Scientific Writing: Towards Organization and Motivation

Course Description: For most, scientific writing is difficult. Doctoral candidates and scientists often struggle with writing journal articles or their theses, while simultaneously completing time-consuming research projects. In addition, the standards for the publication of journal articles are increasing so there is pressure to publish high quality papers.
Unfortunately, doctoral candidates and scientists often do not receive any formal training to improve their scientific writing. Instead, they learn “by doing”, and by making mistakes.
This lack of training is a serious problem. Scientists have the responsibility to communicate their findings to their peers, and writing is the key to communicating scientific results. Scientific findings can only be used effectively if scientists are able to clearly communicate them.
With discipline and commitment, scientific writing is a skill that can be learned and mastered. In this workshop, Andrea Sanchini will work with participants to develop a set of “how-to” strategies for writing journal articles and theses, and for increasing writing productivity.

Learning Outcomes
At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
o Handle the typical challenges associated with scientific writing
o Describe the structure of a scientific article
o Assess sections of an article for clarity
o Create a writing schedule that works for you
o Begin writing part of your next journal article or your thesis
o Use strategies to increase your writing productivity

Teaching Method
This workshop follows a balanced approach, including input presentations provided by the trainer, individual learning phases and group exercises. In addition, hand-outs, checklists and sample articles from the trainer's own experience in scientific writing will be provided.

Preparing for the Workshop
During the workshop, participants can draft part of their current writing project, for example a journal article or a thesis (1 to 2 pages). Therefore, participants are asked to decide in advance which writing task they want to do during the workshop.
Ideally, participants should have started their research project already and be at the stage of writing, in order to take the most advantage from the workshop.

Topics: Day One Topics
o Common challenges and misunderstandings in scientific writing
o How to organize the flow of information
o The sections of a scientific article
o The stages of the writing process
o Different types of writers
o Techniques and software available to increase writing productivity

Day Two Topics
o Clear scientific writing
o Motivational tools to increase writing productivity
o How to reduce procrastination and perfectionism
o Teamwork with co-authors and supervisors

Target Audience: doctoral candidates of Natural, Life and Social Sciences, postdocs

Date:
Please inform yourself about current dates in the service portal under UR internal dates.

Location: SR Theologie, Schwaansche Str. 5

Lecturer: Andrea Sanchini, Berlin

Registration: Online Registration

Participation Fee: 150 € (Members of the Graduate Academy can use their virtual member budget to cover the course fees. The registration for the workshop is binding. Our conditions for participation apply.)