For More of the Shoemaker's Children

Greetings again. Last week I mentioned the saying “The shoemaker’s children go barefoot.” And I indicated that young researchers at my own university often lack training in scientific writing. I then described a 2-day workshop I had just given to a research group here.

This week I “provided more shoes”. The graduate student organization at our college of medicine had asked me to give a 1-hour seminar on how to approach writing a scientific paper. Therefore at noon this Friday, while the graduate students ate pizza, I gave them a presentation.

One hour is a short time to discuss writing a scientific paper. But I tried to provide useful advice. My presentation, titled “Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers: Ways to Decrease Stress and Increase Success”, consisted mainly of 50 tips. Each attendee received a handout containing the tips. In case you’d like the handout, I’ve added it to the AuthorAID Resource Library.

Perhaps you too can base a research-writing seminar on this handout. You can discuss all the tips or only some of them. If you have such a seminar, I hope you’ll let me know.

By the way, at the end of my seminar I mentioned a new video that might interest graduate students and others. This video, which is available online, is based on On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research, which I discussed in an earlier blog post. Whether you view this video yourself or discuss it in a group, it can be a useful resource.