Scientific Writing

General Information

Target group: Doctoral and Ph. D. students at the Faculty of Medicine

Pre-requisites:
Participants should have a sound knowledge of the basics of scientific writing.
They should be interested in reviewing and analysing their writing skills, identifying strengths and weaknesses and further enhancing their skills.

No. of participants: Max. 12

Requirements: Advance task, active participation.

Contents / Aims and Objectives

Accurate, understandable writing is one of the most important academic skills. Writing is a learned skill that takes persistence, training and confidence. In this course, we will start by discussing frequent problems and the typical phases in the writing process. We will then discuss the following questions: requirements for and structure of scientific papers, different types of writing, writing an abstract, figures and tables, the title, publishing the paper, etc. Questions of language and style will be discussed in detail, using examples both from published (or rejected) papers and from examples provided by course participants. We will look at rules and tools for bibliographic references, and, finally, at the effective use of your word-processing programme when preparing longer texts, e. g. doctoral dissertations or other manuscripts.

To prepare for the course, we will be using an online module which will help you to re-evaluate your skills and to identify your particular strengths as well as areas where you need more practice.

Methods

Short presentations, practical exercises, individual feedback and discussion.