Biology subjects

McDowell, G. S.

Publications and source records attributed to McDowell, G. S..

9 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

A systematic review of professional society-backed biology education DEI research: The groups, research methods, and levels of analyses comprising the field

This integrative literature review analyzes the corpus of biology education research published in the main biology education journals of major professional societies. The goal of this analysis is to determine which approaches (including groups of focus, research methods, and settings/perspectives) from social science fields (i.e., psychology, sociology, and anthropology) are utilized in published peer-reviewed biology education research relating to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Scoping how social science approaches are used in this area is important to understanding whether biology education research could benefit from complementary approaches that might advance praxis. This analysis found that research informing the biology education community draws heavily from psychological perspectives that are overwhelmingly not disaggregated (78% of articles identifying a group used a lumped together one), are by far more quantitative (58% used survey, 26% grades, 20% school data) than qualitative (17% used interview, 10% observation), and did not (72%) adopt structural approaches. The addition of missing contributions from social science is critical to advancing interventions to broaden STEM participation given that merging paradigms can offer more robust, multi-level explanations for observed phenomena. This has important implications for education, biology education, biology education research, social science, and research in related STEM fields.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2024

Projection Statistics ProST Online statistical assessment of group separation in data projection analysis

MotivationUnsupervised data projection for the determination of trends in the data, visualization of multidimensional data in a reduced dimension space or feature space reduction through combination of data is a major step in data mining. Methods such as Principal Component Analysis or t-Distribution Stochastic Neighbor Embedding are regularly used as one of the first steps in computational biology or omics investigation. However, the significance of the separation of sample groups by these methods generally relies on visual assessment. User-friendly application for different projection methods, each focusing on distinct data properties, are needed as well as a rigorous method for statistical determination of the significance of separation of groups of interest in each dataset. ResultsWe present Projection STatistics (ProST), a user-friendly solution for data projection analysis providing three unsupervised (PCA, t-SNE and UMAP) and one supervised (LDA) approach. For each method we are including a novel statistical investigation of the significance of group separation with Mann-Whitney U-rank or t-test analysis as well as necessary preprocessing steps. ProST provides an unbiased, objective application of the determination of the significance of the separation of measurement groups through either linear or manifold projection analysis with methods ranging from a focus on the separation of points based on major variances or on point proximities based on distance. AvailabilityThe ProST software application is freely available at https://complimet.ca/shiny/ProST/ with source code provided on https://github.com/complimet/prost. Contactdanny.salem@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca or Miroslava.cuperlovic-culf@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca Supplementary informationSupplementary help pages are provided at https://complimet.ca/shiny/ProST/.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2024

Empowering future scientists: Exploring How Mentors Guide Students to Write and Publish Scientific Papers

Peer-review and publication are important parts of the scientific enterprise, and research has shown that engaging students in such scholarly practices helps build their sense of belonging and scientific identity. Yet, these disciplinary literacy skills and professional practices are often part of the hidden curriculum of science research, thus excluding students and others from fully understanding ways in which scientific knowledge is constructed, refined, and disseminated even though students are participating in such activities. Secondary students are increasingly involved in scientific research projects that include authentic disciplinary literacy components such as research proposals, posters, videos, and scientific research papers. More and more, students are also engaging in professional practice of publishing their scientific research papers through dedicated secondary science journals. How teachers and other mentors support the development of professional disciplinary literacies in students is critical to understand as part of supporting more student participation in research. To this end, we used a mixed- methods study of interviews and surveys to examine the experience and conceptions of the mentors (teachers and professional scientists) who guided pre-college students through the writing and publication of their scientific research projects. Analyzing our data from a lens of cognitive apprenticeship, we find that mentors encourage independence by primarily employing the method of "exploration". We also find that mentors have divergent views on the value of publication within science, versus for student scientists specifically. Our findings suggest that mentors could work to explicitly reveal their own thinking within science writing to provide more sequenced support for student scientists.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2023

Optimizing Short-format Training: an International Consensus on Effective, Inclusive, and Career-spanning Professional Development in the Life Sciences and Beyond

Science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) fields change rapidly and are increasingly interdisciplinary. Commonly, STEMM practitioners use short-format training (SFT) such as workshops and short courses for upskilling and reskilling, but unaddressed challenges limit SFTs effectiveness and inclusiveness. Prior work, including the NSF 2026 Reinventing Scientific Talent proposal, called for addressing SFT challenges, and a diverse international group of experts in education, accessibility, and life sciences came together to do so. This paper describes the phenomenography and content analyses that produced a set of 14 actionable recommendations to systematically strengthen SFT. Recommendations were derived from findings in the educational sciences and the experiences of several of the largest life science SFT programs. Recommendations cover the breadth of SFT contexts and stakeholder groups and include actions for instructors (e.g., make equity and inclusion an ethical obligation), programs (e.g., centralize infrastructure for assessment and evaluation), as well as organizations and funders (e.g., professionalize training SFT instructors; deploy SFT to counter inequity). Recommendations are aligned into a purpose-built framework-- "The Bicycle Principles"--that prioritizes evidenced-based teaching, inclusiveness, and equity, as well as the ability to scale, share, and sustain SFT. We also describe how the Bicycle Principles and recommendations are consistent with educational change theories and can overcome systemic barriers to delivering consistently effective, inclusive, and career-spanning SFT. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTSTEMM practitioners need sustained and customized professional development to keep up with innovations. Short-format training (SFT) such as workshops and short-courses are relied upon widely but have unaddressed limitations. This project generated principles and recommendations to make SFT consistently effective, inclusive, and career-spanning. Optimizing SFT could broaden participation in STEMM by preparing practitioners more equitably with transformative skills. Better SFT would also serve members of the STEMM workforce who have several decades of productivity ahead, but who may not benefit from education reforms that predominantly focus on undergraduate STEMM. The Bicycle Principles and accompanying recommendations apply to any SFT instruction and may be especially useful in rapidly evolving and multidisciplinary fields such as artificial intelligence, genomics, and precision medicine.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2022

Preprint peer review enhances undergraduate biology students' disciplinary literacy and sense of belonging in STEM

Undergraduate education on science publishing and peer review is limited compared to the focus on experimental research. Since peer review is integral to the scientific process and central to the identity of a scientist, we envision a paradigm shift that makes teaching peer review integral to undergraduate science education, and hypothesize that this may facilitate the development of students scientific literacy and identity formation. To this end, we developed a curriculum for biology undergraduates to learn about the mechanisms of peer review, then write and publish their own peer reviews as a way to authentically join the scientific community of practice. The curriculum was implemented as a semester-long intervention in one class and as a module intervention embedded into a discipline-based class on vaccines. Before and after both interventions, we measured students scientific literacy, including peer review ability, using quantitative methods. We also carried out a longitudinal qualitative assessment of students perceptions of their scientific literacy and identity using thematic analysis of students writing. Here, we present data on the improvement in peer review ability of undergraduates in both classes, and data on the curriculums interrelated impact on students development of scientific literacy, identity, and belonging in academic and professional spaces. These data suggest that undergraduates can and should be trained in peer review to foster the interrelated development of their scientific literacy, scientific identity, and sense of belonging in science.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2021

The DocMaps Framework for representing assertions on research products in an extensible, machine-readable, and discoverable format

Peer review of a research product varies widely depending on the publishers and platforms involved in the process. As scholarly publishing is disrupted by new innovations, peer review processes become more heterogeneous, placing an increasing burden on the researcher in understanding how they can communicate their scholarship. New ways to model such processes, and increase transparency, trust, and experimentation in scholarly publishing are needed. Many are emerging but can tend to focus on the needs of creators, and not those of readers, funders, and the whole scholarly publishing ecosystem. They may not place focus on representing editorial practices in ways that can be reliably aggregated, surfaced, and queried; are often limited to traditional peer review processes; and cannot capture the full range of editorial practices and events needed to accommodate alternative publication, review, and curation models. To support researchers in a world of experimentation in scholarly publishing, we propose a machine-readable, extensible, and discoverable framework for representing and surfacing review and editorial processes. Working with a Technical Committee composed of interested parties by employing a modified Delphi Method, we developed initial guiding principles and proposals towards an object-level editorial metadata framework compatible with a broad range of possible futures for scholarly publishing. We present the results of this process with a proposal and example use cases for DocMaps, a framework for representing object-level assertions.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2019

Co-reviewing and ghostwriting by early career researchers in the peer review of manuscripts

The goal of this study is to shed light on the involvement of early career researchers (ECRs) during peer review of manuscripts for publication in journals. In particular, we sought to better understand how commonly ECRs contribute ideas and/or text to peer review reports when they are not the invited reviewer (\"co-review\"), and how commonly ECRs do not receive named credit to the journal editorial staff for these scholarly efforts (\"ghostwrite\"). First, we evaluated 1,952 publications in the peer-reviewed literature generated by exhaustive search terms that combined synonyms of \"early career researcher\" and \"peer review\" and found no previous studies about ECRs ghostwriting peer review reports. We then surveyed 498 researchers about their experiences with, and opinions about, co-reviewing and ghostwriting as ECRs. Three quarters of those surveyed have co-reviewed and most find it to be a beneficial (95% agree) and ethical (73% agree) form of training in peer review. Co-reviewing is the second most commonly reported form of training in peer review besides receiving reviews on ones own papers. Half of survey respondents have ghostwritten a peer review report, despite the 4/5ths majority opinion that ghostwriting is unethical. Survey respondents report that the three major barriers to including co-reviewer names on peer review reports are: a lack of communication between PIs and ECRs; a false belief that co-authorship is for manuscripts but not peer review reports; and prohibitive journal policies that are out of alignment with current practice and opinions about best practice. We therefore propose recommendations for changing this status quo, to discourage unethical ghostwriting of peer review reports and encourage quality co-reviewing experiences as normal training in peer review.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2017

Assessing the Landscape of U.S. Postdoctoral Salaries

PurposePostdocs make up a significant portion of the biomedical workforce. However, data about the postdoctoral position are generally scarce, including salary data. The purpose of this study was to request, obtain and interpret actual salaries, and the associated job titles, for postdocs at U.S. public institutions.\n\nMethodologyFreedom of Information Act Requests were submitted to U.S. public institutions estimated to have at least 300 postdocs according to the National Science Foundations Survey of Graduate Students and Postdocs. Salaries and job titles of postdoctoral employees as of December 1st, 2016 were requested.\n\nFindingsSalaries and job titles for over 13,000 postdocs at 52 public U.S. institutions and 1 private institution around the date of December 1st, 2016 were received, and individual postdoc names were also received for approximately 7,000 postdocs. This study shows evidence of gender-related salary discrepancies, a significant influence of job title description on postdoc salary, and a complex relationship between salaries and the level of institutional NIH funding.\n\nValueThese results provide insights into the ability of institutions to collate actual payroll-type data related to their postdocs, highlighting difficulties faced in tracking, and reporting data on this population. Ultimately, these types of efforts, aimed at increasing transparency, may lead to improved tracking and support for postdocs at all U.S. institutions.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2017

The GSS is an unreliable indicator of biological sciences postdoc population trends

The postdoctoral research position is an essential step on the academic career track, and the biomedical research enterprise has become heavily dependent on postdoctoral scholars to conduct experimental research. Monitoring postdoc population trends is important for crafting and evaluating policies that affect this critical population. The tool most use for understanding the trends of the biological sciences postdoc population is the Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) administered by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. To determine how well institutions tracked their postdocs, we analyzed the yearly changes in the biological sciences postdoc population at institutions surveyed by the GSS from 1980 to 2015. We find examples of large changes in the biological sciences postdoc population at one or a few institutions most years from 1980 to 2015. Most universities could not explain the data presented in the GSS, and for those that provided an explanation, the most common causes were improved institutional policies and more robust tracking of their postdocs. These large changes, unrelated to hiring or layoffs, sometimes masked population trends in the broader biological sciences postdoc population. We propose the adoption of a unified definition and titles for postdocs and the creation of an index to better assess biological sciences postdoc population trends.\n\nAbbreviations

scientific communication and education↗