Becoming a scientific writer - putting the why before the how

Aim

The aim of this course is to help publishing scientists develop a more impartial, analytical view of scientific writing, to better understand their readership, and to make them more efficient writers and editors. 

Language

English

For

Mid-career staff; postdocs, 3/4 year predocs or equivalent

Contents

This workshop takes an important qualitative step beyond ‘HOW to do scientific writing’, and provokes publishing scientists to ask ‘WHY do I write it like this?’. This new perspective will inspire publishing scientists to become more effective, more autonomous, and more productive science communicators.

You will:

• Develop a deeper understanding of the structure of scientific papers, with a renewed focus on the purpose of each section and the connections between them
• Gain a global framework to conceptualise the entire publishing process, and the profile of their readership
• Learn how to make the qualitative jump from a passive scientific account to an active scientific argument
• Explore some common problems of language construction that make our writing unclear, and why we are prone to these problems
• Practice some intuitive editing tools to address these problems and explore AI tools that can be used to support the writing

Study commitment

Before the course the trainer will send some reading material and a preparatory task based on a published paper from the participant’s field. 

Entry criteria

This course is for people with some experience doing research, writing and publishing papers - please indicate how you meet this criteria in the registration form.

For any issue regarding attendance before or during the course, please note that you should contact the Intervals team directly by sending an email to intervals@prbb.org.

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