fundamentals of eDNA

This week we went discussed how you can use GitHub and R simultaneously to improve research communication and collaboration efforts. On Monday, we discussed the differences between “markup” and “markdown.” We went over markdown syntax. Then, we walked through a tutorial on setting up GitHub and R Studio in order to post and share our weekly reflections. I loved how you can generate a manuscript that has the code for analyzing the data/generating figures embedded in the script. I thought it was really nice how you can share the manuscript with collaborators and you can all work on it simultaneously. I think this will be a very useful tool in the future. On Wednesday, we discussed the McKiernan et al. (2016) paper. I am currently going through the process of publishing in an open access journal, and I found this paper very interesting. Although I already knew a bit about open and traditional journals, this paper raised interesting topics on the pros, cons, and in/outs of how open journals work and the publishing process for open journals. I did not know that there is a growing number of open access journals that are offering free publishing. When working with a team, I do think it is important that everyone agrees on the terms of working openly (i.e. making data publically available, publishing in open access, etc.). It is vital to know your rights as an author as well.