Course: Scientific Writing

Overview:

This course guides participants through the process of writing the first draft of their manuscript. Morning sessions focus on structuring each article section, with plenty of practical pointers and opportunities to apply the ideas to the researchers’ own work. Afternoons are dedicated to drafting each section and all participants have a one-to-one session with the workshop facilitator at the end of the week to discuss possibilities for improvement.

Course Content:

This course takes participants through the manuscript section by section.

• Articulating your key message and identifying your story
• Writing an appealing abstract
• The Introduction: Providing a rationale for the research and arousing interest
• Methods and Results: Describing your methods and guiding readers through your findings
• The Discussion: Putting your findings in context and discussing their implications

Method:

Workshop materials are based on a corpus analysis approach that reveals critical steps commonly included in each article section. Participants learn to analyse sections from their own field for such steps, to identify the associated key phrases and to critically evaluate the way in which information is presented. This enables them to create a skeleton structure for their own work, which can be used to streamline the writing process.

Date and Time Schedule:

The course will take place online via Zoom every day from Monday 25th November to Thursday 29th November, from 09:00-12:15. You will be asked to complete a writing task every afternoon from Monday to Thursday. Please allow sufficient time for this in your planning. You should not plan to perform time-consuming experiments in the lab during this week. On the morning of Friday 30th November, you will be allocated an individual appointment of 30 minutes between 09:00 and 12:15 with the lecturer.

Contact monika.lam@tuebingen.mpg.de for registration details.