Scientific Writing for Advanced Students

We will spend a couple of very intensive days together, where we will use your own paper in progress, interspersed with other exercises, such as writing an abstract for a Nature paper, and lots of discussion to help you detect your own weaknesses and work on them in a peer review approach. Together we will identify what makes a paper good and how to structure it properly. We will think about the differences between scientific language compared to other forms of writing (with a mind on mistakes non-native speakers commonly make), as well as many important details such as citing literature, picking the right journal, cover letters and dealing with reviewers etc. Our aim is to have a solid draft of your paper by the end of the course meaning we write a section a day, so the more mature your draft is when you bring it to the course the better a foundation we have to work on.

Requirements: This is an advanced course, we expect you to have taken a basic writing course before. Good English language skills are a requirement. We will NOT help you analyze your data. Please bring a fully analyzed dataset including what you think are going to be your main figures and tables (no more than 3 each). Please send us an outline (not a draft) of your paper, with a brief summary for each of the major sections introduction, methods, results and discussion in bullet points latest one week before the course. Bring a draft – the more advanced the better – with you. We’ll be sending more information and reading material more shortly before the course.

Find more info about us here: Resource Fluctuations and Animal Movement + Computational Ecology