5 Publishing, Dissemination, and Authorship
5.1 Research Products
We share the results of our research in multiple ways, most commonly in various types of written products, data dashboards, and conference presentations that may be local, national, or international. We occasionally share our research in other ways, such as news interviews and social media. The HEDCO Institute encourages trainees to pursue publishing and research presentations.
UO Student Presentations
The UO has opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students to present their research on campus. Students should also let us know with as much advance notice as possible if they are interested in attending a conference outside UO.
Undergraduate Research Symposium
Students from all disciplines, majors, and colleges come together on campus to share the projects and interests they’re passionate about. Students can present research, creative projects, data stories, works-in-progress, etc. in a variety of formats and media.
Graduate Research Forum
Graduate students can present at the Graduate Research Forum with a poster, three-minute thesis or as part of a panel.
Poster Presentations
The University of Oregon Undergraduate Research and Distinguished Scholarships provides information regarding poster printing on campus, as well as presentation tips and other resources. They also provide PowerPoint poster templates. Posters are typically made in PowerPoint but may also be designed using other graphic software that can create .pdf files, such as Canva or Adobe Illustrator.
Translational Products
One of our strengths is that we have a dedicated communications team that helps us share our research or even the work of others with non-research audiences. The Evidence Hub on our website contains summaries that help translate technical research into accessible products for individuals involved in education.
Conferences
The conferences our members most often attend are:
American Educational Research Association
Society for Prevention Research
Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness
Society for Research Synthesis Methodology
5.2 Authorship
We follow ICMJE authorship criteria. To be included as an author, an individual needs to make a substantive intellectual contribution to a publication.
From the ICJME website:
The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:
Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved
CRediT and Acknowledgments
In addition to ICMJE criteria, we follow the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT), which includes 14 roles that can be used to describe contributions to a written product.
The 14 CRediT roles are:
Individuals who contribute in a smaller or less direct capacity, such as a board member who provides input on research topics, someone who does minor proofreading but not substantial edits, or a librarian who helps us find full-text articles, are generally not included as authors but may be included in acknowledgments as warranted.
Specific publishing outlets, such as individual peer-reviewed journals, may also have their own additional authorship guidelines that we must follow.
Author Order
Author positions have meanings related to the amount of contributions and/or roles that authors have on a project.
First Author. The project lead or person who did the most work on a project will usually be the first author. The first author may be a student or postdoc trainee if the trainee carried out most of the research under faculty supervision and the trainee wrote a large portion of the paper. The faculty supervisor on a project may be the first author if a trainee carried out some of the research but the faculty supervisor wrote most of the manuscript and/or designed the study. Ph.D. students should be first author if they publish their dissertation.
Last Author. The last author is often the supervisor or the PI of the grant funding for the project, or the senior author who has provided overall leadership for the project. On many of our publications the last author is the institute director, Dr. Emily Tanner-Smith, given her overall leadership and senior guidance on all project activities and outputs, or our research team director, Dr. Sean Grant, given his research leadership on institute projects.
Middle Authors. Many of our publications also have middle authors who made substantial contributions but did not lead the project. Middle authors may include other contributors at the HEDCO Institute and external collaborators in other UO departments or at other institutions.
Corresponding Author. The corresponding author is the person who will be designated as the contact person for journal editors or readers who have inquiries about a publication. The corresponding author is the person who typically corresponds with the journal during the publication process. This is often the first or last author.
5.3 Use of Materials and Collaborations
Our data dashboards, protocols, and other resources are publicly available. Anyone is welcome to use these, as long as they credit us appropriately. For inquiries related to research collaborations with us, contact Dr. Sean Grant (spgrant@uoregon.edu).
5.4 Understand the Structure of a Research Study
A lot of journals and research articles use a conventional IMRD structure, which include an abstract followed by Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. Some sections might use different names based on the requirements of different journals. For example, Methods might be named as Research Methods or Methodology. Except for the name differences, each of these sections normally contains easily recognized conventional features.
Abstracts
Summary of the key points of the article. Read this first, but don’t rely on it solely to draw conclusions about the study.
Abstracts usually contain four kinds of information:
- purpose or rationale of study (why they did it)
- methodology (how they did it, who was studied)
- results (what they found)
- conclusion (what it means)
Introduction
Introductions usually aim at generating readers’ interest in the current study and providing enough information to understand the current study. This section usually provides readers the following information:
- what is known about the topic-broad information
- what is not known-more specific information
- what question the authors asked and answered-a focal point
Methods
This section provides you the approaches that were used in the study to answer the research hypotheses. For example, the research instrument used, (e.g. questionnaire), subjects (e.g. children between the ages of 8 and 15), procedures, and the approach to data analysis.
Results
This section basically presents the data that the authors had found, which might include the relationships among variables and/or differences among groups are reported. These analyses should directly reflect the predictions originally described in the Introduction.
Discussion
This section provides a clear answer to the question posed in the Introduction and to explain how the results support that conclusion.
Questions to Consider
Before and during your reading, consider the following questions:
- What am I looking for?
- Who are these authors?
- What journal is this?
- Might I question the credibility of the work?
- Have I taken the time to understand all the terminology?
- Have I gone back to read an article or review that would help me understand this work better?
- Am I spending too much time reading the less important parts of this article?
- Is there someone I can talk to about confusing parts of this article?
After reading, ask yourself these questions:
- What are the hypotheses of this study?
- What specific problem does this research address?
- Why is it important?
- Is the method using a good one?
- What are the specific findings?
- Am I able to summarize them in one or two sentences?
- Are the findings supported by persuasive evidence?
- Is there an alternative interpretation of the data that the author did not address?
- 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?
- What are some of the specific applications of the ideas presented here?
- What are some further experiments that would answer remaining questions?
References
Purugganan, M. & Hewitt J. (2004). How to read a scientific article. Retrieved from http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~cainproj/courses/HowToReadSciArticle.pdf
Keshav, S. (2007). How to read a paper. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 37(3), 83-84.
How to read a scientific article (that you think is too complicated). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.engineering.pitt.edu/First-Year/First-Year-Conference/Documents/HowTo/