A Resource on Proposals and One on Plagiarism

Greetings again. I hope you had a good week.

Here in College Station, this week was unusually cold, with a low of 19 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 7 degrees Celsius). On Friday, our university was closed because of ice and snow. I hope you enjoy the accompanying photo of the snow.

These cold days were a good time to stay inside and read. My reading included messages on e-mail discussion lists. Some of the messages introduced resources that can help in research writing.

One message regarded resources on writing and editing grant proposals. By following some links from the message, I found a free online short course on writing proposals, provided by the Foundation Center.

This course is available in English, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. It focuses mainly on applying to private foundations for funds for service projects. However, many of the ideas also pertain to seeking research grants.

Another discussion-list message introduced a video blog post titled “Detecting and Preventing Plagiarism”. This post is by George Lundberg, a prominent medical editor. You can view the video, or you can read the text version of the blog post.

This video blog post reminds us that plagiarism—for example, copying a paragraph from an article online into one’s own article—is wrong. It also identifies resources that editors and authors can use to determine whether plagiarism seems to be present.

I hope that some of you find these resources useful. Wishing you a good week— Barbara