Don't start with figure legends! Outlining a scientific paper by starting with the story (CC059)

 

How do you start writing a scientific paper that you'll submit for peer review? In today's episode I share my process, which starts with telling a story and outlining the key points. I also discuss the issues that I think about when selecting a journal and paper format. This episode is part of a larger arc of episodes investigating the sensitivity and specificity of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), also known as exact sequence variants (ESVs). ASVs are growing in popularity for analyzing microbial communities using 16S rRNA gene sequences. Proponents think that they should supplant operational taxonomic units (OTUs). What do you think? Pat demonstrates these concepts by live coding at the command line interface using GitHub Flow and RStudio. 0:00 Introduction 1:03 Recapping the story so far 16:55 Outlining the story 21:26 Thinking about journals 28:54 Conclusion The accompanying blog post contains the exercises and solutions can be found at http://www.riffomonas.org/code_club/2020-12-23-recap