Scientific Writing - 2-day workshop

Justin Mullins and Mark Buchanan
Target group: Early Career Researchers
Date: April 9 and 10, 2025
Time:10:00 - 18:00
Please note that the start time is one hour later than usual.
This adjustment accommodates participants commuting from other cities where QF or TerraQ partner institutions are located, such as Braunschweig or Bremen, allowing for a more comfortable and timely arrival

Location: AEI Seminar room A113 (Appelstraße 11a, 30167 Hannover) in Gebäude 3403
The maximum number of participants is 20.

Registration
Please complete your registration here.

Description

Our scientific writing workshop teaches the skills for producing scientific papers of the highest quality. A main focus of the course is the structure of good communication. So the workshop includes sessions on the structure of sentences, of paragraphs, abstracts and entire papers.
AI is changing the way scientists think about writing and, indeed, about the process of science. Our workshop examines this change, the currently available tools and how (and how not) to use them. This is a rapidly changing area, so our thinking is evolving too.
We explain how journals choose the papers they publish, we discuss editing, and group editing. We also have a wide range of thought-provoking exercises allowing participants to practice the skills we teach and play with the AI assistance we introduce.
One of the most valuable aspects of the course is the one-to-one feedback we give to each participant. Ahead of the workshop, we ask each attendee to write an abstract about their work. We then prepare detailed line-by-line feedback that we give to each student during the second day.
This allows us to show each participant how to apply the ideas we teach to their own work. Participants at previous workshops tell us this is extremely valuable.

There is an exercise.
Participants are asked to complete an abstract writing exercise ahead of time and submit it by uploading it here by March 21, 2025. The workshop includes detailed one-to-one feedback on this work with an experienced instructor. This is also an opportunity to discuss any other individual questions and challenges.

Proposed Schedule

Day I
10:00 Introduction
10:15 Diary of a paper
10:45 Sentences I
12:00 Coffee
12:15 Titles and abstracts
13:30 Lunch
14:30 Tractors
15:00 Paragraphs—purpose and structure
16:00 Coffee
16:15 Mathematical papers
16:45 Using AI in scientific writing
17:30 Science & the media
18:00 End of Day I

Day II
10:00 Types of scientific paper and their structure
10:30 One-to-one consultations and writing exercise
11:30 Coffee
11:45 Breaking the mould
12:00 One-to-one consultations and writing exercise (cont’d)
13:00 Graphs and figures
13:30 Lunch
14:30 The process of writing
15:00 Sentences II
16:00 Coffee
16:15 References and acknowledgements
16:45 Group editing exercise
17:45 Concluding remarks
18:00 Workshop ends