Scientific Writing (WS 2008/09)

Aims of the course

When students are confronted with having to write a scientific paper, be it their thesis or later a piece of work for a journal or conference, they are often insecure as to what would be the best way to do this.
Profound knowledge about the rules that are relevant for scientific writing can help avoid many mistakes and promote the project’s success.

This module consists of a detailed lecture, as well as practical exercises.
The following issues are dealt with: 

→ How to adjust your work to a specific target group (audience). 

→ The general structure of a paper with detailed explanations as to the purpose of each element and its realization 
(title, abstract, keywords, introduction, related works, body of the paper, style, fonts and layout, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgements, and tables). 

→ The last part of the lecture deals with the process of publishing a paper: rules for submitting a manuscript, dealing with the reviewers’ comments etc.

Set up

• Maximum numbers of participants is 16.
• Participants will be divided in 4 groups, each consisting of 4 participants.
• During the practical exercises each group will read one paper very carefully and examine the paper according to the aspects mentioned during the preceding lecture.
  This paper can be one that one of the group members wrote.
• In a final discussion the four papers (which all of the participants should have read before the course) will be compared.

Target date

Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Starting: 9 a.m.
Ending: 5 p.m. (maybe having some beers afterwards)
Lecture Hall, BCCN Building, Hansastr. 9a