The HINARI Authorship Skills Site

Last week an AuthorAID user told me about a helpful Web site she had found. (Thanks again!) This Web site is the HINARI Authorship Skills site. I agree that this site is very useful.

This Web site contains four items:

• a PowerPoint presentation on how to write a scientific paper
• a “Web bibliography”, with links to online resources on various important topics (for example, publication ethics, writing papers and abstracts, and preparing references)
• some activities for developing authorship skills
• a list of questions to discuss

The PowerPoint presentation on writing scientific papers includes an interesting observation: Authors want to publish more, but readers want to read less. How can one resolve this contradiction?

One way might be to write papers that are informative but concise. (Provide the information, but delete the extra words.) Also, organize papers well, so readers can quickly find the information they want.

As some of you know, HINARI is a program that gives institutions in developing countries free or inexpensive online access to major biomedical and related journals. It was established by the World Health Organization and major publishers. Everyone, including researchers in developed countries, can use the training resources on the HINARI site.

Do you know of other Web sites that might help AuthorAID users? If so, please tell me. I look forward to mentioning additional Web sites in this blog, and I hope to add some of them to the AuthorAID resource library.