Tag Archives: Twitter

Enter the Naturejobs #ScientistAtWork photo competition 2018

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Send us a moment from your scientific day

By Jack Leeming

UPDATE: This competition is now closed. The winning entries will be published in the 26th April issue of Nature.

Last year, we launched the first Naturejobs #ScientistAtWork photo competition. It was a huge success — we received hundreds of entries from all over the world, and spoke to the five winners here.

We’re running the same competition again this year. We’re looking forward to seeing your entries. Winners will be announced and profiled alongside their images in the April 26th issue of Nature magazine, and will receive a year’s personal print and online subscription to Nature.

The competition will run from the 1st of March until midnight GMT on March 31st. Entrants must not be professional photographers.

All you need to do to enter is either:

  1. Email us your photo with a quick description and your contact details, or
  2. Post your image on Twitter with the #ScientistAtWork tag, or
  3. Post your image on Instagram with the #ScientistAtWork tag

You must be willing to grant us the rights to publish your image for the competition. You also must be contactable — we’ll be getting in touch to interview you about your photo if you are one of the five winners. We may also contact runners-up, as we did in 2017, to find out more about the story behind the image.

The winning entries will be decided by a panel of Nature journalists and art staff. We’re looking for images that capture moments in a scientific day — either in or out of the lab — in an original way. Heavily photoshopped images will not be considered (though colour correction and touching-up is fine). Finally, your photo must be high enough quality for print publishing in Nature (at least 220 mm at 300 dpi) to be considered.

That’s it! (More-or-less: please check out the terms and conditions below.) Best of luck to all of you and we look forward to flicking through your photos. Please feel free to send any questions to photocompetition@nature.com.

 

Jack Leeming is the editor of Naturejobs.

 

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Communication: talk to peers and the general public

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Effective communication will improve the value of scientific discoveries, says Eleni Wood

As scientists, our work is often driven by data collection and results. But a key step in the scientific process, and one that increases the value of our findings, is the effective communication of our investigative processes and results. Science communication is not only important within our fields for the advancement of our disciplines – communication to other audiences also influences the public perception and credibility of scientists and the work we do.

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Bonding in Boston: The importance of networking in science

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Naturejobs journalism competition winner Ashish Nair finds new hope at our Boston career expo.

A long time ago in a land galaxy far far away, there was a great gathering where those weary of the well-trodden trail of tenureships and grants repaired themselves. The gathering in question was the Naturejobs career expo, a free one-day event organized for students and scientists alike. Featuring some truly inspiring speakers, it gave a much-needed boost to my hope for a career in science that can be both emotionally and financially (yes, $$$) satisfying.

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Craft your connection

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Twitter is the medium du jour, and if you’re like many other early-career researchers, you’re all over it. Fantastic. But digital and social media is about much more, and there’s more to consider than the content that you and everyone else are tweeting and retweeting.

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{credit}CC-BY-SA Atos/Flickr{/credit}

Don’t forget that you need to nurture your online persona – the summation and entirety of every bit of online information about you or that involves you, both written and visual. Someone may well have already posted some of this. But you can still shape and guide a great deal of the accessible online information about you — and the image that this information creates — by actively managing the content over which you have some control.

This is especially true if you’re looking for a job. It’s safe to assume that potential employers will look you up online and so you need to have control over the information presented about you.

LinkedIn is still one of the most highly used sites for finding out about jobs through your virtual network – and occasionally getting one. You’ll need to make your profile look good — and you’ll need to find a way to stand out from the rest of the pack.

If you’re not seeking employment, though, social media is still a hugely powerful and useful tool. It can help you reach networks of like-minded scientists, build research collaborations and even make friends

Lots of your colleagues find particular sites to be key venues when they want to engage in collaborative discussion, peer-review papers, share negative results that might never otherwise be published, and even upload raw data sets

And through these sites, you can build a powerful virtual network that will yield opportunities, information and advice. Here’s to the click!

Back to the thesis

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We share Nature’s back to the thesis videos, and some of our favorite #threewordthesis tweets

Last week, Nature visited a few prominent scientists to take them back to their theses.

First up was Francis Collins, director of the NIH, with Semiclassical theory of vibrationally inelastic scattering, with application to H+ and H2 (1974). This is how it went.

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Getting the message out

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How do you engage people with your science?

So you’re all over Twitter and Facebook and you even have a blog. Good on you – you’re your own public-relations and outreach specialist, getting the word out about your science. But what about the other kind of outreach – what’s still called science communication? Can you talk with a member of the press for an interview, or deliver your message to key thought leaders – such as government officials who decide on funding agencies’ annual budgets? Is it just a bit scarier than tweeting?

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Skills for your next networking adventure

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Networking may seem terrifying, but once you master the basics, it can be a real career boost

Naturejobs journalism competition winner Andy Tay

Networking during academic events such as conferences and seminars can be nerve-wrecking. Most of us can remember when we pretended to be engrossed in a programme booklet, wishing we could finally muster the courage to speak to the speaker with ground-breaking research standing ten feet away. You’re not alone, and there is a solution. Effective networking is a skill and anyone can benefit from more practice.

Do your homework

It’s a good habit to read the abstracts of presenters and download their papers to learn more about them before you join a conference. If you’re interested in their work, look up their profiles on platforms like Google Scholar, PudMed and ResearchGate. These platforms automatically update publications and can be better sources of information than many lab webpages, which are less regularly updated. By being diligent, and finding out more about the presenters and their research, you’ll be more confident and ready to ask critical, intelligent questions.

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Scientific communities: How to avoid getting scooped on social media

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Being prepared before broadcasting is a sure way to avoid being scooped, says Jon Tennant at the 2015 London Naturejobs Career Expo.

Many scientists are nervous about sharing their scientific work before publishing. The fear of being scooped is there when it comes to social media, but it will be difficult for someone to scoop your work based on a 140-character sentence.

Sharing your science on social media is all about being selective. You can make data and methods open when you’re ready – there is no rush to get things out before you are prepared.

Further reading:

Scientific communities: Build your own.

Scientific communities: How to follow the right people on Twitter

Scientific communities: From Twitter to paper

Scientific communities: Membership at learned societies

Scientific communities: How to get your blog noticed

 

Scientific communities: How to follow the right people on Twitter

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Following the right people on Twitter can help develop supportive and beneficial communities, say speakers at the 2015 London Naturejobs Career Expo.

Jon Tennant, a paleontologist and avid social media user shares his tips on how to make the most of a social media community on Twitter.

Jon Tennant’s four top tips:

  1. Identify learned societies in your field and find out who they follow. These people will be high-profile scientists in that particular speciality.
  2. Tweet at conferences and you’ll quickly find that people follow you back, especially those who cannot attend.
  3. Curate your feeds into lists. For example, develop a list appropriate to science communication, or on microbiology. You can be as specific as you like
  4. If you don’t like what someone does/says on Twitter, you can unfollow them.

Further reading:

Scientific communities: Build your own

Scientific communities: Membership at learned societies

Scientific communities: From Twitter to paper