How to be a modern scientist

by Jeffrey Leek

The face of academia is changing. It is no longer sufficient to just publish or perish. We are now in an era where Twitter, Github, Figshare, and Alt Metrics are regular parts of the scientific workflow. Here I give high level advice about which tools to use, how to use them, and what to look out for. This book is appropriate for scientists at all levels who want to stay on top of the current technological developments affecting modern scientific careers. The book is based in part on the author's popular guides including guides forReviewing papersReading papersCareer planningGiving talksThe book is probably most suited to graduate students and postdocs in the sciences, but may be of interest to others who want to adapt their scientific process to use modern tools. About the Jeff Leek is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a co-founder and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization on Coursera that has enrolled over 3 million aspiring data scientists. His research has helped contributed to our understanding of the genomic basis of brain development, blunt force trauma, and cancer. He is blogs at Simply Statistics and can be found on twitter at @jtleek and @simplystatsThe book is also available through Leanpub ( if the book is purchased on that platform you are entitled to lifetime free updates

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Technology, Programming, Research

100 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 7, 2016

Reviews

[Rodrigo Nemmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great practical advice for graduate students, postdocs and faculty in "hard science". I wish I've read this ten years ago when I was a grad student, or even as a postdocs. Now, as a professor, I will make parts of this book a mandatory reading for the students in my research group (e.g. "How to write a paper").

[TK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give a 3.5 stars. It looks like different blog posts glued together, very concise, straight to the point, which I liked. The chapters on "writing", "scientific blogging/code", "reading scientific papers", and "career planning" are my favorite ones, very insightful. The topics about publishing, peer review, data sharing, talks, and credits, I could skip them all, mostly because I already had the knowledge on those topics.

This book, together with "The Craft of Research" and "The PhD Grind" are a nice combination as a getting started guide to be a modern scientist.

Minor issues: because it seems it's a bunch of blog posts glued together, there are some minor repetitions. It also talks too much about the problems of not giving credit to data generators. Not sure if that information is that useful for modern scientists.

[Bilal Hikari · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an informative read, I highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in scientific research especially in life sciences/computer science fields.
The book is a collection of articles written by the author in his blog, they are well organized since there are a lot of clickable links it's preferable to have a computer with internet access to check out the external resources provided in the book.

كتاب مفيد جدا على صغر حجمه، عبارة عن مقالات مجمعة من موقع الكاتب يشرح فيها الخطوات التي يجب ان يتبعها الباحث ليواكب التقدم التكنولوجي، كما يشرح مسار البحث العلمي بدءا من كتابة الورقة البحثية مرورا بكيفية الالقاء في الندوات والمحاضرات العلمية إلى البحث عن عمل واستغلال الأنترنت للتعرف على باحثين جدد ...، انصح به كل مهتم بالبحث العلمي خاصة مجال علوم الحياة وعلوم الحاسوب.

[Helfren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Modern scientist nowadays are all over opensource software and blog, while at the same time writing their paper and research to be published. This book is not about how to be a scientist but instead just a guide to write a research paper.

Probably one of most interesting points was entertain, don't teach.

[Alex Linschoten · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy read on some of the tech and career-focused decisions that an early-stage scientist or academic might want to be thinking about. Leek is sometimes a little too prescriptive for my tastes (esp w/r/t tech and software choices), but that's a small drop in an overall sea of useful advice.

[Ahmad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommend to every scientist who wants to have an online profile and have more audiences. I had some experience in the field so that I found it somehow elementary. Also, it had some typo.

[Nirab Pudasaini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful book for early career scientists and researchers. Filled with tons of advise and links to useful tools.

[Monika]

PQHS 432

[Colm Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short and easy read, with a relatively narrow focus. There is an implicit assumption that the reader is a scientist primarily doing computational analysis of data & there is relatively little discussion of the data generation side of things (e.g. bench work). The emphasis on certain aspects of scientific life is very unbalanced - 10 pages on data sharing vs 4 for career planning - and there is quite a heavy focus on computational tools over soft skills (e.g. very little discussion of networking skills or time management).

The book is primarily collated from the author's blog posts, which are great and publicly available, but as far as I can tell there has been little effort made to make the posts into a more book like format. There's plenty of embedded links & the assumption seems to be that you will be reading in a browser and will click for further info. Often things are mentioned with no context (e.g the Potti scandal is mentioned without even a single sentence explaining it) which can be frustrating if you are reading it as a book / on a kindle / not on a connected device. Similarly there's a fair amount of repetition which may not be apparent in separate blog posts but very evident in a book.

Nonetheless, because it's short and quite focussed, it's still a worthwhile read to catch up on some of the modern aspects of science (especially around reproducible research & social media engagement) and has useful tool recommendations.

[Noi Nhieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an easy read (may be too easy that it doesn't feel like a book, but more like an outline note) that offers succinct guides to scientists at almost all stages of their career. It brings up some non-science issues that scientists are encountering in the modern era, and provides some opinions about those, but not necessarily an answer. Above all, it is a good resource to help catch up with the astoundingly fast evolving techs surrounding us, to help facilitate scientific research, as well as to be aware of the modern challenges. I personally think that a large part of the books should be addressing senior scientists who usually refuse to become "modern" :D

[Thamme Gowda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Excellent collection of chapters.
I read this book in July 2016, the topics and tools referenced in this book are contemporary (of course, very 'modern' as the title says!).

Every grad student interested in research/academia track is encouraged to read this.

[Clifton Franklund · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick and easy read. But, this has lots of ideas that I want to incorporate into a Research Design and Methods course at Ferris.

[Firdaus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very practical advice for young scientist. I have learnt couple very essential things from Jeff even though entering my third year of study.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many good ideas, will be referencing this book in the future. Very practical guide. First time reading a book through Leanpub, great experience.