Seeing a need for resources to supplement the CommKit, BE communication fellows Alex Triassi, Tyler Toth, George Sun, Divya Ramamoorthy, Josh Peters, and Kyle Jarrod McLean began compiling templates and learning guides to make it easier to create beautiful and clear scientific documents.
Alex Triassi, lead fellow on the project, says the project started by identifying the problem that creating scientific content — whether it’s a poster, figure, code, or long document — is much harder in practice than in theory. Even if scientists know what they want to create, the learning curve for how to practically create it can be steep. What software do you use? What format works best? Alex and the team wanted to help develop resources that make it easier for users to produce beautiful scientific content while easing the frustration associated with the technical learning curve.
The BE Comm Lab is excited to introduce our newest resources to the community.
Peruse our Awesome List of all the communication resources and laboratory software that we find make our lives easier and check out our templates and learning resources below!
Templates
Our templates were built to provide formatted guides for a range of common software. For all the templates, we encourage you to first read the CommKit article associated with the template to understand why your document is important and what you should include in your document. From there, feel free to use our template as a starting point, and we emphasize starting point, for the project you are working on. If you would like feedback on your project and are part of the MIT community, make an appointment with a fellow here!
Resources for Learning
Our learning resources were built for two reasons – to provide context for why to choose certain software for the task you are undertaking and to provide the code to help you learn how to convert software defaults into beautiful documents and figures following best practices in visual design.
- Univariate Plotting in Python
- Plotting Distributions in R
- Intro to Markdown and Pandoc
- Intro to LaTeX
Limited familiarity with GitHub is required to access our resources. If you would like more info, you can start here to learn more about Git and GitHub.
Still have questions?
Not sure where to start? Still struggling with formatting? Make an appointment with a Comm Fellow and hear about their experiences and get feedback on your work. And as always, reach out to us with questions or comments! We would love to hear from you!
Blog post by Prerna Bhargava.
#resources #spotlight