Resources from the CMB Writing Course

Greetings again. I hope the Year of the Ox is starting well for you.

Now seems a good time to share some materials from the China Medical Board (CMB) Program in Biomedical Writing and Editing. Here’s the story.

In the mid-1990s, some of us in China and the United States noticed that much good research was being done in China but that little of it was becoming internationally known. We therefore developed a program to teach biomedical writing and editing in China.

In our proposal, we promised that materials developed for the program would be openly available. Thus, I’m now posting on the AuthorAID website the main lesson materials from the CMB writing course. Among topics discussed in these materials are writing journal articles, doing other scientific writing, and using English well.

These materials do have some limitations. By now, some of the content is outdated. Also, a little of the lesson material is not included, as it came from elsewhere and we had permission to use it only in the course itself. And it is best to use the lesson materials with a textbook.

Nevertheless, these materials may be helpful to many in the AuthorAID community. Researchers can use them to teach themselves more about research writing. Also, people wanting to teach research writing can adapt these lessons.

A closing comment: In writing the proposal for the CMB program, we said we hoped it would be a model for similar programs involving more countries and more fields. Now we have AuthorAID!