Writing and Publishing Research

Graduate Academy, Mommsenstraße 7, Seminar room 02 (ground floor)

The workshop addresses PhD students in their first years and covers essentially the following four areas:

Scientific writing and language skills

To gain more experience in scientific writing the course aims to build up writing skills running through three interactive levels: common pitfalls in written English and general punctuation will be discussed, second the ABC system (accuracy, brevity, clarity) of academic writing will be introduced, third advanced writing tools will be explained in order to develop a more fluent and activated form of writing looking at sentence clarity, coherence, transitions and emphasis.

This session includes numerous practical exercises. Special attention will be drawn to language skills.

Structure and content of a publication

The overall structure and content of a publication will be highlighted. In an extensive practical session the students are asked to work on and redraft pieces of their own writing, mainly the abstract and the introduction, and thereby apply their newly gained knowledge in scientific writing. Here they are asked to work in groups and critically evaluate other peoples writing, too.

The process of publication

Usually we elaborate on questions such as: How should I go about writing a paper? What is a zero draft? How many drafts do I have to write? How do I target my writing for a particular journal? Who should actually and legally read my paper? How do I handle co-authorship? How do I obey ethic rules in publishing? What are the views and powers of the editor?

Many more similar questions come up when we discuss the process of publication. The students will run through the course of events considering this process. Different aspects will be exhibited and time will be especially allocated to exchange experiences.

Organization and motivation

This topic naturally comes up in all sessions. How do I start the writing process and how do I actually manage to keep going? How do I work best and where? What happens when I am seriously stuck?

A final session will be used to wrap up these questions and to give some potential advice on self-management.

The overall aim of this workshop is to help doctoral candidates to gain practice and confidence in their own writing on whichever level they may be, but most importantly to motivate them to start or to keep writing, whatever the odds are.