Write About Science

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The Scientific Paper Seminar

THE Scientific Paper Seminar is a two-day writing workshop exploring the techniques for producing papers of the highest quality for the world's top journals. The workshop examines  the structure of scientific papers, the techniques for presenting clear logical arguments and the skills needed to write and edit concise, emphatic sentences.

Instructors Mark Buchanan and Justin Mullins are writers with more than thirty years' combined experience in science communication. We've created the workshop around a balance of lectures and intensive exercises for the participants, as we believe practice is an essential part of learning.

Your workshop:

SUCCESS in modern science demands intellectual brilliance, hard work and creative inspiration. But the most successful scientists today also know how to communicate their ideas clearly and powerfully in research papers, proposals and presentations.

The workshop includes sessions on the following topics:

    * How high-profile journals such as Nature and Science choose the papers they publish
    * Types of scientific paper and their structures
    * The structure of titles and abstracts
    * How to express complex ideas in clear, emphatic sentences
    * The structure of paragraphs
    * Techniques for constructing arguments
    * Editing skills
    * plus exercises to practice these skills

Before the workshop, we ask participants to complete a scientific writing exercise, focusing on material linked to their own work. This helps attendees to focus on the course objectives in advance and allows us to give detailed individual feedback during the workshop.

Your task (until January 9th):

"Using a piece of research with which you are familiar (it can be your own, but doesn't have to be), write a paragraph of no more than 300 words describing the work for readers in other disciplines. The paragraph should start with a basic introduction of two or three sentences and include a statement of the general problem being addressed. You should follow this with a one-sentence statement of the main conclusions starting 'Here we show' and then finish with two to three sentences putting the main findings in a general context. Provide a title for a scientific paper about the work you describe."

Your instructors:

Mark Buchanan is a physicist and science writer based in Europe. A former editor with the international science journal Nature and also New Scientist, he is the author of three books and numerous articles exploring the ideas of modern physics. His writing focuses on efforts to use novel concepts from physics to understand patterns and dynamics elsewhere, especially in biology or the social sciences. He writes occasionally for the New York Times, and has a monthly column in the journal Nature Physics.
He can be contacted at Mark.Buchanan@WriteAboutScience.com

Justin Mullins is a consultant editor at New Scientist where he has covered everything from quantum computing and cloaking technology to Chernobyl and the International Space Station. He was New Scientist's San Francisco bureau chief during the dotcom boom and later its Boston Editor and Technology Editor. He has taught science writing in various places including the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Contact him at Justin.Mullins@WriteAboutScience.com