Guest Post: Scientific Manuscript Writing Workshop—An Experience Worth Remembering!

[This post is from Edith Wakida, research manager, Mbarara University of Science and Technology College of Medicine, Uganda. Thank you! –Barbara]

I recently won an AuthorAID grant to conduct training on scientific manuscript writing at my institution. I had organized a similar workshop before, but unfortunately it did not go as I imagined, so I had a gap I desired to close. I reflected on what could have been wrong and realized I had not carefully selected the participants. I had made an open invitation combining experienced and junior researchers, so the workshop helped only some of the participants. When I wrote the proposal to AuthorAID, I decided to focus on junior researchers only.

On 15–17 January 2014, a workshop was held for junior researchers. The facilitator (Dr. Achilles Katamba, an epidemiologist from Makerere University) had been told the nature of participants, and he planned accordingly. Before he started the training, he asked the participants about their level in manuscript writing. The exercise enabled him to understand and capture the audience.

The training was very fruitful; participants were eager to learn and did not want the 3 days to end! The facilitator was excellent in content delivery, taking care of everybody’s needs; he was very knowledgeable and generous with information. At the end of the training, participants including myself had draft manuscripts!

This to me was a serious achievement because I have organized very many capacity building workshops and not felt as successful as with this training. I can confidently say that this was the best training I have organized so far and that I also benefited as a participant.

I would like to encourage other research managers and administrators to do more than administration work. We need to use these workshops we coordinate as opportunities for us to develop more skills. Today we may be rapporteurs, but tomorrow, we can be the facilitators or consultants we are inviting to the workshops! Just think about that.