Good Practices in Academic Writing

This workshop is intended for a relatively wide audience of people struggling with research texts on both ends: authors and editors. We know how difficult it is to write – we are struggling with this abstract right now, trying to bring closer to you the content of the whole workshop in just a few words – but you may have noticed that reading can be an even more excruciating affair. Both authors and editors should keep their focus on the reader at all times. After all, why else write?

This short workshop will therefore be organised around two basic issues that put off readers, poor structure and poor narrative, and how to overcome them most effectively. Fortunately, in scientific writing structure is set and easy to master, especially the IMRAD one (sounds familiar?), and you can rely on it to drive the narrative. And narrative or storytelling, as “novel research” suggests, can make your research much more compelling than you think. This does not require special talent, but it does require two emotions: empathy and passion. Empathy for the reader and passion about the subject. Pressure to publish is set to kill them both, but with a few simple guidelines you can rekindle the fire that has always been in you. After all, who does not like a good story?

The workshop will include examples and some individual and/or group work to address specific common mistakes that confuse or put off the reader, which is why the number of participants will be limited. We particularly invite editors and authors who are passionate about science communication to participate and share their views with the rest of us. You will also get small assignments and discuss their results so that we keep the course in an interactive mode as much as possible.