Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Chapter 12 of Research Like a Pro with DNA, “What’s Next? Publishing, Productivity, and Further Education.” We discuss updating family tree software at the completion of a project, sharing reports, anonymizing living individuals, asking DNA matches for permission to be included in a publicly shared report or proof argument, and ideas for how to share your written conclusion. We also discuss DNA proof arguments and meeting standards, and ideas for continuing DNA education.
Transcript
Nicole Elder Dyer (0s):
This is research like a Pro episode 250 R L P with DNA 12. What’s next? Welcome to research like a Pro, a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited Genealogist professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at FamilyLocket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a Pro, a Genealogist guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion Volume Research Like a Pro with dna, Join, Diana, and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.
Nicole Elder Dyer (43s):
Today’s episode is sponsored by newspapers.com Break down Genealogy brick walls with the subscription to the largest online newspaper archive. Hello and Welcome to research like a Pro
2 (56s):
Hi. Nicole. How, are you today
Nicole Elder Dyer (57s):
Hi mom? I’m great. I’m having a great day. I’ve been enjoying working on some of my dire research How about you.
2 (1m 5s):
I’ve been having fun working on my Royston research for the study group and I was a little bit behind, so I decided yesterday to catch up and I needed to go into Ancestry and I used through lines for my test taker and went to his ancestor, my common ancestor, John Kerry Royston and looked for all the matches there. And it was really interesting because there were two matches that come down from John Kerry Roy’s. He had three wives and so I have one match from his wife that I share. Polly Cessna, only one. I was hoping for more, but they only had three children together and we don’t know who the other child was.
2 (1m 46s):
I think they probably didn’t survive. And then I had one match from his other wife, Maryanne Renwick, coming down through Richard w Royston and I was hoping for a lot of matches there but you know, through lines only shows if people have trees, matches if you have trees. So you know, these are people that actually had trees that went back to at least Richard. But then I had a lot of matches coming down through his first wife in Virginia that we don’t even have a name for cuz the marriage records are all gone. And this is coming through Peter Kemp Royston a son. And this is the one that my Royston cousin Don Royston has researched thoroughly and has settled on John Kerry Royston as Peter Kemp, Roy’s father.
2 (2m 31s):
And I have a lot of matches coming from Peter Kemp Royston. So isn’t that so interesting? Wow.
Nicole Elder Dyer (2m 39s):
Yeah
2 (2m 40s):
And that also is a why DNA match because Don Royston took the the rice and research when we did the Y DNA Royston project and he matched the rice and through my line and so we have the Y d as well and all of his research. So it’s very interesting. It makes me want to now go into his results Don’s and find all of his matches that are coming through. So that’s what I decided this morning that now I need to look at all of his through lines and his matches to, you know, the descendants of Thomas, Beverly Royston.
Nicole Elder Dyer (3m 20s):
Yeah, that’ll be a great thing to do. And do you think you’ll add to your research plan to look at shared matches of these people and see if any of the trees look kind of obvious that you could quickly build back, find more matches?
2 (3m 33s):
Yeah, I think I will. And a lot of the through lines are like that. There’s a lot of the green boxes, which means through lines is just putting ’em together. That’s not anything that people actually have in their trees because some of their trees are kind of small, but they give you such good clues. So what I’m doing is I’m putting ’em in my Lisa chart and that I’m going to use Alice’s idea. Our colleague Alice Child has the idea that when you have connected a generation or researched a generation on the research, basically put turns lucidchart in kind of into a research log when you’ve actually done the work yourself to link those generations, you turn the little box gray.
2 (4m 13s):
So I’m going to try that approach this time so I know that I have verified those Links. So anyway, that’s been kind of a fun thing that I’ve been working on.
Nicole Elder Dyer (4m 22s):
Yeah, and when you have multiple test takers like that where you’re viewing a bunch of matches, it’s great to be able to add more matches that you find in their results, like you were saying with Don’s through lines.
2 (4m 32s):
Yes, I think that’s going to be really helpful. And I love the idea that on Ancestry you can do shared matches. so I can look at Don’s all of his shared matches with the people that I know come through our line. so I have test takers from my Royce in line shared with me by several of my cousins and I can look for all those shared matches with him. So hopefully some of them will show up in his match list and then I can kind of hone in on the specific cluster. And I’m also thinking about, you know, maybe doing a guffy graph for the newest matches that have come in. you know you did a Guffy graph for me a few years ago, but there are so many new DNA matches that keep coming.
2 (5m 15s):
So I’m wondering what do you think, how helpful that would be to gather all the recent matches?
Nicole Elder Dyer (5m 19s):
Usually what I do is just look at shared matches for the new ones and once I have kind of the main people in the cluster, it’s easy to just find the new matches by looking at their shared matches.
2 (5m 32s):
Okay, well and I was kind of going back and forth because we really know who the specific people are involved here, just look at their shared matches and just gradually build that cluster out manually I guess is what it would be.
Nicole Elder Dyer (5m 45s):
Yeah, I just kind of go to the people that I’ve already identified, look at their shared matches, look for people with trees, and then just focus on those ones,
2 (5m 54s):
Right? We’re always working on those trees. But, I love how in through lines you can go to the list view instead of the relationship view. And I’ve been using that because then that lines it up with those who share the most DNA down to those who share the lease. so I had coming through that Peter Kemp Royce and all the way from 22 Santa Morgans down to eight and so I’m trying to take one match from each of his children. He had about three or four children that the matches come through trying to get these independent lines and then the best matches from those. So that was my methodology, that’s what I was doing yesterday. It’s kinda how I was prioritizing who goes into the lucid chart.
Nicole Elder Dyer (6m 32s):
Y’all have to tell you how I’ve been doing it with my dire project and we can talk about that in the next episode.
2 (6m 37s):
Great. It’s fun, isn’t it? Every time we do these projects you learn little tricks, things to refine or new ways to think about gathering these matches to prove our case.
Nicole Elder Dyer (6m 49s):
Right. Well if you haven’t tried our Airtable research logs quick reference guide that is something new we launched at Roots Tech and it’s a P D F download, which is four pages that tells you all about using Airtable for a Genealogy research log. Also, we’re excited for April’s Webinar with the Research Like, a Pro Webinar series. Diane is gonna be talking about the Eisenhower case and if you want to join us in the study group this fall that begins in August and it’s the Research Like a Pro study group and we’d love to have experienced Research Like, a Pro become a peer group leader to lead a small group that meets on the Mondays of the study group to discuss their research.
Nicole Elder Dyer (7m 33s):
And as always join our newsletter to get our weekly Monday list of new blog posts and podcast episodes and coupon codes. There’s always something new in there.
2 (7m 44s):
Well let’s get to our subject. We are onto chapter 12 of Research Like a Pro with DNA, our book and this chapter is titled What’s Next, Publishing Productivity and Further Education. This is such a fun chapter because when we come to the end of a research report we kind of wonder, okay, what should I do now? But it doesn’t mean we’ve always actually answered our research question just because we finished a phase of research. In fact, most of the time I need to start another project to continue on with all my future research. So if you have found the answer to your research question and you have completed that reasonably exhaustive research, then maybe you are ready to turn your report or reports because we often have several into a proof argument and maybe you want to share your research report with cousins or you wanna submit your proof argument for a publication in a Genealogy journal or put it online.
2 (8m 39s):
So we’re going to talk all about the things that you need to think about in doing that as well as give some tips for Productivity and further DNA education. So let’s talk about this idea of continuing research. When we are working with dna, so often we need several phases of research before we actually find the answer to our question and feel like we’ve achieved genealogical proof. So if you have ideas for future research, then your next step would probably be to create a new research plan for the same overarching research question. Perhaps your next phase would focus on finding traditional records about a person or couple identified through DNA evidence.
2 (9m 23s):
Or maybe you want to focus on finding descendants of an ancestral couple so you have candidates for Y DNA or mitochondrial DNA testing. Another future research suggestion could be to focus on mapping DNA segments in DNA painter and maybe eliminated or disproved a candidate for say a parent. And now you’re moving on to find another candidate for the parent of your ancestor. Doing your research in phases can help you from not getting overwhelmed. For instance, you could give yourself 10 to 20 hours to research and then write your next report. And as you are going along, one of the things that will really help is if you write notes in your research project document.
2 (10m 4s):
Sometimes we want to just research forever it seems like. And then the longer you spend researching, the longer it will take to write up that research into some type of a report. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking, can only write a report when you found your answer because often it’s in the writing, we make the connections that actually lead us to find the answer.
Nicole Elder Dyer (10m 26s):
I think it’s so important to write the report at the end of the phase instead of just moving on and forgetting about it. Well, as we talked about in chapter three, it’s important to keep your research in a family tree program, whether it’s an online one or more popular is to keep it in a software program on your computer that you have control of. And so if you’re doing that and staying organizing and helping to visualize your family through that family tree software, the end of a phase of research is a good time to update that tree with your findings. And you have a report that has the citations, so it’s an easy way to take what you found and put it into your tree.
Nicole Elder Dyer (11m 7s):
You can just copy and paste citations into the notes and you can add in dates that you’ve discovered places, new people, anything that’s gonna be an update in your family tree. Your family tree is obviously a great thing to pass on to future generations. So the more that we can keep it up to date the better. And you may also want to update the family search collaborative family tree and it’s a great way to find cousins for D N A testing and to get in touch with cousin matches who aren’t responsive. Sometimes you can find them as family search users who have added to the tree or you know added a photo of someone in their family. And so sometimes you can more easily reach them through that website than through the DNA testing company website.
Nicole Elder Dyer (11m 51s):
Also, you may want to update any of of the trees that you have on the DNA N Company websites. If you’ve proven one of your ancestors after a phase of research, then you definitely want to add that new end of line ancestor to the end of your tree on each of the sites that has your D N A and that will help you define more matches descending from that ancestor and that side of the family.
2 (12m 14s):
That’s such a good tip to add that end of line ancestor if you have proven them because I don’t want to update everything on those trees. Those are more research trees, But, I think it is important if we do have pretty good proof of that end of the line to end it. Well, after concluding a phase of research, you probably want to share your DNA report with interested relatives. You may have reached out to several of them to help you with sharing their DNA results and they’ll want to know what you found so you can do this even before you fully reached a conclusion because it will help with collaboration when a relative seizure report. They’ll see that you are working according to Genealogy standards and maybe it will help them to decide to work with you.
2 (12m 58s):
It really is helpful to have an ally to help recruit additional test takers from their side of the family. And they might also give you permission to view their DNA results or use their information in a published case study. And you may want to post your report online on your website or your online tree. So you do have to think about what kind of sharing you want to do. Do you want this to be private or public? If you’re doing private sharing, that would be emailing the report privately to a client. If you’re doing client work or a relative or reviewer, maybe presenting it to a small group. If you are part of a Genealogy society and you maybe wanna do a little presentation on it or maybe sharing within a small closed group could be a research study group like we run in Research, Like a Pro or maybe you wanna do something that’s public, you just wanna post that report on your website or on the family search family tree, your ancestry tree.
2 (13m 56s):
Or maybe you want to do this for a presentation that will be recorded for your society or for a larger group. So there’s so many things that can be ways of sharing our research, either private or publicly. But one of the things that you need to think about is that anytime you do post an article online for the public that constitutes publication. Now you might also want to consider formal publication in a book or a journal that is obviously out there for the public to read, but anytime you post it on the internet, that is also making it available for the public to read.
Nicole Elder Dyer (14m 36s):
That helps us to think about when we might need permission. So the time when you wouldn’t need permission is if you’re sharing your report with a client or a family member who already has access to their match list that you used. If the person you’re sharing with can already see the list of their own matches and the matches are the ones in the report, you don’t need permission from the matches to give that test taker the report about their own matches. But if you’re gonna share the report with distant cousins, then that would be a time to get permission of everyone you talk about in the report before you send it off to those cousins because those cousins wouldn’t be able to see the DNA matches they since they don’t have access to that match list you’re using, then they need to see a privatized report or one that has people giving permission to get permission from the matches used in your report or your proof argument or whatever your written conclusion is.
Nicole Elder Dyer (15m 27s):
Then it’s a good idea to just send a succinct request that mentions how they’re related to the ancestor in the report because they may not know that and then where you’re going to be Publishing it or sharing it so that they can understand how their name or their match information will be used. And when I sent out a bunch of messages to get permission from matches, I had not messaged some of them before to establish how they were connected to the test taker. And so some of them didn’t even know that Louis Thorpe was their ancestor. And so I learned that I needed to tell them you descend from Louis Thorpe through this side of your family and just kind of briefly explain their line and then ask them for permission because then they’ll be more clear on exactly what I need and what I’m doing.
Nicole Elder Dyer (16m 20s):
I also tell them that I can share the report with them too so they can see it. Just so that you know about one third of the matches I contacted, responded to in my first message and gave permission. Some did say they only wanted their initials to be used and then I sent additional messages and reminders and another one third responded after that I just said something quickly like I’m not sure if you got my first message, so I’m sending another to see if you have thought about my request. Some said they had forgotten, others said they didn’t get it because they hadn’t logged in recently to Ancestry. I actually got really good response rates at 23 and me and my heritage and one, one person I really wanted to use, I had to send him four messages before he responded and he just said he’d been busy and sick.
Nicole Elder Dyer (17m 8s):
So he finally got back to me. There was one person who was kind of questioning if you could even use D N A for a research case this far back in time. And so I sent him my report and he was impressed. And so that was a privatized or anonymized version of the draft so that they could just see what it would be like if their name was included in it. And so that helped him to say, oh yeah, sure you can use me in your report. So that was kinda my experience with asking for permission, but if you do ask for permission and some of them don’t respond, you can still use them, you just need to anonymize them.
Nicole Elder Dyer (17m 48s):
And anonymizing living people is not too difficult. You just need to remove their name and any identifying information. So initials you wouldn’t want to use because people can still be identified by that and you’d wanna remove sometimes their parents’ names. If the parents are still living their birth and residence information, just any identifying information, you just remove that and you give them a pseudonym like descendant A or Jane’s descendant number two or test taker three. And after you anonymize the information about them, then you can use them in your report. One thing I do like to do is make sure to still say what the gender of the individual is so that you can still use X D A inheritance patterns and matrilineal and patrilineal descent that can still be visible in your dissent diagrams.
2 (18m 42s):
That is such a great tip. And I’m just looking at the image in the book where you’ve done that and said Jenning’s daughter and then David eight, David five, I really like when you anonymize it to use the ancestor’s name at the bottom for the DNA match because that just makes a little bit clearer than like match one or match two. So let’s move on to safeguards against separation. And this is something that Genealogy standards counsels us to do. And this is so that when we are sharing our report and all the documentation that goes with it in the form of footnotes, it doesn’t get separated. So someone would not take one page and just post one page without all the surrounding pages that give context to your your argument.
2 (19m 27s):
So one way you want to do this is to make sure your citations are footnotes on each page. So even if just one page is posted, they still have all the citations for that page, then they’ll be able to see exactly how you got the information. And then another good safeguard is to have a footer in your document with the page number and the total number of pages so that if people are reading that one page they’ll realize that, oh, there are 20 other pages that go with this. And so you may also want to include a header that includes your name and email address, so future readers of the report will know who to contact for the rest of the document. And you may also want to add a copyright notice to your report along with contact information and then people can reach out to you about getting permission to use excerpts from your document and whatever they’re doing.
2 (20m 17s):
So to prepare your document for sharing, you want to save it as a pdf and this makes it easy for anyone to read it because almost everyone has the correct software to view a a PDF file. They can view it on their mobile device, a tablet, a computer, and it’s more difficult for others to read a Word document. So saving it as PDF also makes it harder for others to edit the document which you hold the copyright to and others should not be editing it without your permission. So it’s very easy in your word processing program in Word, you simply click file save as and then change the file type to pdf. And if you’re using Google Docs, it’s very similar, you just click file download and then PDF document.
2 (21m 3s):
And if you have two separate files that you need to merge into one PDF such as a report and a file including record attachments, then you might have to use a PDF editor to help with that or you could just have them as two separate PDFs.
Nicole Elder Dyer (21m 18s):
Great. Now that you have a PDF ready with your DNA report and you want to share it, how should you post it? One really simple option is just adding it as a document in your public member tree@ancestry.com or adding it as a document in the Family Search family tree. I really like putting it in family search because this is a collaborative tree and it makes it easier for others to find it because there’s hopefully just one profile for each person. So you can just find your relative in the tree and upload the PDF to the memories section and family search and then descendants of your person will be able to see what you found. Also, if you have a blog or a personal website, that’s another great place to find it there because it increases the chances of those searching Google for their ancestors’ names will be able to find it.
2 (22m 5s):
What if you have reached a conclusion that you’re ready to prove? Well then it’s time to write a proof argument. And this is typically the kind of proof we need to write when including DNA evidence proof arguments are typically longer and include a lot of indirect evidence. DNA evidence is almost always indirect and must be correlated with documentary evidence. So we have three different types of proofs, proof statements, proof summaries and proof arguments. Proof statements are simple phrases that state a genealogical fact and in order to prove something in just one statement, you should be able to provide a footnote with one or two citations as documentation for the statement and the information should not have any conflicts in it.
2 (22m 48s):
Sometimes we can use DNA evidence in a proof statement if a relationship is very obvious such as an autosomal DNA match between a mother and a child, proof summaries are used when we have a genealogical fact that requires more explanation than just one statement. You might need to have a bulleted list of evidence, an explanation of conflicting evidence that’s easily resolved or two or three paragraphs of explanation. And D N a evidence can be used in a proof summary. An example of this would be when why D N A results are used and show a close genetic distance between two men whose relationship can also be proven with documentary research.
2 (23m 30s):
And then finally we have a proof argument. These are longer than proof summaries and these are four complex cases that include a large body of evidence. Often our proof arguments will have multiple pieces of conflicting information that are not easily resolved or where there were multiple hypotheses and those had to be disproved. Within your proof argument, you’ll probably also have proof summaries and proof statements that help build the case. And D N A evidence and a proof argument may include many test takers and evaluation of several types of dna. So a really good resource to learn more about writing proof arguments and types of proofs is chapter seven in Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas w Jones.
Nicole Elder Dyer (24m 17s):
So now that you’re ready to write a proof argument, you need to think about how to organize it. What’s great about researching in phases is that you can often reuse a lot of the writing and tables you’ve already created in your reports. And so you can kinda gather those and outline how you want to use each topic that you’ve already researched and you can work on arranging your evidence logically and here are some different ways you might want to do that. So the first one is documentary evidence first and then DNA evidence second. And this is how a lot of proof arguments with DNA have been written. If you read the National Genealogical Society quarterly, you’ll see that many do it this way.
Nicole Elder Dyer (25m 0s):
To follow this model, you’ll start with an introduction that presents your research question, and then after that you’ll have each piece of documentary evidence for the first half of the article. Then you will have the DNA evidence that is used to kind of support the conclusion that you came to in the first half about the documentary research. And so then the DNA section will often talk about DNA n inheritance and the methodology used. Then introducing the test takers and how they descend from the research subject. And then the DNA analysis showing how everyone’s related to each other, how much DNA n a they share, whether or not there’s triangulated segments.
Nicole Elder Dyer (25m 40s):
Some articles just use total amounts of shared DNA n a and not triangulation. And then following all of that is a conclusion that sums up the evidence in both documentary and DNA research.
2 (25m 53s):
I really like that approach of putting forth all the documentary evidence and then the DNA evidence, but in some cases it really is better to weave your DNA N evidence and your documentary evidence back and forth. And so we have a couple of examples that are really great. Karen Stanbury wrote an article for the National Genealogy Society quarterly and it’s titled Rafael Ariaga, a Mexican father in Michigan. Autosomal DNA helps identify paternity, and this is the only case study in that journal that deals with an unknown parent of a test taker. So the test taker Joanne was adopted by her mother’s sister and no record named the father. And so after a short introduction, Karen discusses what types of DNA are applicable to the research question.
2 (26m 39s):
And then she reads DNA findings with documentary evidence throughout the article. And that’s really a good example just to see how you can take a case that’s difficult like that and then go back and forth. And another article is Jill Morell’s article DNA helps identify Molly first Lancor Morell’s father, which was an unknown grandfather case and that followed an organizational structure similar to Karen’s. So she has five paragraphs of background information and then the rest of the article has the DNA evidence interwoven with documentary evidence. And so you might want to think about what makes sense with your DNA case study and if you want to weave it back and forth or begin it with documentary evidence.
Nicole Elder Dyer (27m 25s):
Another way to organize is to present first the DNA evidence and then the documentary evidence. And this might seem a little backwards, but it works for some cases. One of them is from B Daryl Jackson. His article in the quarterly is called George Craig of Howard County, Missouri Genetic and Documentary Evidence of His Ancestry. And he presents Y D N evidence at the very beginning and uses that to suggest a common ancestor between the test takers and a significant Y D N A match that was supposedly within a close number of generations. Then he uses that identified ancestor who was born in 17 hundreds to then do DESCENDENCY research and showing how he did the descendency research a little bit, but then finding this candidate.
Nicole Elder Dyer (28m 13s):
Then he presented all of this documentary evidence of the candidate that he found and how this new candidate’s timeline ended when the research subject’s timeline began in a new location, kind of showed how it was all tied together. So it was interesting to see the Y D N A results up front that then set the stage for the documentary research that followed. So which type of organizational structure you use is up to you. It should build the case logically and not presenting research in the order it was found, but the best way that will help the reader to understand the evidence. That’s from standard 61 of Genealogy standards, which talks about putting it in a logical order.
2 (28m 58s):
I love that thought of logical order. And often when we are writing, we just get things down and then we move sections all around because maybe the first way we wrote it isn’t as logical or doesn’t make as much sense. And so that’s why we love word processing programs, right? So we don’t have to retype something, we just move it well in a DNA proof argument. We have to have some diagrams and tables. One of the first things you’ll want to have is a diagram showing the test takers descent from the common ancestor. And it’s so important for the reader to be able to visualize this. Sure, you can write it all out in a narrative, but having a diagram is the simplest and the easiest way to have someone else understand what you’re talking about.
2 (29m 41s):
So there’s some different diagrams you might want to use. You might want to use lines of dissent from a common ancestral couple lineage of a single tester to the research subject, hypothesized relationships to the research subject, pedigree of a test taker, pedigree of a DNA match or triangulated matches showing bars with overlapping segments. So there are a lot of different things and each case will be different what you need to present. And then we also want to use some tables, and this is how we can show the amount of shared cent Morgans the expected amounts of shared dna, triangulation of segments and other numerical data.
2 (30m 22s):
And this really is the best way to present this in a table or a figure. And so some of the things that we commonly would do tables for would be the total shared center Morgan that base testers share with each other. Shared segments among testers, the total shared center Morgans and proposed relationships with between testers, triangulated segments, tree completeness of testers or Y SST R values of testers. So again, it will differ depending on your case study, but you’ll really want to consider having some really good tables as well as some good diagrams to help illustrate your DNA evidence.
Nicole Elder Dyer (31m 1s):
So important to have those figures and tables well after you’ve written your proof argument, it’ll be good to compare what you have against the Genealogy standards, especially the DNA standards. Those ones are in standards 51 through 57, and it’s important to see if you’ve addressed all the factors relevant to DNA N analysis that can affect your conclusion. Standard 53 is about having enough matches and test takers. It’s good to consider do you have enough so that you have ruled out of their hypotheses? If not, maybe you need to have some more targeted testing. Standard 54 is about sufficient verifiable data. This is the challenging one, but it allows readers to review the DNA match data for themselves.
Nicole Elder Dyer (31m 44s):
Usually this means transferring some of the DNA N test acres and matches to JED match, although some cases that have been published in the NGS Q have used matches where only the editors could see them and the author shares the login to the database that they’re using with the editors. So then they can verify that the matches are accurate and then the public can trust that the editors have vetted that information. But then it’s good to have at least a few matches in JED match so that people can review that. There’s other standards in the booklet of Genealogy standards that are outside of those D N A standards that you need to meet as well.
Nicole Elder Dyer (32m 27s):
Like for example, standard two about specificity requires that each parent child link have documentation. So that means we need to have some kind of source citation for each of the parent child Links in our diagrams. This can be done just below the diagram or maybe you can copy and paste your citation into an ancestry public member tree for readers to view there if there isn’t space in the journal. But if you’re just creating your own proof argument to Publish on your website, you can make it as long as you want. If you don’t have a space limitation, I think it’s best to go ahead and put those source citations right below the diagram so that people can see you’ve done that.
Nicole Elder Dyer (33m 7s):
And I think it’s important for people to see that there is some documentation for each of those parent-child Links.
2 (33m 13s):
All right, that’s great to think about meeting standards, which we always wanna do in all of our work. Now, when you are all done with your proof argument, then you want to consider Publishing that. And this is a valuable way to Publish your conclusions and become a better writer. And to just preserve your research. We have mentioned the National Genealogical Society quarterly repeatedly, but there are other journals. There’s the American Genealogist, the New England, new England Historical and Genealogical Register, all accept case studies and they’re also local level genealogical journals that accept case studies as well. And so if you are getting ready to submit, you might want to consider which one would your case study fit best with?
2 (33m 55s):
And it’s a good idea to read several articles that are in those journals and review their submission guidelines before submitting. So what are some of the benefits? This sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it, to get ready to Publish, but one of the things that you will get is feedback, compare review, and you will for sure improve your writing skills and they will get validation that someone who is an expert in the field has reviewed your work and is going to Publish it. Another benefit is sharing your methodology and your strategies because everyone can learn from how you solved your case. So some of the challenges of submitting a DNA article to a peer-reviewed journal include contacting living test takers for permission.
2 (34m 45s):
You might have to spend some additional money on targeted testing to eliminate other hypotheses and it will take extra time and maybe you will disagree with some of the feedback you get from the editor or peer reviewer, which can be a challenge. and that also you have to get your case study down into the page limit. And so some of the journals aim for less than 20 pages, and that can be difficult if you are using a lot of DNA testers. Documentation for parent child Links alone could take up those 20 pages. So luckily the authors and editors have come up with creative space saving ideas like citing an attachment on the website or an author created Ancestry family tree.
Nicole Elder Dyer (35m 24s):
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Nicole Elder Dyer (36m 8s):
You can even save it directly to your ancestry Tree For. listeners of this podcast, newspapers.com is offering new subscribers, 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription. so you can start exploring today. Just, use the code FamilyLocket at checkout.
2 (36m 23s):
All right, let’s move on to talking about Productivity. After you finish a big research project, whether it’s a report or a case study and you’ve submitted it, it’s really good idea to step back and think about Productivity. We all have limited amount of time and if we’re trying to accomplish more, then we really want to improve our Productivity. We use an online time tracker, toggle.com to track our time and it’s always fun every week to get the report and see how much time I spent on something like email or creating new presentations or my own DNA research can just kind of help you decide where your time is going.
2 (37m 5s):
So it’s really great to track your time with whatever tool you are using. And then as we have talked about a lot, we like a lot of the things that are taught in David Allen’s book, getting Things Done. He has so many good ideas. And one of the things that I have really incorporated is to track all of this input, which are to-do items, your ideas, inbox emails in one place that you review frequently and getting all of these out of your head and to like just one list can help you focus better. And then you can take those lists and you can make your plan for what you need to do.
2 (37m 46s):
If you track your to-do items in a notebook that you never look at, it’s not going to help. And so you need to have your list somewhere that you review often. David Allen recommends you do a weekly review to go over your list of items to do, and I love doing this. So sometimes I will take an item off of my to-do list and put it in a someday later category because I realize I just don’t wanna do that right now, but it’s such a good idea, I don’t wanna lose it. And then you can also accomplish or order your tasks by where you can accomplish them. you know, there’s tasks we can only do at the computer tasks that we can do on the phone. Maybe it’s reading that we could have, you know, a list of things we want to read.
2 (38m 27s):
And then we look at our list and we choose a next action from our list based on the context, the time available and energy. And if you want to know more, I have a lot of articles on FamilyLocket about getting things done and how to incorporate that into your Genealogy work,
Nicole Elder Dyer (38m 44s):
That’s great. you know, I always want to get more efficient with my research. Another thing that can really help you is getting more education, especially in the field of DNA and using DNA evidence with Genealogy. There are a lot of books, courses, institutes, so many learning opportunities that can help you. One thing to think about is that there are often new D N A tools introduced in the field and the genetic Genealogy field is always changing rapidly. And so, so as these new tools are introduced and older tools are updated, it’s good to try and learn the changes and learn the new tools just in case that tool can make you more efficient and help you with your research.
Nicole Elder Dyer (39m 29s):
A lot of these tools have user groups on Facebook that you can ask questions and learn from other users, so that can be really helpful. One great place that I’ve learned a lot about using DNA evidence is Institute courses. And there are several institutes that often have intermediate and advanced genetic Genealogy courses like the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and the Institute of Genealogy and Historical research, I G H R and the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh Grip. There’s another Institute that focuses on federal records of the United States, the genealogical Institute on federal records. So they don’t usually have classes on D N A, but if you need to use federal records, that one is great.
Nicole Elder Dyer (40m 14s):
So these courses can really help you learn from people who have successfully used DNA evidence and also learn about new tools so they can be really useful.
2 (40m 24s):
I think the very first Institute I took was an advanced DNA Institute from Karen Stanbury. and that was so, it was such a fun way to get started with DNA journey. And I look back and I think, oh, we have come so far in the genetic Genealogy world with what we are teaching in our methodologies and tools. It’s amazing. But if you’re just getting started out, you may want to use a book and I, the very first book I read on DNA was Blaine Bet Ander and Debbie Parker. Wayne’s book, genetic Genealogy and Practice, and it’s a workbook, it is a few years old now, it’s 2016. But the basic principles about how DNA work have not changed.
2 (41m 4s):
And so that’s a great stepping stone. And then also Blaine Bender’s book, the family tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy is a wonderful foundational piece, illustrated and color, easy to understand, really great book. We highly recommend that. And then of course we talk a lot about Genealogy standards, so you’ll probably wanna have a copy on your bookshelf to refer to, and that’s published by the board for certification of Genealogist and the latest edition, you’ll want the latest edition, which has the DNA standards added. And then there are other great books out there about dna. so I’d highly recommend just to get a library of these good books that can help you.
2 (41m 44s):
Then we also have articles and reading case studies about how people have solved their research questions with DNA. Evidence is a great way to learn. And the National Genealogical Society Quarterly has several articles that use DNA and you can go to the National Genealogy Society website and get a list of all the different articles that are there. And then we’ve also written about different articles and give you some specific ideas on our website. Then there’s also webinars and Legacy family tree webinars has so many webinars specifically on DNA evidence, and so that’s a great opportunity to learn.
2 (42m 30s):
And they’re also how to videos on YouTube and you can search just for specific DNA tools to get helpful videos for learning how to do just about anything.
Nicole Elder Dyer (42m 41s):
You know, one of the first places I learned about using DNA evidence was at a conference. And often you’ll go to a Genealogy conference that will have a track dedicated to genetic Genealogy or an entire day dedicated to it. And there’s even some conferences that are completely focused on genetic Genealogy. Some of the ones we like are National Genealogical Society Conference, Roots Tech, Institute for Genetic Genealogy I four Gigi, Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree, and there’s so many more. Even last year we went to one called the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference, which was awesome. There are so many regional and local level conferences and workshops and seminars that can help you dive into using DNA evidence and it’s helpful to attend those.
Nicole Elder Dyer (43m 29s):
Another place that I often use for information about DNA n evidence are the testing company help centers. Usually DNA testing company websites will have a learning center or a help center that can help answer questions about their specific tools and their reports and things that you’re looking at and kind of helping you understand them. Also, there are some online courses that can help you with learning about D evidence. The National Genealogical Society offers several genealogical study courses. Two of them are specifically focused on D N A and there’s also the d n adoption website. If you’re doing a lot of research about unknown parentage or adoption, that can be really helpful.
Nicole Elder Dyer (44m 11s):
And it also has a lot of great resources just for anyone using d n evidence. And there’s some other academic institutions that offer online courses like the University of Strat Cloud and Excelsior College and others. Lastly, you can keep up on news and updates and how-to tutorials from reading blogs. And I follow a lot of blogs using Feedly, which helps me kind of see all the new blog posts at once. And it’s really helpful to see how people are using D N A tools in their own research to see announcements from testing companies third party tools, and also listening to other Podcasts, so the Genealogy guys, Genealogy Gems, family tree Magazine, extreme Jeans, cutoff jeans, which is about unknown parentage, adoptee research.
Nicole Elder Dyer (45m 4s):
And of course we have our online course, Research Like a Pro. Obviously you’re listening to our podcast. So there are so many ways to learn about using DNA and how to incorporate that with your Genealogy. So hopefully one of these methods can help you increase your learning and and meet your goals.
2 (45m 23s):
Well, great. Thanks for taking us through all those different opportunities. So many ways to learn. And you know, the very best way to learn is just to dive in and start using DNA with your Genealogy. Well, let’s finish up this chapter and this is the last chapter in our book. So your task for this chapter, update Your family tree software and continue with your research. Will you continue with another phase of research in this research question or choose a new one? Then share your DNA report whether privately or publicly, and be sure to get permission or privatized before publicly sharing. Write a proof argument, consider submitting your work to a journal, set goals for improving your Productivity, and then create a DNA education plan.
2 (46m 7s):
How will you keep up with the changes in the field? How will you improve your skills and understanding? So we hope that everyone will focus on continuing education and practicing using DNA so that you can use it with confidence in working with your Genealogy and helping you make progress whether you’re Confirming ancestors or whether you are discovering new ancestors using dna.
Nicole Elder Dyer (46m 32s):
Well, that’s the last chapter of Research Like a Pro with DNA, and we hope you’ve enjoyed this series. Going through the book at the end of the book, we have several appendices including supplemental material and work samples. We have templates for locality guides, the d n Airtable base, a research report template and so forth, and to view our work samples. Some of those are posted online, so if you have the book, you can find the URL for that. And we also have a list of sources used and some of our proof arguments and research reports are actually included right within the appendix. And so if you check out appendix C, you’ll see Diana’s research report about discovering the father of Jack Green Schaffer.
Nicole Elder Dyer (47m 16s):
Then you’ll also see my proof argument about discovering the father of Bari Tharp Dyer. We also have a research report from Robin Wirthlin about identifying the the biological parents of Fern Tischer. So you can read those work samples in the back of our book. And there’s also a glossary for any words that you might need defined. So we hope that if you don’t have a copy of Research Like, a Pro with DNA, you’ll purchase one. There’s print or Kindle versions available at Amazon, and we hope that you find it useful.
2 (47m 55s):
All right, well, thanks everyone for listening. We hope you have a great week and we hope you are starting to use D N A and your research. So we’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye
Nicole Elder Dyer (48m 5s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on amazon.com and other book sellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each of you and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.
Links
How to Write and Publish a Proof Argument with DNA Evidence – https://familylocket.com/how-to-write-and-publish-a-proof-argument-with-dna-evidence/
How to Prepare DNA Research Reports for Sharing – https://familylocket.com/how-to-prepare-dna-research-reports-for-sharing/
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Research Like a Pro Resources
Airtable Research Logs Quick Reference – by Nicole Dyer – https://familylocket.com/product/airtable-research-logs-for-genealogy-quick-reference/
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com – https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d
Research Like a Pro Webinar Series 2023 – monthly case study webinars including documentary evidence and many with DNA evidence – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-webinar-series-2023/
Research Like a Pro eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/
RLP Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/
Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources
Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin – https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx
Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/
RLP with DNA Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/
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