AuthorAID News

Hello again. This week I’m pleased to introduce more resources on publication ethics. These resources come from publishers of journals.

Some of these publishers are publishing companies, and others are professional organizations for which journal publishing is one activity. A British researcher mentioned these resources in a post to the e-mail discussion list of the World Association of Medical Editors.

Each of these resources is designed to help one or more of the …

Greetings! I’m pleased to announce the first set of AuthorAID small grants in 2012.

First, a background: AuthorAID introduced small grants last year. There were two types of grants: the travel grant and workshop grant. Three researchers received the travel grant to present their work at international conferences, and four people received the workshop grant to fund an AuthorAID workshop at their institution.

This year, we are going to award these small grants again. …

The title of a paper should have the fewest possible words that adequately indicate the contents. Extra phrases such as "a study of" or "observations on" usually should not be included.

Greetings again. I hope you had a good week.

As some may recall, the most recent Resource of the Week was a resource useful in learning to paraphrase. The current blog post will describe an approach helpful in paraphrasing (that is, in using one’s own words to state what others said).

I learned this approach …

Hello again. This week I learned of another resource on avoiding plagiarism. It includes guidance on paraphrasing (that is, on using one’s own words to present what others said).

This resource is titled “Avoiding Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism, and Other Questionable Writing Practices: A Guide to Ethical Writing”. It’s available in HTML and

One way to make writing more concise is to delete needless words. For example, instead of writing "The dye was red in color," just write "The dye was red."

Greetings again. And special wishes to readers (for example, in China and Vietnam) who are celebrating the start of the Year of the Dragon.

In Chinese culture, the dragon is a symbol of good luck. It also represents power, strength, and excellence. Sounds like a good year for research writing!

I hope this semester will be a good one for writing—including for students here at Texas A&M University who are taking the course Biology of Mammalian Cells and …

Hello again. This week I’m featuring a resource on resources.

An AuthorAID community member mentioned this resource last week. Its title is "Authorship Skills Web-Bibliography".

This web-bibliography is a 42-slide PowerPoint presentation. Each main slide describes an online resource relating to research publication and contains a link to it.

Among topics of the resources are

• avoiding plagiarism
• citing …

Beware of translating your native language directly into English. Sometimes, the translation may be awkward. If in doubt, seek a second opinion from a colleague with strong English language-ability.

[Note: This guest post is from Dr. Haseeb Md. Irfanullah. Thank you, Haseeb! —Barbara]

On 28 and 29 December—the last 2 working days of 2011 in Bangladesh—26 Bangladeshi researchers came together in the seminar room of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences in Dhaka to take part in a training program supported by AuthorAID/INASP. The participants, guest speakers, and facilitator managed to touch on and discuss different aspects of research presentation and research paper …