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Harry's paper and labb manual
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mattnolan001 committed Mar 28, 2024
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12 changes: 12 additions & 0 deletions _news/HarryPaper.md
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date: 2024-03-14 15:35:00-0400
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We're building the new website!



Harry's [paper](https://elifesciences.org/articles/89356) investigating grid firing and behaviour is out. A lot of hard work and a very exciting result. Well done Harry!
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title: values
description: the lab's research values
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This document is inspired by Mariam Aly’s excellent [article](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06167-w) about lab manuals and by her lab’s [manual](https://www.alylab.org/). Detailed information including mailing lists, calendars, contact numbers, and protocols are on our internal [wiki](https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=376674941).

### Goals
We aim to do the best science we can with the resources available to us. We are committed to supporting creative and rigorous science that aims to address important questions. We expect everyone in our labs to share this commitment. We also do our best to make the process fun.


### Expectations and responsibilities
With help from current and previous lab members we’ve put together below principles and general expectations for everyone, for ourselves, for postdocs and PhD students, for lab staff and for undergraduates.

#### Everyone
We’re lucky to be surrounded by talented colleagues from diverse backgrounds. Our expectation is that everyone will contribute to a respectful, open, positive and productive work environment.
- Act respectfully at all times towards fellow lab members, colleagues and the public at large. This includes following the University's dignitiy and respect policy.
- Ask questions. Everyone has a right to ask questions and seniority is no guarantee of having the right answer.
- Base arguments and decisions on sound theory and evidence.
- Maintaining a healthy work life balance is important for you and your colleagues.
- Recognise and give credit to other people for their ideas and contributions. This includes your lab colleagues and people outside the lab.
- Be aware of the broader context in which we work. This includes the relevance of what we do for the wider public and effects on the environment of travel and general use of resources.

As well as good ideas good science requires experiments that are rigorous and reproducible.
- Experiments are often difficult and can take time to get working well. It’s as important to share problems as successes. We can all learn from problems and other people may have helpful suggestions.
- Design your experiments carefully to address a clear question. When relevant ensure appropriate consideration of statistical design issues including power, effect size, group size and blinding.
- Ensure your data is of the best quality you can achieve. Have clear pre-defined criteria for data quality and don’t spend time on data that don’t reach these criteria. If you’re developing a new method then develop quality criteria.
- Ensure that your research is reproducible. This includes documenting methods and where possible implementing analyses in code so they can be repeated using raw data as an input.

#### Gülşen and Matt
We aim to ensure our labs carry out rigorous science that addresses important research questions, to support students and staff in our labs in their personal and career development, and to provide a respectful and supportive environment for everyone in our labs. Ways we try to achieve these goals include:
- Setting big picture scientific goals and objectives.
- Helping you to develop your research and provide opportunities for training.
- Meeting regularly with you and being available for ad hoc meetings.
- Giving feedback and perspectives on projects and the field more generally.
- Obtaining resources for lab projects.
- Supporting your applications for funding.
- Providing advice and support for future stages of your career.
- Working with you to write up projects for publication.

#### Postdocs, research staff and PhD students
We expect postdocs and PhD students to lead research project addressing questions within the big picture goals of the Sürmeli and Nolan labs. We expect research staff to play important roles contributing to the delivery of research projects. We hope that you will take opportunities to contribute collaboratively to other lab projects and to training of junior lab members, and we expect you to make the our labs a collaborative and intellectually engaging environment.

To achive these goals we expect you to:
- Work with Gülşen and / or Matt to set your research goals and prioritise your commitments.
- Arrange training to meet your project goals. Gülşen or Matt will help you identify other lab members or collaborators to contribute to your training.
- Maintain careful records of lab methods, including training received, and of all experiments.
- Work independently towards your project goals. We expect you to encounter challenges and obstacles. We suggest problem solving in the following order: 1, review your notes and records to identifiy overlooked issues; 2, consult the wiki, equipment manuals and / or published protocols; 3, consult with lab colleagues (we put this third as this way you save your colleagues time for the most important problems, while following steps 1 and 2 will also more effectively develop your expertise); 4, discuss with Gülşen or Matt. If your trouble shooting identifies alternative strategies, this is very welcome, but be sure to discuss with Gülşen or Matt and your collaborators before initiating major changes of direction.
- Share your expertise with other group members.
- Identify skills and expertise you would like to develop and take advantage of opportunities to do so. We expect everyone to use at least 10 days per year for training or other professional development.
- Keep up to date with detailed literature in your field and important advances across neurocience in general.
- Contribute to supervision of MSc and undergraduate research students.
- Take holidays and aim to maintain a healthy work-like balance.



#### Masters and undergraduate students
We strongly encourage you to take advantage of your time in the lab to learn from other people about what they are doing. You will usually work with a postdoc or PhD student on a specific question as part of a larger project. This person will provide you with lab training needed to address your project goals

We expect you to take excellent notes on your training and to follow these when carrying out experiments. You very likely will still encounter unexpected challenges. We suggest problem solving in the following order: 1, review your notes and records to check if there are any issues you're overlooked; 2. consult with the person supervising you. You should not change or modify protocols without consulting with the person supervising you; this will very likely end up wasting your time and lab resources.

You will meet regularly with Gülşen and / or Matt to discuss your work and plans.

You should read literature around your project and more generally.



### Publication policies

#### Preprints and journals
We aim to share all manuscripts as preprints before submitting to a journal. Which journals to submit to is a joint decision between first and lead author(s). Our preference is to submit to non-profit journals with a strong commitment to open science (e.g. eLife). We recognise that scientific job and funding evaluation is far from perfect and will submit elsewhere if the first author prefers.


#### Data and code
We aim to share all ocde and data. For papers on which Matt is senior author, code is found [here](https://github.com/MattNolanLab) and data [here](https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/777). For papers on which Gülşen is senior author, data is found [here](https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/4369).

#### Authorship
We support use of the CRedIT taxonomy for documenting author contributions to research papers.Qualificaton for authorship requires meeting at least one of the CRedIT criteria. In determining position on authorship lists we follow the convention that the first author(s) have usually carried out most of the key experiments and provide strong intellectual drive, the senior authors have provided supervision, leadership and direction, and intermediate authors have contributed consistent with the CRedIT criteria. When multiple people have made substantial contributions of key experiments and ideas to a project, and where publishing these contributions as a single study is likely to lead to a more impactful paper, then the major contributors will share joing or equal contributing first author status. If at any stage of a project you would like to discuss authorship issues then please mention this to Matt or Gülşen. We aim that all authorship decisions are made collaboratively and with the agreement of all authors. In the even of unresolvable differences then Matt or Gülşen will have responsibility for the final decision.

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