Adopting healthy scientific practices is essential for conducting good quality research. This may be intuitive but it is hard to achieve and does not happen naturally. This video from the Royal Society introduces the problem:

The term “replication crisis” emphasizes that replication, a corner stone in science, is often considered of secondary importance. If we want to fight this phenomena it is important to conduct research using practices that promote the possibility to do that.

The open science movement not only offers you a way to get credited for your work (see this post on open access for more), but also tries to solve the problem of replicability. It takes into account several aspects at the level of researchers, scientific venues, funding organizations, etc.

In this article, we will focus on aspects related to the way research is conducted and the direct implications (and advantages) for your thesis.

I am assuming that you are not interested in falsifying your data or following any other intentional malpractices. In case you wonder, if you get caught, you could face serious consequences that range from immediate nullification of your thesis to expulsion and/or immediate termination of your internship.

As a single researcher (or small group of researchers) your attention should go towards offering to other scientists the possibility to access the data that you used for the analysis as well as your procedures. This video explain in a funny way why:

In other words, these are a set of good research practices that you should take into account:

• Carefully describe the procedures that you followed for obtaining the data.
• Make your data publicly available so that other scientists can check what you are doing. This includes your mentor and your second reader.
• Document each step of the process in order to be able to share this information with fellow researchers.
• Disclose the meaning of each field in the data.
• Disclose and share the programming code that you used for developing the data as well as the analysis.

Adopting these practices has several direct benefits:

• Your supervisors and/or reviewers will be positively impressed and predispose towards a higher grade.
• You will obtain a (very) good grade independently from your findings. In fact, your thesis is not about your findings: Showing you capability to follow the scientific method is way more important.
• Your work could, starting from your data, be published in a relatively easy manner as a tangible follow up of your thesis. Thus, differentiating your CV from other graduated students.
• A fellow student could decide to continue your work. Thus, you will be able to leave something tangible after you, instead of having your thesis completely forgotten.

In a nutshell, the bottom line is that good research practices will give you a better grade.

In this article, I limited myself to describing the scientific practices that a single individual should follow in pursuing his/her thesis. Adopting a more transparent approach clearly has several benefits and a direct implication on your grade. However, the problem of replicability is bigger than it may look like from this post. It is taken into serious consideration by the entire scientific community. In case you are interested in knowing more, this video gives you a general (and insightful) view on the problem:

#good #research practices like the one promoted by #OpenScience and #OpenData lead to better grades for your #Thesis as well as to a better #Science and more visibility of your work via #openaccess.
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This article (Adopting good scientific practices increase your visibility and the grade of your thesis) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of posts at the following link:

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It is a collections of “digital messages in a bottle” written by students that successfully graduated. Some are friends and colleagues, have been my students.

Hopefully, they followed some of the advises that you are going to find in this blog. Independently of this fact they now are moving to the next chapter of their life.

If you had a successful defense, I would like to ask you to write a letter to the “younger self”. In particular, I encourage you in imagining to talk to yourself as you were when you started doing your thesis.

With this letters you will be able pass some of your experiences to the “new generation” of young bachelor and master students. In this way you will be able to motivate other students in continuing your work and at the same time the “new generation” will have a chance to not repeat the same mistakes that the you did. All that they have to do is to read your letter and the one of your fellow collthese letters.

If you plan to read or write one of these messages in a bottle you also may want to listen to following song. It will set the mood for the task:

Hope you will appreciate the opinions and practical suggestions that you will find in the letters to the younger self. Think about the struggle of the student that wrote the letter, read it carefully as is talking about the journey that you are currently doing or that you did. I am sure that it will help you in writing a better thesis.

Browse around and if you see something that you like send them a message. I am sure that they will appreciate!

Where can you find the letters? Here:

Letters to the Younger Self

Do a better #thesis by reading these letters to the #younger self!
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URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/231572807787807/

Alternatively just click on the join group button

Thesis Support Group Closed group · 2 members Join Group

This thesis support group intend to be a group of people with common experiences or concerns who provide each other with encouragement, comfort, and advice. Nothing more nothing less.

We will focus on both, master and bachelor thesis. You will receive support from PhD students, practitioners and academics in general. Nevertheless, the real value will be what you will share with your peers

It is a close group and participation will be moderated rules of this group includes:

• Have Fun! The fact that this is a thesis support group does not forbid you to have fun and enjoy the company of others.
• Give before you take! Focus on both, how you can benefit from the group and how you can help members in improving their thesis
• No personal attacks here! If a member personally attacks another member with words that are harmful, threatening or not in-line with our mutual respect policy, that member will receive a warning. Three warnings and you’re out.
• Please stick to our mission statement of this Facebook group. Irrelevant content does not belong here it belongs on other pages.
• If someone mentions you by name please respond directly to that person on the same post. If the comment is inflammatory please report it to the group admin.
• If you are going to comment, we would prefer it if you could try and add valuable discussion to the conversation. Be friendly, be fair and use common sense.

No really special rules and when you do not know what to do, just use a bit of common sense.

This mini-series of article on how to do a good thesis may also help you

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