submitted manuscripts for statistical accuracy and Current Protocols in Neuroscience recently released a statistical guide that provides general guidelines regarding when, how, and why certain improved statistical techniques might be used in neuroscience research 33 (see also Motulsky, 2014 34 ). These tools helps the authors improve statistical reporting in manuscripts and ensure that the correct approach was used, though statistical reviews may be limited by how much raw data are available.

In addition to the above tools, editorials and commentaries published in various journals attempt to help the authors improve the descriptions of their experimental procedures and results to ensure that the published research is transparently and accurately reported. 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 Unfortunately, the authors often fail to incorporate these guidelines into their articles and most journals do not enforce or penalize the authors for not including specific criteria. 6 Refining the steps necessary to ensure quality control during the peer review and publication processes is essential in order to improve transparency and scientific rigor. Adopting the approaches discussed below will better ensure that the experimental designs are accurate and deviations from that design are explained, with the ultimate goal of increasing the reproducibility of the published data. Journals and publishers should continue to provide detailed guidelines to help the authors during the submission process, but if researchers do not adopt a rigorous and transparent approach to scientific design and reporting from the onset of training, these requirements will continue to fall short.

In the following sections, we outline the key steps to improve transparency and scientific rigor that should be considered during the designing stages of experiments, not just before submission for publication. These requirements can be broadly broken down into (a) reporting criteria to ensure rigor and transparency; (b) transparent account of experimental design; (c) improving statistical rigor and transparency; and (d) peer review to enhance rigor and transparency. Encouraging specific descriptions and a full account of the study will ensure transparency and could improve reproducibility efforts. The next four sections will break down these components to elaborate on how each can improve transparency and rigor in scientific reporting.

3. REPORTING CRITERIA TO ENSURE RIGOR AND TRANSPARENCY

The following points describe the key characteristics that must be included in any research design to assess the internal validity, reliability, and potential for reproducibility of scientific findings. Many of these recommendations have been discussed in various venues (e.g., ARRIVE guidelines 7 , 18 , 38 , 41 , 42 ), and some might only be appropriate to specific sciences. However, we feel that inclusion of these criteria, when applicable, into research manuscripts will improve rigor and transparency of the experimental design and statistical approaches.

3.1. Appropriately describing the experimental subjects

The methods section of each published study begins with a description of the experimental unit; however, in many cases, the information provided falls short. The experimental units are the entity that is randomly and independently assigned to the treatment conditions (e.g., human subject, animal, littler, cage, fish tank, culture dish, etc.). 43 The sample size is equal to the number of experimental units. In considering the sample size, one must ensure that the experimental units are independently allocated to the experimental condition, the application of the condition is applied independently to the unit, and the experimental units do not influence one another. 43 A significant concern in cell biology is determining whether cells or sections, for example, can be considered an experimental unit. In cases where an animal is treated and subsequent testing occurs postmortem (e.g., immunohistochemistry or electrophysiology), then the histological sections, neurons per section, spines per neuron, tumor cells per section etc. are all subsamples of the experimental unit, which is the animal, and should be considered an n of 1. 43 , 44 If data are not independent, one strategy is to analyze clustered data (e.g., convert the replicates from a single subject into a single summary statistic. 44 Alternatively, there are also procedures to accurately model the true variability in data sets using modern statistical techniques (e.g., handling nested data such as cells/animals, littermates). 45 As Stanley Lazic so eloquently concluded in his recent paper, 46

...a few simple alterations to a design or analysis can dramatically increase the information obtained without increasing the sample size. In the interest of minimizing animal usage and reducing waste in biomedical research, 15 , 47 researchers should aim to maximise power by designing confirmatory experiments around key questions, use focused hypothesis tests, and avoid dichotomising and nesting that ultimately reduce power and provide no other benefits.

An appropriately written section describing the experimental subjects must include a statement of ethical approval (Institutional Review Board approval for human research or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approval for animals), followed by the total number of participants involved in each experiment. The authors must also include a clear description of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, which should be prespecified prior to the start of the experiments. Reporting the number of experimental units (i.e., subjects, animals, cells) excluded as well as the reason for exclusion is necessary to prevent the researcher from introducing selection bias that favors positive outcomes and distorts true effects. 48 Crucially, studies involving human subjects must not reveal individual identifying information but must contain a full description of the participants' demographics as variations in the demographics can lead to confounding variables if not appropriately controlled. When designing an experiment, one must also account for sex as a biological variable (see below). One should carefully review the extant literature to determine whether sex differences might be observed in the study and, if so, design and power the study to test for sex differences. Omitting this step could compromise the rigor of the study. 49 , 50

3.2. Randomization and blinding procedures

Choices made by investigators during the design and execution of experiments can introduce bias, which may result in the authors reporting false‐positives. 13 , 39 , 51 For example, when investigators are aware of which animals belong to one condition or know that a given treatment should have a specific effect, or human subjects become aware of the conditions they are in, the researchers and participants may inadvertently be biased toward specific findings or alterations in a specific behavior. 52 , 53 To reduce bias in subject and outcome selection, the authors should report randomization and blinding procedures. 54 Implementing and reporting randomization and blinding procedures is simple and can be followed using a basic guide, 52 , 55 but to reduce bias, it is essential to report the method of participant randomization to the various experimental groups as well as on random sample processing and collection of data. 38 , 39 Moreover, investigators should report whether experimenters are blind to the allocation sequence and also, in animal studies, report whether controls are true littermates of the test group. 44 Similarly, once the investigator is blind to the conditions, they should remain unaware of the group in which the subject is allocated and the assessment outcome. 39 Blinding is not always possible. In these cases, procedures to standardize the interventions and outcomes should be implemented and reported so groups are treated as equally as possible. In addition, researchers should consider duplicate assessment outcomes to ensure objectivity. 52 Attention to reporting these details will reduce bias, avoid mistaking batch effects for treatment effects, and will improve the transparency of how the research was conducted.

3.3. Animal housing and husbandry

Many life science disciplines use animal models to test their hypotheses. Few studies provide detailed information regarding housing and husbandry and those reports that contain the information typically do not provide any level of detail that could allow for others to follow similar housing procedures. When using animals, care should be taken to adequately describe the housing and husbandry conditions as these conditions could have profound implications on the experimental results. 56 At a minimum, the authors should introduce in the abstract the race, sex, species, cell lines, etc. so that the reader will be aware of the population/sample being studied. However, in the methods section, the authors should carefully describe all animal housing and husbandry procedures. For example, it is normally unclear whether animals were single or group housed, and in most journals, the age and/or weight of the animals are commonly omitted. 57 Other factors that are not commonly reported include information on how the animals were transported from a breeder to the experimenter vivarium (see Good practices in the Transportation of Research Animals, 2006), vivarium temperature, humidity, day/night schedules, how often cages are cleaned, how often animals are handled, whether enrichment is provided in a cage, and cage sizes. 56 Requiring a full description of housing and husbandry procedures will be essential to the rigor and transparency of the published studies and could help determine why some studies are not reproducible.

3.4. Sex as a biological variable

Sex/gender plays an influential role in experimental outcomes. A common practice within research is that findings in one sex (usually males) are generalized to the other sex (usually females). Yet, research consistently demonstrates that sex differences are present across disciplines. For example, as evidence reveals in a recent issue of JNR (see Sex Influences on Nervous System Function ), sex not only matters at the macroscopic level, where male and female brains have been found to differ in connectivity, 58 but at the microscopic level too. 59 The National Institutes of Health as well as a number of funding agencies mandates the inclusion of sex as a biological variable, yet this mandate is not enforced by most journals. Starting at the study design, the authors must review whether the extant literature suggests that sex differences might be observed in the study, and if so, then design and power the study to test for sex differences. Otherwise, the rigor of the study could be compromised. When publishing the results, the authors must account for sex as a biological variable, whenever possible. At a minimum, the authors should state the sex of the subjects studied in the title and/or abstract of the manuscript. The rationale for choosing only one sex if a single sex study is conducted should also be provided, though discussed as a limitation to the generalizability of the findings. Investigators must also justify excluding either males or females. The assumptions that females are more variable than males or that females must be tested across the estrous cycle are not appropriate as these are not major sources of variability. 60 This policy is not a mandate to specifically investigate sex differences, but requires investigators to consider sex from the design of the research question through reporting the results. 49 , 50 In some instances, sex might not influence the outcomes (e.g., 61 , 62 ), but balancing sex in animal and cellular models will distinctly inform the various levels of research. 49 More specific guidelines for applying the policy of considering sex as a biological variable are also available, 50 , 63 but shifting the experimental group composition should be done in the context of appropriate a priori power analyses. One concern is that sample sizes need to be doubled to identify effects using both female and male subjects, but factorial designs can evaluate the main effects of the treatment and subject sex without increasing the sample size. 64 While the risk of false‐positive errors associated with testing sex differences in this way is present, reporting that these differences may or may not be present is imperative to understanding how sex influences the function of the nervous system. This practice should be extended to all scientific journals using animal/human subjects.

3.5. Transparent account of the experimental design and statistical approaches

A transparent experimental design, meaning how the experiment is planned to meet the specified objectives, describes all the factors that are to be tested in an experiment, including the order of testing and the experimental conditions. As studies become more complex and interconnected, planning the experimental procedures prior to the onset of experiments becomes essential. Yet even when the experiments are planned prior to their initiation, the experimental designs are often poorly described and rarely account for alterations in procedures that were used in the study under consideration. To provide a more transparent and rigorous approach to describing the experimental design, a new section should be placed after the “subjects” paragraph describing, in detail, the experimental design and deviations made from the original design.

The experimental design section should consist of two main components: (a) a list of the experimental procedures that were used to conduct the study, including the sequence and timing of manipulation; and (b) an open discussion of any deviations made from the original design. The description should include an explanation of the question(s) being tested, whether this is a parameter estimation, model comparison, exploratory study, etc., the dependent and independent variables, replicates (how often the experiments were performed and how the data were nested). and the type of design considered (e.g., completely randomized design, randomized complete block design, and factorial design; see 65 , 66 ) for definitions and procedures to implement these designs). Assuming the authors planned the analysis prior to data collection, the authors should describe the specific a priori consideration of the statistical methods and planned comparisons 7 or report that no a priori statistical planning was carried out. If the statistical approach deviated from how it was originally designed (see, for example, Registered Reports below), the authors should also report the justification for this change. This open description could help to improve independent research reproducibility efforts and assist reviewers and readers in understanding the rationale for specific approaches.

A precise description of how methodological tools and procedures are prepared and used should also be provided in the experimental design section. Oftentimes, methodological procedures are truncated, forcing the authors to omit critical steps. Alternatively, the authors may report that the methods were previously described but might have modified those procedures without reporting those changes. Due to current publishing constraints, various caveats that go into the methodological descriptions remain unknown. However, this can be remedied easily by journals requiring a full description or step‐by‐step procedure of the experimental protocol used to test the dependent variables. Two options are available for publishing full protocols. First, the protocol could be published in the manuscript, with the reviewers verifying that the procedures are appropriately followed; second, a truncated version of the methods could be published in the manuscript, but the extended methods must be required as supplemental material (the extended methods will be peer reviewed during the submission process). An alternative approach is to deposit step‐by‐step protocols into a database or a data repository such as Dryad, FigShare, or with the Center for Open Science, where they will receive a DOI and can be linked back to the original research article, which will contain the truncated procedures.

3.5.1. Materials

Rigorous descriptions of the experimental protocols not only require a level of detail in the description of the experimental design, but also a full account of the resources and how they were prepared and used. A contributing factor to irreproducibility is the poor or inaccurate description of materials. In order for researchers to replicate and build upon published research findings, they must have confidence in knowing that materials specified in a publication can be correctly identified so that they might obtain the same materials and/or find out more about those materials. Most studies do not include sufficient detail to uniquely identify key research resources, including model organisms, cell lines, and antibodies, to name a few. 67 While most author guidelines request that the authors provide the company name, city in which the company is located, and the catalog number of the material, (a) many authors do not include this information; (b) the particular product may no longer be available; or (c) the catalog number or lot number is reported incorrectly, thus rendering the materials unattainable.

A new system is laying the foundation to report research resources with a unique identification number that can be deposited in a database for quick access. The Resource Identification Initiative standardizes the materials necessary to conduct research by assigning research resource identifiers (RRIDs). 68 To make it as simple as possible to obtain RRIDs, a platform was developed ( www.scicrunch.org/resources ) to aggregate data about antibodies, cell lines, model organisms, and software into a community database that is automatically updated on a weekly basis and provides the most recent articles that contain RRIDs. While SciCrunch is among the founding platforms, these identifiers can also be found on other sites, including antibodyregistry.org , benchsci.com , and others. Similarly, though more involved, PubChem offers identification for various compounds such as agonists and antagonists. Simply find the chemical abstract service (CAS) number from the chemical safety data sheet (SDS), input that number into PubChem, and receive the PubChem Chemical Identifier (CID). RRIDs have been successfully implemented in many titles throughout Wiley and are also in use by Cell Press and a number of other publishers. The authors should provide RRIDs and CIDs when describing resources such as antibodies, software (including statistical software used, as this is rarely reported), and model organisms, or compounds used, allowing for easy verification by peer reviewers and experimenters.

3.5.2. Statistical rigor and transparency

With most statistical software having a user‐friendly interface, students quickly learn how to perform basic statistical tests. However, users all too often choose inadequate and incorrect statistical methods or approaches or cannot reproduce their analyses since they have only a rudimentary understanding to each test and when to use them. 6 , 28 , 69 , 70 What's more, the authors do not appropriately describe their statistical approaches in text, partially because tests are performed only after the study is executed. In designing and reporting the experiments, the authors should report normalization procedures, tests for assumptions, exclusion criteria, and why statistical approaches might differ from what the authors originally proposed, if they developed these approaches prior to the onset of data collection. In addition, the authors must also include the statistical software and specific version thereof, descriptive statistics, and a full account of the statistical outputs in the results section.

Errors in statistical outputs often arise when the authors (a) do not conduct and report a power calculation 70 or do not distinguish between exploratory and confirmatory analyses; 71 (b) fail to state which statistical tests are used or provide adequate detail about the tests, including the descriptive statistics and a full account of the statistical output; (c) fail to state whether assumptions were examined 42 ; or (d) fail to describe how replicates were analyzed. 69 Moreover, it might be difficult to reproduce statistical output when the authors do not report the statistical software and specific version thereof, fail to include in the manuscript the exclusion criteria or code used to generate analyses, or explain how modifications to the experimental design might lead to changes in how statistical analyses are approached (e.g., independent versus non‐independent groups) (additional details about these common mistakes can be found in, 7 , 28 , 32 but it is important to emphasize that failure to report these variables can lead to errors in data interpretation.

Choosing the correct statistical analyses first depends on an appropriate experimental design and mode of investigation (exploratory versus confirmatory 71 ). One must decide whether experimental conditions are independent, meaning that no subjects or specimens are related to each other, 7 , 32 whether the conditions are non‐independent or paired, and whether there are any associations between variables. 72 The second step is that statistical analyses must include specific details about the test statistics, rationale for choosing each test, a description of whether normal distribution parameters are obtained, and a statement about which p‐value level is deemed statistically significant. In addition, a transparent and rigorous statistical analysis section must include the following:

• Power analysis calculations or sample size justification for exploratory research, including accuracy in parameter estimation 73
• Statement of the factors tested, types of analyses, and what post hoc comparisons were made
• Statement of the statistical tests used and details as to why those tests were chosen, including how the authors choose between parametric or nonparametric tests (assumptions aside) *
• Statement of an assessment of assumptions
• Statement of how replicates were analyzed (e.g., are western blots performed in duplicate and band pixels averaged?)
• Data point exclusion criteria
• Statement of how outliers were determined and how they were handled
• Descriptions of raw data, including transformation procedures
• Within the results, a full account of the test statistic, and where applicable the degrees of freedom, p‐values reported to a consistent number of decimal places (usually three), and statement of whether the test was one‐ or two‐sided

3.5.3. Power analysis

Many studies are rejected for publication because of criticism that a study is underpowered, though many more studies are published despite this. 74 Reporting how a sample size was predetermined based on power analyses conducted during the experimental design stage is a good way to avoid this criticism. Researchers are taught to perform these analyses prior to the start of their experiments, but evidence suggests that researchers and peer reviewers do not fully understand the concept of statistical power, have not been given adequate education about the concept, or do not consider the measurement important in designing the experiments. 75

Reviewers and journal editors are beginning to ask authors to address the question of what the power of the study was to detect the observed effect. 76 , 77 Determining whether a study is appropriately powered a priori or post hoc is a matter of debate. 77 Many argue that post hoc power analyses are inappropriate, especially for nonsignificant findings, while others argue that post hoc power analyses are appropriate since a priori power analyses do not represent the power of the ensuring effect, but rather the hypothesized effect. 75

The a priori power analysis is the most common way of determining the sample size for simple experiments and can be easily computed using freely available software such as G*Power . The sample size depends on a mathematical relationship among the (a) effect size of interest; (b) standard deviation ( SD ); (c) chosen significance level; (d) chosen power; and (e) alternative hypothesis. 54 Yet, as more parameters come into play (for example, within mixed effects modeling), power analysis software becomes more complex (see Power Analysis for Mixed Effect Models in R ). Conducting these analyses allows researchers to confidently select a sample size large enough to lead to a rejection of the null hypothesis for a given effect size. 75 However, one limitation to a priori power analyses is that effect sizes and SD s may not be known prior to the research being conducted and may lead to observed effects that are smaller or larger than the hypothesized effects, 78 , 79 ). Alternatively, if it is conventional to use a specific number of subjects for a particular test, then one can report the calculated effect size for that particular sample size and decide whether more samples would be warranted. Either way, power and sample size calculations provide a single estimate, ignoring variability and uncertainty as such simulations are highly encouraged (see 80 ).

An alternative to the a priori power analysis is a post hoc power analysis (SPSS calls this “observed power”) or confidence intervals. The post hoc power analysis takes the observed effect size as the assumed population effect, though this computation might be different from a true population effect size, which might culminate in a misleading evaluation of power. 75 Post hoc power analyses always show there is low power with respect to nonsignificant findings. 77 Thus, utilizing the post hoc power analysis must be done with extreme care and should never be a substitute for the a priori power analysis. In fact, many in the statistical community see post hoc analyses as a waste of effort and recommend abandoning this approach 81 ; see also https://dirnagl.com/2014/07/14/why‐post‐hoc‐power‐calculation‐does‐not‐help/ and http://daniellakens.blogspot.com/2014/12/observed‐power‐and‐what‐to‐do‐if‐your.html ). If a reviewer or journal requests a power analysis, we recommend that rather than using post hoc power analyses, report confidence intervals to estimate the magnitude of effects that are consistent with the statistical data reported. 76 , 77 , 82 Alternatively, if increasing power is a necessity and/or sample sizes are already at their limits for financial or logistic reasons, one should consider alternative approaches, which are well described by Lazic; these include: (a) using fewer factor values for continuous predictors; (b) having a more focused and specific hypothesis test; (c) not dichotomizing or binning continuous variables; (d) using a crossed or factorial design rather than a nested arrangement. 46

We also advise authors to determine whether a parametric or nonparametric test is the most appropriate for the obtained data. Analogues to ordinary parametric tests (e.g., t ‐test or ANOVA, etc.) can be performed even if data are skewed or have nonnormal distributions; multiple robust analytics are available for these circumstances (see 83 ) as long as the sample size is sufficient. Importantly, parametric tests also generally have somewhat more statistical power than nonparametric tests and are more likely to detect a significant effect if one exists. Alternatively, when one's data are better represented by the median, nonparametric tests may be more appropriate, especially when data are skewed enough that a mean might be strongly affected by the distribution tail, whereas the median estimates the center of the distribution. Nonparametric tests may also be more appropriate when the obtained sample size is small, as occurs in many fields where sample sizes average less than eight per group 48 or when the data obtained are ordinal, ranked, or there are outliers that cannot be removed. 84 Beware, however, that meaningful nonparametric testing with sample sizes too low (e.g., n  < 5) contains very little appreciable power to reveal an effect, if indeed one is present; difficulties due to violations of the underlying statistical assumptions of the particular test being used might be present. Bayesian analyses with small sample sizes are also possible, though estimates are highly sensitive to the specification of the prior distribution.

3.5.4. Graphical representation of data

Figures illustrate the most important findings from a study by conveying information about the study design in addition to showing the data and statistical outputs. 7 , 32 Simplistic representations to visualize the data are commonly used and are often inappropriate. For example, bar graphs are designed for categorical data; when used to display continuous data, bar graphs with error bars omit key information about the data distribution (see also 85 ). To change standard practices for presenting data, continuous data should be visualized by emphasizing the individual points; dot plots (e.g., univariate scatterplots) are strongly recommended for small samples, along with plots such as violin plots (or overlaid points on the plots) to provide far more informative views of the data distributions when samples are sufficiently large. Bar graphs should be reserved for categorical data only. Moreover, graphic data plots involving multiple groups are often shown as overlaid, but should be “jittered” across the X ‐axis so that each discrete data point can be visualized. The use of jittering means that when there are fewer unique combinations of data points than total observations, the totality of the data distribution is not obscured. By adopting these practices, readers will be better able to detect gross violations of the statistical assumptions and determine whether results would be different using alternate strategies. 42

When plotting data, it is important to also report the variability of the data. Typically, this is expressed as the SD or standard error of the mean ( SEM ), but it is important to note that SEM does indicate variability. 34 The SD is calculated as part of an estimate of the variability of the population from which the sample was drawn. 86 , 87 The SEM , on the other hand, describes the SD of the sample mean as an estimate of the accuracy of the population mean. In other words, the SD shows how many points within the sample differ from the sample mean, whereas the SEM shows how close the sample mean is to the population mean. 87 The main function of SEM is to help construct confidence intervals, which are a range of values that take into account the true population value (usually an unknown), so that one can quantify the proximity of the experimental mean to the population mean. 88 Yet deriving confidence intervals around one's data (using SD ) or the mean (using SEM ) is premised on those data being normally distributed. Robust estimators are increasingly important as heteroscedasticity (having subpopulations with differing variabilities) is a frequent consequence of real‐world measurement. Traditional data transformations are an attempt to cope with this phenomenon but for many, such transformations may not actually serve to resolve anything and may add a layer of unnecessary complexity.

In determining which estimate of variability to depict graphically, it is important to remember that the SD is used when one wants to know how widely scattered measurements are or the variability within the sample, but if one is interested in the uncertainty around the estimate of the mean measurement or the proximity of the mean to the population mean, SEM is more appropriate. 87 When plotting data variability, it is important to consider that when SEM bars do not overlap, the viewer cannot be sure that the difference between the two means is statistically significant (see 34 ). We also note that it is misleading to report SD 's in the narrative and tables but plot SEM s. Furthermore, unless an author specifically wants to inform the reader about the precision of the study, SD should be reported as it quantifies variability within the sample. 86 , 87 , 88 Therefore, the optimal method to visualize data variability is to display the raw data, but if that makes the graph too difficult to read, instead show a box‐whisker plot, frequency distribution, or the mean ±  SD . 34

3.5.5. Inclusion of statistically significant and nonsignificant data

The probability that a scientific research article is published traditionally depends on the novelty or inferred impact of the conclusion, the size of the effect measured, and the statistical confidence in that result. 21 , 89 The consequence of obtaining negative results can lead to a file‐drawer effect; scientists ignore negative evidence that does not reach significance and intentionally or unintentionally select the subsets of data that show statistical significance as the outcomes of interest. 41 This publication bias skews scientific knowledge toward statistically significant or “positive” results, meaning that the results of thousands of experiments that fail to confirm a result are filed away. 89 These data‐contingent analysis decisions, also known as p‐hacking, 90 can inflate spurious findings and lead to misestimates that might have consequences for public health. To combat the stigma of reporting negative results, we encourage authors to provide a full account of the experiment, to explicitly state both statistically significant and nonsignificant results, and to publish papers that have been rigorously designed and conducted, irrespective of their statistical outcomes. In addition, some organizations such as the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology are offering prizes in neuroscience research to encourage publication of data where the results do not confirm the expected outcome or original hypothesis (see ECNP Preclinical Network Data Prize ). Published reports of both significant and nonsignificant findings will result in better scientific communication among and between colleagues.

3.5.6. Real and perceived conflicts of interest

Though objectivity of a researcher or group is assumed, conflicts of interest may exist and could be a potential source of bias. Conflicts of interest largely focus on financial conflicts, 91 , 92 but they can also occur when an individual's personal interests are in conflict with professional obligations, including industrial relationships. 93 Conflicts, whether real or perceived, arise when one recognizes an interest as influencing an author's objectivity. This can occur when an author owns a patent, or has stock ownership, or is a member of a company, for example. All participants in a paper must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a real or perceived conflict of interest. When considering whether a conflict is present, one should ask whether a reasonable reader could feel misled or deceived. While beyond the scope of this article, the Committee on Publication Ethics offers a number of resources on conflicts of interest .

3.5.7. Registered reports and open practices badges

One possible way to incorporate all the information listed above and to combat the stigma against papers that report nonsignificant findings is through the implementation of Registered Reports or rewarding transparent research practices. Registered Reports are empirical articles designed to eliminate publication bias and incentivize best scientific practice. Registered Reports are a form of empirical article in which the methods and the proposed analyses are preregistered and reviewed prior to research being conducted. This format is designed to minimize bias, while also allowing complete flexibility to conduct exploratory (unregistered) analyses and report serendipitous findings. The cornerstone of the Registered Reports format is that the authors submit as a Stage 1 manuscript an introduction, complete and transparent methods, and the results of any pilot experiments (where applicable) that motivate the research proposal, written in the future tense. These proposals will include a description of the key research question and background literature, hypotheses, experimental design and procedures, analysis pipeline, a statistical power analysis, and full description of the planned comparisons. Submissions, which are reviewed by editors, peer reviewers and in some journals, statistical editors, meeting the rigorous and transparent requirements for conducting the research proposed are offered an in‐principle acceptance, meaning that the journal guarantees publication if the authors conduct the experiment in accordance with their approved protocol. Many journals publish the Stage 1 report, which could be beneficial not only for citations, but for the authors' progress reports and tenure packages. Following data collection, the authors prepare and resubmit a Stage 2 manuscript that includes the introduction and methods from the original submission plus their obtained results and discussion. The manuscript will undergo full review; referees will consider whether the data test the authors' proposed hypotheses by satisfying the approved outcome‐neutral conditions, will ensure the authors adhered precisely to the registered experimental procedures, and will review any unregistered post hoc analyses added by the authors to confirm they are justified, methodologically sound, and informative. At this stage, the authors must also share their data (see also Wiley's Data Sharing and Citation Policy ) and analysis scripts on a public and freely accessible archive such as Figshare and Dryad or at the Open Science Framework. Additional details, including template reviewer and author guidelines, can be found by clicking the link to the Open Science Framework from the Center for Open Science (see also 94 ).

The authors who practice transparent and rigorous science should be recognized for this work. Funders can encourage and reward open practice in significant ways (see https://wellcome.ac.uk/what‐we‐do/our‐work/open‐research ). One way journals can support this is to award badges to the authors in recognition of these open scientific practices. Badges certify that a particular practice was followed, but do not define good practice. As defined by the Open Science Framework, three badges can be earned. The Open Data badge is earned for making publicly available the digitally shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. These data must be accessible via an open‐access repository, and must be permanent (e.g., a registration on the Open Science Framework , or an independent repository at www.re3data.org ). The Open Materials badge is earned when the components of the research methodology needed to reproduce the reported procedure and analysis are made publicly available. The Preregistered badge is earned for having a preregistered design, whereas the Preregistered+Analysis Plan badge is earned for having both a preregistered research design and an analysis plan for the research; the authors must report results according to that plan. Additional information about the badges, including the necessary information to be awarded a badge, can be found by clicking this link to the Open Science Framework from the Center for Open Science.

4. PEER REVIEW TO ENHANCE RIGOR AND TRANSPARENCY

The process of peer review is designed to evaluate the validity, quality, and originality of the articles for publication. Yet peer reviewers are not immune to making mistakes. For example, several studies were conducted where major errors were inserted into papers. In these studies, no reviewer ever found all the errors and some reviewers did not spot any errors. 95 , 96 While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss many of the defects of peer review (see 97 ), it is important to note that the changes to the peer review process are ongoing 98 and publishers are working to develop more formal training processes. However, to quickly improve rigor and transparency in scientific research, peer review should emphasize the design and execution of the experiment. We are not saying that reviewers should focus solely on the experimental design; it is important for reviewers to weigh in on the novel insights of a study and how study results may or may not contribute to the field. However, to help ensure the accuracy and the validity of a study, emphasis should first be on the experimental design. To assist the reviewers, the authors should submit as part of their manuscript a Transparent Science Questionnaire (TSQ), or something equivalent, which identifies where in the manuscript specific elements that could aid in reproducibility efforts are found. The reviewers use this form to verify that the authors have included the relevant information and ensure that the study was designed and executed objectively, ensuring the study's validity and reliability. Using this or similar forms will also help reviewers to find the relevant information necessary to ensure the appropriateness of the design, which can then allow them to focus on the experimental outcomes. Adopting forms such as the TSQ or using services such as those offered by Research Square could also speed up the peer review process and reduce the cost in time committed by unpaid reviewers (which, in 2008, was estimated to cost $2.3 billion) ( https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/08/31/the‐burden‐of‐peer‐review/ ).

A multistage review where different parties are concerned with different aspects of the review may be optimal. Because many errors in manuscripts are found in the statistical output, one stage of review should be a statistical review, whereby a statistical editor reviews the statistical analyses of the manuscript to ensure accuracy, but also verifies that the most appropriate statistical tests for that design were used. Upon completion, the editor will then make a decision as to whether the approach and execution is sufficient and is in line with the reported statistical output. By having experts focus on specific aspects of a research report, journal editors will become more confident that the research published is valid and of high quality and integrity.

5. CONCLUSIONS

A challenge in science is for scientists to be open and transparent about the procedures used to obtain results. A major source of irreproducibility is substantial human error, which can occur while scientists are conducting the experiments or during data/statistical analysis. Groups are continuing to develop systems that help researchers cover every aspect of the experimental design (e.g., EQIPD or XDA ), but education and awareness of the key elements in research design and analysis is essential to transparent and reproducible research. By incorporating the specific elements discussed in this document into research manuscripts, researchers can reduce subjective bias, while actively improving methods' reproducibility, which will increase the likelihood of research reproducibility as the two are closely linked. 2 While variability in results is inevitable, ensuring that every salient aspect of a study is reported will help others understand the procedures involved and potential sources of errors during the experimentation process, which will ultimately lead to greater transparency in science.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Dr. David McArthur serves as JNR's paid statistical reviewer and has reviewed in that capacity for other journals, both Wiley and other publishers. Dr. Anita Bandrowski runs SciCrunch, a company devoted to ensuring RRIDs persist in the literature. Dr. Maryann Martone is a founder and the CSO of SciCrunch, which provides services supporting RRIDs and is the Editor‐in‐Chief of Brain and Behavior . Dr. Eric Prager is the Editor‐in‐Chief of Journal of Neuroscience Research . Dr. Nidhi Bansal is the Editor‐in‐Chief of Cancer Reports . Chris Graf works for Wiley, and volunteers for COPE, Committee on Publication Ethics.

AUTHORS' CONTRIBUTION

All authors take responsibility for the integrity and the accuracy of this manuscript. Conceptualization , EMP and CG. Writing—Original Draft , EMP, KC; Writing—Review and Editing , EMP, KC, JKP, DLM, AB, NB, MM, HCB, AB, CG; Supervision , CG.

Supporting information

Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank Dr. Larry Cahill, Dr. Stanley Lazic, Dr. Hermina Nedelescu, Dr. Tracey Weissgerber, and Dr. Cora Lee Wetherington for valuable comments to this manuscript. EMP and AB acknowledge the contribution of the discussions that took place during the meetings organized by the ECNP Network Preclinical Data Forum ( https://www.ecnp.eu/research‐innovation/ECNP‐networks/List‐ECNP‐Networks/Preclinical‐Data‐Forum.aspx ).

Prager EM, Chambers KE, Plotkin JL, et al. Improving transparency and scientific rigor in academic publishing . Cancer Reports . 2019; 2 :e1150. 10.1002/cnr2.1150 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

This article is simultaneously published in Brain and Behavior ( https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.1141 ) and in Journal of Neuroscience Research ( https://doi.org/10.1002/jnr.24340 ).

* When describing the data, it is important to differentiate between an exploratory and confirmatory study, as this could have profound implications as to how data are presented. Exploratory analyses are meant to identify patterns in the data without much emphasis on hypothesis testing, but most studies publish confirmatory experiments to test one or a few stated hypotheses.

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How to use Online Bulletin Boards (OBBs) in your market research

With agile market research on the rise, and a significant trend towards research methodologies that can be used remotely, interest in Online Bulletin Boards (OBBs) has soared in 2020. Read our post about how you can use OBBs to obtain rich insights from your participants and how FieldworkHub can help you integrate them into your market research practice today. 

What is an Online Bulletin Board (OBB)?

Online bulletin board (OBB) research is a qualitative approach that gathers a virtual assembly of participants and a moderator to gather insights on topics of interest through interactive discussion.   

Unlike a focus group, an OBB will typically last for several days, during which time participants are dipping in and out as their schedule permits. It’s a place for participants and moderators to interact and delve deep into various topics of interest over an extended period. Participants are encouraged to elaborate on ideas, comment and express opinions as best they can, and are often invited to include supporting material in the form of media uploads to help illustrate their thoughts; this helps fuel further discussion with the moderator, and within the group if the material is shared. The OBB may start as a group discussion but later split off into more personal one-one-one interactions as it progresses and research evolves. 

Activities and participation typically involve:

• Group discussions
• Diary activities
• Media uploads (e.g. videos, photos, web clippings)
• 1-on-1 discussions between participant and moderator

How are Online Bulletin Boards (OBB) groups built?

Bulletin boards are conducted via an online platform and typically include 10-20 participants, though in theory there’s no upper limit. Groups can be composed of those who meet a broad set of demographics, such as consumers aged 18-65 who live in the UK, or can be more specific, such as B2B decision makers aged 25-65 in the financial services sector who use a specific enterprise software application, or parents with children aged 12-15 who purchase teen trousers at least once every three months.

Some clients recruit their participants from existing customer or prospect lists. Alternatively recruitment can be outsourced to a specialist agency such as FieldworkHub which has access to a broader range of potential participants and can screen them to find people who meet the client’s precise requirements.

How are OBBs beneficial?

OBBs empower researchers, executives, developers and brands to make decisions regarding strategy or next phases of research in a rapid and cost-effective manner. Within a few days, clients can obtain initial insights on topics of interest, allowing them to make decisions and tailor their next steps much more quickly than with traditional research methods.  There is also more anonymity with participants in an OBB, making it especially useful when discussing more sensitive topics. 

Benefits to OBBs:

• Cost-effective
• Variety of activities and discussion styles to choose from
• More interactive and engaging for participants, resulting in richer and more meaningful insights
• Flexibility with participation - participants can take part from anywhere at any convenient time
• Delivers insights in real-time (this is especially helpful with the rise in agile research in the MR sphere)
• Offers more anonymity than in-person research 

What to consider when choosing an Online Bulletin Board platform

The last five years have seen a rise in the number of OBB software platforms, which can make the process of choosing which platform to use or license more difficult. Here are some of the most important things to consider when making your selection:

• Does your platform allow participants to log in and participate via mobile phone? Access to the platform via a mobile phone is hugely important as most people now use smartphones and tablets for much of their online interaction. It is also essential the mobile experience of the platform is user-friendly.  
• Is it available through both app and web browser? Though mobile phone apps are extremely popular, it’s useful if the platform is ‘device agnostic’ and can be accessed through standard web browsers as well. Platforms available via apps often have additional privacy concerns and drain the users’ batteries more, which can hinder participation.
• Are ample security measures in place? Now that the GDPR is in force, security should be a top concern when choosing a platform. To ensure privacy within your insights communities, you should consider platforms which offer SSL encryption, password protection, respondent privacy for tasks which need to be kept private, and notifications that tell respondents when tasks will be viewable by other members of the community.
• Does the platform allow respondents to delete and/or review material after it’s been posted? The option for individual respondents to view/edit/delete material they’ve uploaded is important as they can change their mind about what’s been posted. Not having the option to edit or delete may hinder participation.
• Is processing and accessing of files through the platform made easy? It’s important to consider the context and format of files being processed/uploaded and whether they’re compatible with other software used. Complications with file processing can bog down the synthesis of insights by your team, cause delays in field, and possibly hinder participation.
• Do you find the platform easy to use? This one is a no-brainer - you should ask yourself whether navigating and using the platform comes intuitively and is generally easy to use; if not, you may want to reconsider your selection.

How FieldworkHub can help

FieldworkHub can support a number of your OBB needs and has the capability to run a qualitative study from start to finish, including:

• Advice on the most suitable OBB platform 
• Participant recruitment 
• Discussion guide development
• Project management 
• Expert moderation of OBBs in most major languages
• Incentive handling
• Reporting & analysis

Get in touch with us today to understand how we can help you with your OBB research needs.

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Research in progress presentations.

What makes a good research presentation?  A set of skills that some people seem to develop intuitively. However, most of us have to work at it. Here are a few tips:

CONTENT: Think about ……

• length: don’t try to include too much.
• timing: respect time limits – your audience members will have other things to do
• aims and focus: make them explicit at the beginning
• making the topic accessible to the audience

The key skill is to include exactly the right amount of material. Most speakers prepare too much and find there is little time left for an interesting Q and A session at the end.

STRUCTURE and COHERENCE: Think about …

• your introduction: in which you can provide an overview of your talk
• your  conclusion: a strong ending will leave  positive impression
• signposting of different sections
• highlighting really important points
• use of slides, handouts and other visual aids
• how you will support your arguments with evidence
• how you will make your own standpoint clear

The key skill is to organize your presentation so that the information and arguments will be presented in a balanced and accessible way. You can achieve this through a combination of spoken words, Powerpoint slides, handouts, pictures, charts, maps and diagrams.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS : Think about …

• Use of body language: to communicate enthusiasm and confidence to your audience
• Use of voice: varying speed of delivery, intonation, word stress
• Avoidance of redundancy and unintended repetition
• Pronunciation of unfamiliar words
• Highlighting of key words
• Interactive skills when dealing with questions
• Achieving a positive rapport with the audience

The most important skill is the last one. Audiences will appreciate it when they feel that you are talking to them rather than to your notes, Powerpoint slides or the ceiling. It is important to look at your audience to check for positive or negative feedback signs. Nodding the head in agreement is a good sign. Looking at a watch or a mobile phone is usually not. To achieve rapport you may have to depart from your intended script from time to time: it is never a good idea to prepare your words 100% in advance and then deliver them without modification in response to audience feedback.

A TYPICAL RESEARCH in PROGRESS PRESENTATION

Although there is no fixed format for this type of presentation, you will probably wish to include a mix of the following:

• Your research topic or draft title
• Your reasons for choosing this topic (and for rejecting other possibilities)
• Your research questions and claims
• Your research methodology and data collection methods
• Influential sources: theoretical frameworks and/or individual writers
• Your findings or expected findings
• Problems encountered in the process of your research with solutions adopted

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Progress Report: What is it & How to Write it? (+Examples)

Picture this: You're a project manager juggling multiple tasks, deadlines, and team members. Keeping the balance between different tasks is hard but very important.

Enter the progress report, your secret weapon in conquering chaos and ensuring smooth sailing.

But what exactly is a progress report, and how do you craft one effectively? In this blog post, I'll demystify progress reports and guide you through the process of writing one.

From daily progress reports to weekly progress reports, using practical progress report templates and a tried-and-true format.

What is a Progress Report?

A progress report is a vital tool in project management , designed to keep different types of stakeholders informed about the ongoing status of a project.

It's a concise document highlighting current achievements, challenges, and goals, allowing the project manager to track progress and make necessary adjustments.

Project progress reports are one of the most important types of project management reports . They help maintain transparency, communication, and accountability within a team, ensuring everyone is on the same page. They also provide valuable insights for decision-makers, helping them gauge the project's overall health and success.

Here's what you can expect to find in a typical progress report:

• Project Overview: A brief summary of the project's objectives and scope.
• Current Status: A snapshot of where the project stands regarding completed tasks, milestones reached, and overall progress.
• Challenges and Issues: Any technical difficulties, resource constraints, or personnel issues.
• Next Steps: The immediate tasks and goals on the horizon and how the team plans to tackle them.
• Progress Report Format: The layout of the report can vary depending on the organization's preferences or industry standards.

Writing a progress report can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be. You'll create a valuable document that keeps everyone informed and aligned by breaking it down into manageable sections and using clear, concise language.

Embrace the progress report writing skill and watch your team's productivity and communication soar.

Why are Progress Reports Important?

Progress reports play a vital role in project management, serving as a communication tool to keep stakeholders updated. Let's delve into why progress reports are crucial for the success of any project or business.

Transparency and Accountability

Progress reports eliminate ambiguity and promote transparency. By regularly sharing project updates with stakeholders, the project team is held accountable for their work. This accountability ensures everyone is on track to meet the project milestones and objectives.

Identify Potential Issues Early

Progress reports help identify potential problems before they escalate. Team members can spot bottlenecks, delays, and other issues by examining project data and analyzing the progress report.

Early detection enables the team to take prompt action and prevent these issues from derailing the project.

Effective Decision-Making

Armed with accurate and timely information from progress reports, project managers and stakeholders can make informed decisions.

When a project progresses smoothly, management can allocate resources more efficiently or plan for future phases. On the other hand, if a project encounters challenges, swift decisions can be made to reallocate resources or change course.

Maintaining Momentum

A progress report's important aspect is maintaining momentum. When team members see their progress documented and shared, it fosters a sense of accomplishment and motivation.

This positive reinforcement encourages teams to keep pushing forward and maintain their productivity.

Improved Communication and Collaboration

Progress reports facilitate better communication and collaboration among team members. By sharing updates and insights, the entire team stays informed, reducing the chances of miscommunication or misunderstandings.

Moreover, progress reports provide a platform for team members to ask questions, provide feedback, and offer support.

Performance Tracking

Business progress reports, such as quarterly, monthly, or annual progress reports, help track performance over time.

By comparing past reports, management can gauge the business's overall health and identify trends or patterns. This historical data can inform future strategies and drive continuous improvement.

How to Write a Progress Report

Step 1: define the purpose.

The first step in writing a progress report is understanding its purpose. Progress reports inform stakeholders about the project's status, including what has been accomplished, any challenges encountered, and future planning. This allows project managers to keep everyone in the loop and make informed decisions.

The purpose of this monthly progress report is to update the management team on the project's status. It presents an overview of completed tasks, in-progress tasks, upcoming tasks, and any challenges faced during the reporting period. This report will also provide insight into key performance metrics and future planning .

Step 2: Know Your Audience

Determine who will read the progress report. Is it for higher-ups, clients, or team members? Tailor the language, tone, and level of detail accordingly.

Step 3: Set the Timeframe

Decide the reporting period – weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Choose a timeframe that best suits your project's pace and stakeholder expectations.

Step 4: Collect Information

Gather data on tasks completed, team members involved, and any obstacles faced. Consult previous progress reports, project documentation , and team members for accurate information.

Step 5: Organize Content

Break down the report into logical sections. Here’s what we suggest:

• Summary: A brief overview of the report's contents.
• Completed Tasks: List tasks accomplished during the reporting period.
• In-Progress Tasks: Describe ongoing tasks and their current status.
• Upcoming Tasks: Outline tasks scheduled for the next reporting period.
• Challenges: Discuss any obstacles encountered and how they were addressed.
• Key Metrics: Highlight key project performance indicators and progress towards goals.
• Future Planning: Discuss plans for the next reporting period and any adjustments needed.

Step 6: Write the Summary

Craft a concise summary that provides a snapshot of the report. Mention key achievements, challenges, and plans for the future. Keep it brief but informative.

This progress report covers our team's accomplishments during Q1, with a particular focus on the completion of the website redesign and the initiation of our social media marketing campaign. We've encountered some challenges in coordinating with external vendors, but we've implemented solutions to overcome those obstacles .

Step 7: Detail Completed Tasks

List all tasks completed during the reporting period. Include the following information:

• Task description
• Team members involved
• Start and end dates
• Any relevant metrics (e.g., hours spent, budget used)
• Task 1 – Implement a user login system.
• Team members: Jeff and Sarah.
• Start date: January 1st.
• End date: January 15th.
• Metrics: 98% successful login rate.

Step 8: Discuss In-Progress Tasks

Outline ongoing tasks, their current status, and expected completion dates. Explain any delays and their impact on the project timeline .

• Task 2 – Develop a mobile app.
• Current status: 70% completed.
• Expected completion date: February 15th.

Step 9: Describe Upcoming Tasks

Identify tasks scheduled for the next reporting period. Provide details such as:

• Assigned team members
• Estimated start and end dates
• Dependencies on other tasks
• Task 3 – Launch marketing campaign.
• Assigned team members: Anas and Mark.
• Estimated start date: February 16th.
• Estimated end date: March 1st.
• Dependencies: Completion of mobile app development.

Step 10: Address Challenges

Discuss any challenges encountered during the reporting period. Describe how they were resolved or any plans to address them in the future.

• Challenge 1 – Unforeseen technical issues causing delays.
• Resolution: Increased resources and adjusted project timeline to accommodate the additional time required.

Step 11: Present Key Metrics

Highlight key project management performance indicators and progress toward project goals. Use visuals like charts or graphs to make the data more digestible.

• Metric 1 – User registration rate.
• Current status: 500 new users per week.
• Target goal: 1,000 new users per week.

Step 12: Plan for the Future

Discuss plans for the next reporting period, including any adjustments required. This may involve reallocating resources, revising timelines, or redefining objectives.

In the next reporting period, our focus will shift to improving user retention and engagement. We plan to implement new features based on user feedback and optimize the onboarding process.

Step 13: Proofread and Revise

Review the report for clarity, accuracy, and readability. Ensure all information is presented in a clear, concise manner.

Step 14: Submit the Report

Submit the progress report to the relevant stakeholders, ensuring they have ample time to review and provide feedback.

Example Progress Report Template

Use this template as a starting point for your progress report:

By following these steps and guidelines, you'll be well-equipped to write an effective progress report that keeps stakeholders informed and drives project success. Clear communication is key to maintaining momentum and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Examples of Progress Reports

1. business progress report.

A business progress report helps track company growth, accomplishments, and areas for improvement. It includes:

• Revenue and sales figures.
• Market trends and competition.
• Operational efficiency.
• Employee performance.
• Goals and milestones achieved.

2. Quarterly Progress Reports

These reports offer a snapshot of a project or business every three months. They cover:

• Major achievements.
• Challenges faced and solutions.
• Key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Updated project timeline.
• Budget status.

3. Monthly Progress Reports

Monthly progress reports provide more frequent updates on projects or departments. They highlight:

• Accomplishments and setbacks.
• Progress towards monthly goals.
• Resource utilization.
• Issues and risks.
• Action items for the upcoming month.

4. Project Status

Project status reports focus on a specific project's progress. They showcase:

• Project documentation updates.
• Completed tasks and upcoming deliverables.
• Risks and issues encountered.
• Team members' performance.
• Changes to project scope or timeline.

5. Personal Progress

Personal progress reports help individuals track their growth and development. They include:

• Personal goals and objectives.
• Achievements and lessons learned.
• Skill development and training.
• Performance feedback.
• Areas for improvement and action plans.

Best Practices for Writing Progress Reports

Know Your Target Audience

When you create a progress report, start by identifying your target audience . Project stakeholders, team members, and future decision-makers should all benefit from your report.

Write in such a way that it is easy for them to understand. Avoid technical jargon and explain industry-specific language so everyone stays on the same page.

Reporting Frequency and Dates

Establish a reporting frequency for your progress reports. Whether weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, maintain consistency. Include report dates and the expected completion date of the current project to provide a clear timeline.

Stick to the Project's Scope

Focus on the project's scope and stay within the project's purpose. Don't digress or include unrelated details. A concise report ensures that readers remain engaged and informed.

Review Previous Reports

Refer to the previous report to identify any changes or developments. Highlight the work completed, project deliverables , and any updates to the project plan. Doing so will maintain continuity and keep stakeholders informed about the department's progress.

Prioritize and Organize

Arrange project priorities logically, focusing on the most critical aspects first. Organize the information in a clear, easy-to-follow format. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points for better readability.

Be Transparent About Problems

Don't shy away from discussing problems or challenges. Addressing issues helps stakeholders understand the project's status and any hurdles that may affect successful completion. Offer potential solutions or workarounds to demonstrate proactive thinking.

Back Up Progress with Relevant Data

Use relevant data to support your progress. Figures, charts, and percentages can provide a quick overview of the project's status. Make sure your data is accurate, up-to-date, and presented in an easy-to-understand format.

Highlight Team Member Contributions

Acknowledge team members who have made significant contributions to the project. This recognition boosts morale and encourages continued excellence.

Include Future Projections

Discuss what's next for the project, such as upcoming tasks or milestones. This helps stakeholders understand the trajectory of the project and anticipate the work ahead.

Keep it Simple and Actionable

Present complex ideas in a simple, easy-to-understand language. Break down complicated concepts into manageable chunks. Offer actionable insights and practical takeaways, so stakeholders can quickly grasp the project details.

Establish a Database

Create a database to store all progress reports. This repository helps stakeholders access past reports and provides valuable insights for future projects. It also ensures that information is preserved and easily accessible when needed.

Proofread and Edit

Before sharing your progress report, proofread and edit for clarity, consistency, and accuracy. This step ensures that your report is polished, professional, and easy to understand.

Progress Reporting FAQs

A progress report is most valuable when you're working on a long-term project. It's a way to keep stakeholders updated on progress and share important insights.

The primary purpose of a progress report is to provide a clear and concise overview of a project's status. This includes: – Communicating progress toward goals – Identifying potential issues and solutions – Demonstrating accountability and commitment to the project – Providing a step-by-step guide of completed tasks and upcoming work – Offering visual aids, like charts and graphs, to illustrate data A well-crafted progress report keeps stakeholders informed and fosters collaboration. It's also valuable for maintaining momentum and motivation throughout the project.

Writing Progress Reports Does Not Need to Be Hard

So, you've reached the end of this blog post. You're now equipped with the knowledge and tools to make progress report writing a breeze. Remember, it doesn't have to be a daunting task.

Keep it simple, stick to the facts, and let your progress shine. Talk about what you achieved, any challenges you faced, and how you overcame them. Use a clear, concise, structured format to ensure your message is easily understood.

To simplify the process, check out our guide on project reporting tools .

Ask yourself:

• What are the key takeaways from this period?
• How can I best communicate the status of the project?
• Are there any challenges that need addressing?

Considering these questions will make your progress report informative, actionable, and engaging. And don't forget, practice makes perfect. The more progress reports you write, the easier and more efficient the process will become.

Explore Further

• Essential Components of Project Management
• Best Project Management Software 2023
• The Inspiring History of Project Management. How Did It Begin?
• 9 Essential Roles In Project Management

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Martin luenendonk.

Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.

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How to Write a Progress Report

6-minute read

• 28th September 2021

A progress report is a business document that provides updates on a project’s progress toward meeting a goal. Typically, you’ll provide a progress report for a supervisor/manager, team member, or business client to summarize a project’s status and what still needs to be completed or improved.

But how do you write an effective progress report for your business’s projects ? In our guide below, we set out the typical structure of a progress report.

1. Header Information

A progress report should start with a header that includes key details about the report and the project. Typically, this will include the:

• Reporting period and/or the date of submission.
• Name(s) and position(s) of the report’s recipient(s).
• Name(s) and position(s) of the report’s author(s).
• Subject or title of the report/project.

This will help the recipient to understand the contents of the report at a glance.

2. Introduction

The introductory paragraph of a progress report should outline the purpose and timeframe of the project, plus any other important details or insights. 

You can also include an overview of what the rest of your progress report will cover.

3. Work Completed

The next section of your report should be titled “Work Completed.” Here, you can provide a chronological list of the project tasks that you have already completed and their corresponding dates. You can also include key findings from those tasks.

4. Problems Encountered

The next section should outline any problems encountered in the project so far. You should then explain either how those problems were solved or how they will be solved, and whether any extra help will be required to do so. You will also need to mention if those problems prompted any changes to the project.

5. Future Plans

To highlight the goals for the remainder of the project, the next section of your report should outline any future project tasks with their corresponding dates or deadlines, anticipated problems, and/or ideas for the project as you move forward.

End your progress report with a brief summary of key completed tasks, ongoing tasks, and major issues encountered. You don’t need to go into too much detail here, though. Stick to the essential details.

5 Tips on How to Write a Progress Report

We also have some helpful tips you can use when writing a progress report:

• Adapt the structure – While the structure outlined above will work for most projects, you can adapt it to suit your requirements. For instance, for a complex project with multiple goals, you may need to break it down into sections, detailing the progress, problems, and plans for each objective.
• Choose an appropriate frequency – For ongoing progress reports, think about whether to schedule daily, weekly, or monthly updates.
• Write clearly – Make sure to write clearly and concisely . Keep your sentences simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.
• Know your audience – If you’re writing a report for someone outside of your organization or team, explain any industry-specific language you use.
• Keep it professional – Make sure to use a formal tone , avoiding colloquial terms and phrases, slang, contractions, and other informal language.

Finally, to be sure your report looks and sounds professional, have it proofread. You can try our proofreading services by uploading a trial document for free today!

Example Progress Report

To see what a progress report might look like, check out our example report below:

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Date: September 24, 2021 To: J. Seymour, Head of Planning From: A. Boleyn, Planning Assistant Subject: Migration to new planning software

Since November 2016, Exemplar Inc. has used the PlanULike package to manage the company’s everyday operations. However, when we expanded to new territories in July 2021, the limitations of the software became evident, especially with regard to currency conversions when budgeting for projects in Europe. As a result, in August 2021, the decision was made to migrate to new planning software. This report covers the progress in this project made up until September 24, 2021.

Work Completed

• August 30 – Research completed into available planning software packages. The PlanZone software is selected based on its flexible budgeting capabilities.
• September 6 – A timeline is developed for installation and implementation of the new software package, with an initial deadline of September 30.
• September 10 – Head of Human Resources, Jack Thacker, begins developing in-house instructional materials for the new software.
• September 18 – Software is acquired and installed. Provisional version of internal training program is developed and tested with key staff members.
• September 21 – IT department identifies software compatibility problems with older hardware in operations department. New equipment purchased.
• September 24 – New computer hardware installed. After testing, training program is extended to heads of department in planning and operations.

Problems Encountered

The key problem encountered thus far has been a compatibility issue between the new software and some of the company’s existing hardware. Head of IT, Simon Robinson, reports that this was due to PlanZone including graphical features that Exemplar Inc. does not use and had not been factored into the initial planning.

Due to speedy delivery and installation of new hardware, this has not significantly affected the timeframe for the migration. But the unexpected expense does mean that the project is now significantly over budget.

In addition, the testing of the in-house training program took longer than anticipated to complete. Key staff are now familiar with the new software, but the deadline for company-wide training has been extended to November 15, 2021.

Future Plans

The improved training program will continue until November 15, 2021, when all relevant staff are expected to be familiar with the new software, after which all operational planning will use PlanZone, and the PlanULike systems will be deprecated by November 30, 2021. Due to exceeding the budget allocated for this project, a meeting will be scheduled for heads of department to discuss how the extra expenses may impact budgeting for other projects.

The company has acquired and installed new planning software (PlanZone), which is projected to enhance project planning and ease operations in new territories. However, unexpected hardware and training issues have slowed progress. Deadlines for the migration have thus been extended. Meanwhile, implications of the extra expenses will be factored into budgeting for upcoming projects.

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Bulletin Boards: A Visual Way to Build School Culture

I have always loved the beginning of the school year. It is a time filled with excitement, and new beginnings. It is also a great opportunity to establish a strong school culture that engages and excites students about mathematics.

While on the surface, school culture seems like a purely non-academic factor, it can strongly influence students’ academic achievement. Through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), non-academic factors are now being included in statewide accountability plans . While assessments tend to be the focus when student’s academic performance is discussed; the inclusion of the non-academic factors, specifically school culture, highlights the importance of an engaging learning environment.

Being intentional and strategic in designing school culture positions students for greater academic success.

The visual environment of your classroom and schools are great places to start. How could you use bulletin boards and hallway displays to establish a school culture that embraces math?

Schools all around the country who use ST Math, a game-based visual and instructional software program, are using bulletin boards to celebrate student growth and success in mathematics. Bulletin boards are great ways to show student progress and at the same time they can be great tools to get your students thinking and communicating their learning. 

Check out these great bulletin boards from various schools with ideas on how to add interactive elements that engage students in math in ways that are approachable, exciting and meaningful!

Celebrate Success in Math

In this example, students created penguin avatars that they move from postcard to postcard as they make progress. Each postcard represents 10% progress.

Bulletin board display by teacher Cortni Brunty at Liberty Union-Thurston Elementary in Baltimore, Ohio

Ideas to make it interactive:  As students move to a new postcard ask them to research postcard locations and create math problems based on the information. The math problems don’t need to be traditional, but can be things they would like to explore (e.g., the distance between two places, the shape of the structures in the location, etc.). 

Display Growth

Students’ names are written on airplanes that travel to the postcard's destination as they make progress in ST Math. 

Bulletin board display by Viki Cooper at Tussing Elementary School in Pickerington, Ohio

Ideas to make it interactive: As students reach a new destination, have them write a “flight plan” to share areas they were stuck on and how they were able to learn from their mistake and solve the problem.

Communicate Learning

In this example, students made their own penguins and shared facts they learned about penguins.

Bulletin board display at Herbert Mills STEM Elementary in Reynoldsburg, Ohio

Ideas to make it interactive: Students can share strategies they are using to solve puzzles or explain the math they are learning with JiJi. They can post these on the bulletin board beside their penguin.

Create Your Own Bulletin Board

Want more bulletin board ideas? Visit our board on Pinterest , and remember to think about how you can promote school culture through your visual environment.

ST Math teachers can download the JiJi postcards on the Teacher Resource Site  and create their own bulletin board!

Share your bulletin boards and your own ideas on how you are using your visual environment to excite and engage students in mathematics.

• Post on Twitter  and tag @JiJiMath and #JiJiBeliever.
• Post on our  Facebook  page.
• Post on  Pinterest  using the hashtag #JiJiBeliever.

Looking forward to sharing your ideas!

Top image credit: bulletin board by Holly Antonelli at Liberty Elementary in Worthington, Ohio

About the Author

Twana is Vice President of Curriculum and Instruction at MIND Research Institute. Follow her on Twitter @TwanaYoung .

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16 Sep 2024

87 million people in sub-Saharan Africa may not have access to electricity, despite being counted as such

Research published today in Nature Energy calls for standardisation of what ‘counts’ as energy access to track meaningful progress

Research published today in Nature Energy by an international team led by the University of Oxford, compares data from two key agencies tracking progress towards SDG7 on energy and finds that their estimates differ for at least 87 million individuals. This represents almost half (45%) of total reported progress towards electrification in the region.

The discrepancy is due in large part to widely varying interpretations in what counts as access. "If a village has a transformer, everyone in the village may be counted as having access to electricity – even if there is no physical connection to their home," explains Associate Professor Stephanie Hirmer , a lead author from the Energy and Power Group in the Department of Engineering Science and member of the Climate Compatible Growth programme which funded the project. 

"We need an agreed standard of what ‘counts’ as access to electricity that can be updated over time to reflect the reality on the ground", she adds. "As a first step, agencies could provide explicit metadata documenting access definitions. Without these changes, the international community can’t track progress in a meaningful way: we’re left in the dark in more ways than one."

The authors add that while energy access is therefore uncertain for this group and may be overreported, these statistics are often taken at face value and used to guide significant policy decisions. "These data discrepancies have deep implications for addressing the electrification challenge," says Associate Professor Julia Tomei, a lead author from University College London. "In Togo for example, if policy makers used the World Bank data, they might stick with their current policy mix for electricity access – since the numbers look very positive. But if they used IEA data instead, which show a decline in access, they might choose a very different electrification strategy."

The authors conclude that it’s now crucial to look more critically at the data and ensure it is accurately reflecting realities on the ground in order to continue making progress towards SDG7: 'ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all'.

The research team is part of the  Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme , and brings together researchers from the Department of Engineering Science and Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University College London, University of Wuppertal, Imperial College London, Technical University of Munich and KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Inconsistent measurement calls into question progress on electrification in sub-Saharan Africa  is published in Nature Energy. The work was funded by the Climate Compatible Growth Programme.

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