User talk:Gryllida/OR

Comment on "Species Discovery"

When dealing with scientific discoveries, the journal article itself will usually specifically list the answers to your questions 2 (usually Introduction), 3 (usually Introduction), 5 (Materials and Methods), 6 (Materials and Methods), 7 (usually Materials and Methods but sometimes Introduction), and 9 (Conclusion hit CTRL-F "further research" or "further study"). Some of them, especially 9, are de facto required by the customs of science publishing and #5 is explicitly required. No journal will publish a study that does not say exactly what equipment was used and how. Science journal articles have a standard format specifically so readers can find this type of information. So I guess the question is if you already have your answers 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9, what do you ask next? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:39, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Darkfrog24

1. What prompted your curiosity in X?
2. How was the new species discovered? -- the paper must say this, but asking this question in an interview allows to get a nice summary (and this is often missing in the press release)
3. Where does it live? -- yes this is often in the paper in terms of geography, but in interviews people sometimes tell me useful information like the type of habitat, 'lives in burrows' etc
4. What does it eat?
5. What technology/equipment was involved/used in the study? -- this is often in the paper but without much emphasis, in an interview people may be able to tell more information and what was the most often used one what was their procedures etc
6. What activities did the study involve?
7. What was the study timeline? How long did it take? -- this is in the paper but not really with much focus; in an interview the answer may give more information about what was the hardest part and what caused the delays
8. What were the roles of the people involved in the research? What activity was most time-consuming?
9. Are there any further plans on exploring the species habitat and lifestyle? -- in the paper there is some information about this but it may be out of date in case the researchers already made some progress since the time they wrote their paper a few months ago (the paper may take several months before it becomes approved by the reviewers and then a few more days or weeks before it becomes published)
10. Do you have a photo of the new species, of equipment, people, lab?

Other extra questions can be

• whether they plan to look for new species anytime soon and if so then where;
• whether the research team is working on any other collaborative projects at the moment;
• whether the species is endangered or not;
• what did the researchers like most about this research;
• what did the researchers dislike most about this research;
• anything else that you can think of depending on the context

Hope it helps Gryllida (talk) 03:46, 13 March 2019 (UTC)