(V2_02_09_18)
Table of Contents
General
Expectations and Responsibilities
Welcome!
It looks like you recently joined the Salomon Lab in Bar Ilan University. We’re really glad to have you here at the Slab. We hope you’ll learn a lot about psychology and neuroscience, develop new skills (coding, data analysis, writing, giving talks), make friends, and have a great deal of fun through the whole process.
This lab manual was inspired by several others, and borrows heavily from them (e.g., this one and this one). It’s also a work in progress. If you have ideas on things to add, or what to clarify, talk to me (Roy Salomon, the PI) or the lab manager (Amir Harduf).
When you join the lab, you’re expected to read this manual and sign a form indicating that you have done so.
The Salomon Lab at Gonda Brain Research Center (SLab) aims to produce high quality research into: 1) the cognitive and neural basis of the construct of the “Self”, 2) the neural underpinnings of conscious experience, 3) novel interventions to help populations with deficits in 1 & 2.
The lab supports Open Science practices including pre-registration of studies, open data, open code and open access.
SLab aims at advancing scientific knowledge as well as developing the careers of its members by providing an excellent and constructive scientific workplace.
Code of Conduct
The lab should be a safe, fun and supportive environment. Any behavior which is not in line with this is unacceptable. All conduct must be fair, respectful and honest. Specific university regulations regarding sexual harassment can be found here, student ethics here and general scientific conduct here. These will not be elaborated further in this Manual.
Expectations and Responsibilities
Everyone
Science is hard. But it’s also fun. In SLab, we want to make sure that everyone experiences a positive, engaging, challenging, and rewarding lab environment. To maintain that environment, we all have to do a few things.
There are a few day-to-day things to keep in mind to keep the lab running smoothly.
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All of the above, and you will also be expected to…
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Authorship
Like other labs, we will follow the APA guidelines with respect to authorship:
“Authorship credit should reflect the individual's contribution to the study."
At the start of a new project we will discuss authorship. Roy will typically be the last author. Authorship will primarily reflect the contribution to the project, and will be decided by Roy. We will try to make this clear in advance so no surprises occur. We can always talk about authorship, but best to have it made clear from the start.
Being in lab is a good way of learning from others, helping others, building camaraderie, having fast and easy access to resources (and people). That said, hours in academia are more flexible than other jobs — but you should still treat it as a real job (40 hours/week) and show up to the lab. My primary concern is that you get your work done, so if you find that you are more productive at home (lab-mates can be chatty sometimes), feel free to work at home occasionally. If you have no meetings, no participants, and no other obligations that day, it might be a good day to work at home – but you can’t do this all the time, and I expect to see everyone in the lab on a regular basis.
The only exception to this is lab managers / research assistants, who must keep more regular hours.
For graduate students, I understand having to be away for classes and TA-ing, but show up to the lab on a regular basis when you don’t have those obligations.
To encourage lab interaction, try to be in most weekdays during ‘peak’ hours (assuming no other obligations) – e.g., between 11am and 4pm. This is not a hard rule, you can work at home occasionally, and I understand other obligations.
PI Office Hours
In addition to weekly meetings (see below), and occasionally dropping by the lab, you can usually find Roy in his office (Gonda 217). The door is almost always open; if it is, feel free to ask for a chat. If the door is closed, if urgent knock once and see if I holler back, otherwise email me.
Lab Resources
The lab uses Google calendars:
We use email a lot so this communication must be optimized.
The Slab website can be found here https://www.salomonlab.org/ all our papers are there. When you join the lab please send Roy a picture you like and a short bio as found here https://www.salomonlab.org/team . The lab site will be maintained by a student form the lab (Currently Roy).
Email:
You can email me anytime.
Whatsapp:
Slab articles is only for articles and resources
Slab is for fun, lunch and gossip
We can create ad hoc groups for tight and quick communication.
You can Whatsapp me personally for urgent stuff otherwise mail me.
Phone:
During business hours call me if needed urgently otherwise email.
If very urgent/ emergency call me anytime
We have lots of equipment some is very expensive (e.g. EEG at 300000 NIS) and some less but all of the equipment is critical for our work and should be taken care of. All equipment must be cleaned, charged and returned to its place after use. This is the responsibility of all lab members but to make it more personal:
EEG equipment- Dvir
LEAP and Leap platforms- Amit
RHI- Amir
fMRI Equipment (e,g, dongle, MRHI fmri.. etc..)- Amir
Arduino and peripherals- Yaniv
VR- Yaniv
Amir as lab manager has oversight for all equipment and if you have a question go to him or come to me.
Weekly Lab Meetings
Weekly lab meetings (~1.5 hours each) are meant to be a forum for trainees to present project ideas and/or data to get feedback from the rest of the group. Projects at any level of completion (or even not yet started!) can benefit from being presented. These lab meetings can also be used to talk about methods, statistical analyses, new papers, and career development. For paper discussions, everyone must come to lab meeting having read the paper and prepared with comments and questions to contribute. Some weeks we may explore a particular issue and have people read different papers – in that case, come to lab meeting having read your paper and be prepared to summarize it for the group.
The lab meeting is a course and lab member MUST be registered. Each person is expected to present at least once every semester. These meetings are informal, and you can do what you wish with your slot – just be prepared to contribute something substantive. Lab members are also expected to attend every meeting (obviously, illnesses, doctor appointments, family issues, etc are a valid reason for missing a meeting). Undergraduate students are encouraged to attend as often as possible (assuming it fits in their course schedule). SLab meeting agendas and notes will be kept in the SLab calendar.
Individual Meetings
At the beginning of each semester, we will set a schedule for weekly meetings. Each full-time lab member (RAs, graduate students, post-docs) will have a one-hour slot set aside to meet with Roy. If scheduling conflicts arise (e.g., because of travel), we can try to reschedule for another day that week. If there is nothing to discuss, feel free to cancel the meeting or just drop by for a brief chat.
Roy will meet with undergraduate students every other week (or according to need); post-docs and graduate students should meet with their undergraduate mentee on a regular basis.
Deadlines are important to make things happen, so we will use them both for you and for me.
For students:
I suggest setting clear deadlines for your work. Typically, this should be a 1-2 week deadline set by you indicating what you will have accomplished by our next meeting.
For me:
Give Roy at least one week’s notice to do something with a hard deadline that doesn’t require a lot of time (e.g., reading/commenting on conference abstracts, filling out paperwork, etc).
Give Roy at least two weeks’ notice to do something with a hard deadline that requires a lot of time (e.g., a letter of recommendation). For manuscript revisions, Thesis versions etc , give him at least 3 weeks, because these will require multiple back-and-forths.
For manuscript submissions (i.e., no hard deadline), you can still bug Roy to give you feedback if he hasn’t responded in a week or two – papers are important!
Learning to present your research is important. Very few people will read your papers carefully (sad, but true) but you can reach a lot of people at conference talks and posters. Also, if you plan on staying in academia, getting a post-doc position and getting a faculty position both significantly depend on your ability to present your data. Even if you want to leave academia, presentations are likely to be an important part of your job. Additionally, every time you present your work, you are representing not just yourself but the entire lab.
It is therefore highly encouraged that you seek out opportunities to present your research, whether it is at departmental talk series and events, to other labs (within or outside of Bar Ilan), at conferences, or to the general public. If you are going to give a presentation (a poster or a talk), be prepared to give a practice presentation to the lab at least one week ahead of time (two weeks or more are advisable for conference presentations, and many weeks ahead of time are advisable for job talks, which require much refining). Practice talks will help you feel comfortable with your presentation, and will also allow you to get feedback from the lab and implement those changes well in advance of your real presentation.
Templates for posters (add link), and talks (add link) are available and should be kept visually similar to the lab style. Some general rules for posters should be followed: minimize text as much as possible (if you wrote a paragraph, you’re doing it wrong), make figures and text large and easy to see at a distance, label your axes, and make sure different colors are easily discriminable
Letters of recommendation are extremely important for getting new positions and grants. You can count on Roy to write you a letter if you have been in the lab at least one year (it’s hard to really know someone if they have only been around for a few months). Exceptions can be made if students or post-docs are applying for fellowships shortly after starting in the lab.
Storing Active Datasets
Lab data must be stored in two places:
I further recommend that you backup to Hard disk provided by the lab.
Each lab member should back up raw data on an external hard drive, as well as the code needed to reproduce all analyses.
Data Organization
If you have already run several independent projects and have a data organization structure that works well for you, feel free to use it. If not (or if you are looking for a change), the following structure is recommended (based on Neuropipe):
When you leave the lab, your projects directories should be set up like this, or something similarly transparent, so that other people can look at your data and code. You must do this, otherwise your analysis pipeline and data structure will be uninterpretable to others once you leave, and this will slow everyone down (and cause us to bug you repeatedly to clean up your project directory or answer questions about it).
Archiving Inactive Datasets
Before you leave, or upon completion of a project, you must archive old datasets and back them up. We will develop the instructions for this when we reach our first inactive dataset.
We’re all for open science including:
Lab members are required to share their code and data with others, whether they are in the lab or outside of it. Within lab, you can share your code and data whenever you like. But do not share your code or data with the outside world until you think (and Roy agrees) that the lab has finished working with it. This gives us an opportunity to work with the data before releasing it for other people to use. Currently, the best option for sharing smaller datasets might be the Open Science Framework, and the best option for sharing MRI datasets is OpenFMRI .
We will also share our work with the world as soon as we ready, which means preprints! The lab policy is to upload a preprint of a manuscript simultaneously with initial submission to a journal. The preferred preprint servers are bioRxiv and PsyArXiv. We will also put PDFs of all our papers on the lab website, and you should share PDFs of your paper with whoever asks.
Once you have read all of this please sign this form . If you have questions or you feel this guide can be improved talk to the lab manager (Amir) or the PI (Roy).
Good Luck!!