Guest Post: From the Intensive Course in Research Writing
[This post is from Dr. Haroon Mohamed Haniffa, who received the AuthorAID grant to attend the Texas A&M University Intensive Course in Research Writing. Thank you, Dr. Haroon! —Barbara]
An important part of the scientific process is the reporting of new results in scientific journals to disseminate that information to the larger community of scientists and the public. A 4-week intensive course in research writing was held at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Texas A&M University, USA, from 27 June to 22 July 2011.
Thirteen participants, including six Texas A&M graduate students, attended the course. The main objective of this course was to help the participants improve their scientific writing skills and their chances of getting papers published in international scientific journals. Important topics covered were
- Writing and editing scientific papers, progress reports, and grant proposals
- Learning about use and misuse of English in scientific documents
- Avoiding breaches of copyright
- Learning about plagiarism and how to avoid it
- Writing for public relations
- Identifying clichés and avoiding jargon and dangling participles in scientific documents
- Delivering lectures effectively
This course gave me a chance to discuss and put into practice ideas about writing, editing, and proofreading of my own papers with the help and guidance of Dr. Barbara Gastel, Dr. Susan E. Aiello, and Dr. Roberto Tuda Rivas. Further, Dr. Barbara’s graduate assistants also helped me to revise my final manuscripts.
This 4-week intensive course gave me a great opportunity for enhancing research writing in my own professional career. I am sure that I will share the knowledge and the hands-on learning experiences that I acquired from this course with my colleagues in Sri Lanka.