#@research

[eascaping-blog]

Showdown Cinematic VR Experience Released for Free!

Our flagship VR demo, Showdown, is now available for download for free.

Unreal Engine

[jeromyanglim]

How to convert document with table cross-references into split document with tables and body in separate documents

I recently had to prepare a submission to a journal that required Tables to be in a separate document. When preparing my manuscripts, I put tables at the end of the manuscript body. I use captions and cross-references to automatically number tables and figures.

However, the automatic numbering does not work when you put the tables in a separate document. I was also concerned that my cross-references (e.g., text like "see Table 1") would become corrupted when I removed the tables that such cross-references refer to.

A basic solution is to convert all the cross-references to standard text. On Mac, the shortcut to do this is Cmd+Shift+F9. It helps if in the preferences field shading is activated.

So it is just a matter of searching for "Table " pressing cmd+shift+F9 and then activating "find next" (i.e., Cmd+Page Down on OSX). Another option for navigating is pressing F11 to navigate to the next field (Shift + F11 to navigate to the previous).

An alternative option would be to lock the field using Cmd+F11. This has the benefit of not permanently removing the field codes, but it makes me a little more nervous that something might go wrong in journal production process.

To state the obvious, once the field codes have been updated:

Close the file

Copy the file and rename one version "body" and the other version "tables".

Delete the tables from the body and the body from the tables.

[jeromyanglim]

How to prepare tables in an appendix to a manuscript in APA style?

This post assumes you know the general rules of preparing tables for APA style

Section 5.05 of the APA 6th Manual describes what is required when including tables in an Appendix.

The only difference is that the table identifier should include a prefix for the appendix (e.g., A, B, C, etc.), and that the numbering of tables recommences at the start of each appendix. Here are some examples:

The first table in Appendix B would be called Table B1.

If there is one table in Appendix A, the second table in Appendix B would still be called Table B2.

If there is only one appendix, the first table in such an appendix would be called Table A1

[jeromyanglim]

Submitting and collaborating on Microsoft Word journal articles with Math Type

This post records a few notes on submitting and collaborating on academic manuscripts in Microsoft Word format with MathType.

Notes for collaborators

I use MathType to enter mathematical equations. MathType is typically academic publishers' preferred option for entering equations in Word documents.

Problems viewing equations: If you experience problems viewing equations in the document, then you should install the MathType fonts (see here for instructions. Essentially, you can install the trial version of MathType for Windows or OSX and then after you uninstall the fonts will remain on your system.

How to edit equations: If you wish to edit the equations, you will probably need to install MathType. For a once-off exercise, the trial version will suffice. Otherwise, the academic licence is reasonably priced.

Equations on Windows: I tend to work on OSX, which uses a slightly different picture format to Windows. If you try to convert a document with equations to PDF on Windows when I have written the equations on OSX, you may experience pixelated equations. To resolve this problem, you will need to install MathType plugin in Word on Windows. Then run the "convert equations" command from the menu. This is further described here.

Equations converting to images on OXS: If you use OSX, there is another issue with MathType where equations get converted to images. This seems to be related to the auto-save feature in Word OSX. I have a work around where I disable Word's auto-save an implement a macro in KeyboardMeastro discussed here.

In general, if you're using Word OSX, there are other reasons why you might want to avoid Word's built-in auto-save, and use an alternative. But I realise this is also quite fiddly for the occasional collaboration with equations.

Submission

When I submit manuscripts to journals I often find that MathType equations do not display correctly when their online system converts the document to PDF. There are several work arounds

Apply the previously mentioned step of opening the document in Windows and running the MathType convertor on Windows, it tends to display correctly in the journal submission system.

If that doesn't work, then:

Convert document to PDF on Windows and submit PDF.

[jeromyanglim]

What is APA style for reporting confidence intervals?

The APA 6 style manual states (p.117):

When reporting confidence intervals, use the format 95% CI [LL, UL] where LL is the lower limit of the confidence interval and UL is the upper limit.

So for example,

One might report:

M=23.3, 95% CI [17.2, 43.7]

Note that the APA manual further discusses variant scenarios such as when presenting a series of confidence intervals.

I assume a similar approach would also be adopted when reporting Bayesian credible intervals.

[jeromyanglim]

How to get doi from figshare?

It can be useful to be able to provide a doi url from figshare. The default viewing page does not make it easy to see what is that doi url.

Here's a way of getting the doi:

Upload the file and make it public

On the viewing page, click download Endnote reference

This should save an "enw" file on your computer. If you have Endnote installed, you can view the fields in Endnote which should include a field about doi. However, alternatively, open the enw file in a text editor and you should be able to read the line e.g., http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.....

[jeromyanglim]

How to create a customised launch page for an Inquisit experiment

I often use Inquisit to run web-based psychological experiments. This post discusses how to customise the landing page for the Inquisit experiment.

Motivation

The standard Inquisit landing page for an experiment is pretty minimal. An alternative strategy is to have a separate web address as the landing page with extensive information about the study. Then, a link is placed directed to the Inquisit landing page. However, I worry that increasing the number of links that need to be step can inflate the drop out rate. Thus, I was interested in customising the Inquisit landing page so that it provided all the information needed.

Steps for creating customised Inquisit landing page

Click "Register New Script" on the Inquisit Web Scripts page (note: this assumes you have a valid web licence)

Follow the steps of the Script Wizard specifying all desired options, except that although we want a custom launch page, on this iteration, select "automatically generate a launch page". When entering instructions to show on launch page, just enter a few word that will be easy to find later on like "test test test".

Once the wizard is complete, go to the launch page for the Inquisit experiment in a web browser. Save the web page as index.htm in your inquisit script folder.

Open index.htm in a text editor and find the section that contains the text you entered into the instruction section (e.g., "test test test"). Replace this text with the HTML formatted text that you want to appear. Essentially this text appears between an open and close HTML span tags.

I also modified the formatting of the tr tag tha appears a couple of lines above the tag to align="left" because left alignment was more suited to the content that I wanted to show than the default centre alignment.

I also often like to add a Google Analytics tracking code to the page. This can be useful in recording the referral website particularly where various online recruitment strategies are being employed.

Save these changes to index.htm

Go to Inquisit Web Scripts and click edit on your new script and this time selct "use a custome launch page"; click "choose file" and select index.htm from your computer, then "upload file", then finish the wizard.

You now have an Inquisit script with a custom launch page. Note that by using index.htm as the file name, you can share the link omitting the index.htm in the url.

Variation on this approach

An alternative approach to this is simply to enter HTML directly into the experiment description wizard. If you want left aligned text, you can surround the content in div tags.

<div align="left"> ... </div>