the community site for and by
developmental and stem cell biologists

How to

How to

This collection features helpful posts on a wide range of topics, from academic writing and reviewing to data visualisation and statistical analysis.

Recent posts

Prevent p-value parroting

Posted by , on 1 February 2018

Recently, Nature published my correspondence “Dispense with redundant P values”. It highlights my concern that p-values are often calculated because “everybody does it”. This reminded me of the mechanical repetition …
Read more >

How to win a conference prize

Posted by , on 11 December 2017

Or, at least, produce nice posters while trying. Students on average author 1-3 papers and produce at least three times that many conference posters***. At large meetings, such as the …

Converting excellent spreadsheets to tidy data

Posted by , on 6 October 2017

Structuring data according to the ‘tidy data‘ standard simplifies data analysis and data visualisation. But understanding the structure of tidy data does not come naturally (in my experience), since it …

See for yourCelLf

Posted by , on 18 August 2017

See for yourCelLf “Forget the textbook picture” is what I proclaim when I teach master students in a course on Cell biology and Advanced Microscopy. Although the textbook is a …

Scales in scientific images

Posted by , on 6 August 2017

I recently saw drawings by Maria Sybilla Merian at Kupferstichkabinett Berlin and the University Library Dresden. Merian, who lived from 1647 to 1717, is renowned for her exceptional illustrations of …

Color-blind people are your audience too!

Posted by , on 27 April 2017

Or, please stop mixing green/red Color is a key aspect of graphic design, but for many years was not relevant for scientific figures that were largely black and white. Falling …

How to make colour blind friendly palettes, from regular contributor Jochim Goedhart.

Do you have a ‘how to’ you’d like us to commission? Or one you’d like to write yourself and share with the community?

Resources

Our Resources page contains a host of useful links for researchers, from advocacy and outreach to scientific databases.

Our full archive going back to 2010 is filterable by category, tag and date.

Updated on 16 March 2021