🎓 Last year, I got my Ph.D. from @DukeU.

📚 This year, the 3 chapters of my dissertation are published in some of the top journals in my field.

🔍 Wondering how you can do the same?

Here are 10 pieces of advice I have learned!🧵 1. Drop modesty.

Ask yourself, what do I need to publish in high-impact journals?

Do you need more technical skills for your field? Do you need to write or code better?

In my case, I wanted to improve at GIS and stats.

So, determine what you need and go for it!

Here's the story of how some senior academics plagiarized my work, led by my former advisor Stuart Pimm.

I reported research misconduct to @DukeU a while ago.

Earlier this year, they had to acknowledge their wrongdoing, though they did so very subtly.

This is what happened👇 I started my Ph.D. under Prof. Stuart Pimm, a leading academic in conservation.

I was just thrilled to be his student. I never checked for red flags.

We published my first chapter together, but things changed when he offered me a topic for the second chapter of my Ph.D.

Many people are not aware that the IUCN Range maps are VERY unreliable.

Some are good, some are bad, and most are in-between.

In our 2021 study, we found their overall accuracy was only 62% vs 87% of our data-driven workflow to map ranges (data for 723 forest birds) Most of the IUCN Range maps are expert-drawn and are not updated based on occurrence records.

The map on the left for the Wattled Guan misses most of the occ points (in purple).

On the right, another expert map shows an improved distribution of its portion in Colombia.

ChatGPT is your personal research assistant, but only if you can use it efficiently.

Here are 12 ways to unlock its potential for many of your academic needs.

I've included real-life screenshots of use cases to help you get started 👇 1. Suggest ideas for the title of a paper.

I'm tired of the hegemony of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

At this point, I think it's actually hampering biodiversity conservation and research.

Yes, it helped tremendously in the past. But not anymore. Here's why: 1/ First, it is flawed.

The categories and criteria are more than 30 years old. They have not aged gracefully. They were conceived before GIS advances, remote sensing. Some simplistic assumptions are used, no use of inference, etc.

Most folks in academia are overwhelmed with email.

I've been there too. But I finally managed to implement a system that works for me - and I think it will work for you.

So here's a simple method to get your email back in control 👇 1. First, email is a general inbox.

Take the incoming tasks into more dedicated places:

a) Schedule tasks in the calendar
b) Place them into a task-manager
c) Take notes
d) send to the Read-it-later app

Here's a screenshot from @AliAbdaal email system.

Having trouble finding the right journal for your paper?

Try these two neat tools to help you decide. Check them out here👇 1. JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator)
jane.biosemantics.org

Just copy the abstract of your paper and JANE will suggest some journals that publish similar research to yours.

There are hundreds of software tools available for research right now.

But in reality most of them are not worth your time.

Here are 8 tools that I've actually use, that can super-charge your research productivity.

A thread🧵 1. @zotero

A reference manager is a must-have for researchers.

But Zotero is a lot more than that. For instance, you can highlight/annotate PDFs, and then export those notes.

Here's how to organize your research for improved productivity and reproducibility

I will show screenshots of my own research for illustrative purposes.

Follow along here👇 1/ First, some clarifications:

• There are many ways to organize the folder structure that follow best practices. Use mine as an example.

• My folder structure is determined by the type of data I handle and my computer skills, which I would say are good enough.

Here's how to conduct a literature review using Google Scholar, @zotero, @RsrchRabbit , and @obsdmd .

A step-by-step guide👇 1. In this thread you will learn how to:

• Use Google Scholar to find literature.
• Create a Zotero lit. collection.
• Use Research Rabbit to expand your Zotero lit. collection
• Add highlights and export to PDF notes to obsidian
• Centralize all relevant notes in obsidian

In 2018, three colleagues and I published a front-cover paper in @PNASNews

It has > 170 citations as of 2022, and it was a success that might not have happened:

• We had $0 budget
• We had no PI (Principal Investigator)
• We had no credentials

[Here's how we did it] 🧵 We were fresh out of college and lived in the same neighborhood (Cali, Colombia)

We started a small non-profit for research and conservation in the tropical Andes - ecotonos.org

We wanted to publish something as a team, and Nicolás Hazzi (first author) had an idea.

Follow this 10 simple rules to increase your productivity and stay motivated while writing a scientific paper:

The advice is from Peterson et al. 2018, a must-read in the subject: "Ten simple rules for scientists: Improving your writing productivity"

[Here they are ]👇 Rule 1: Define your writing time
*Also, schedule the other activities for your research.

Rule 2: Create a working environment that really works
*Google "broken windows theory"

Rule 3: Write first, edit later
* Take this rule as sacred. Overediting can set you back for years.