School of Life Sciences, Peking University

Summer course:

“Scientific Reading, Writing and Presentation”

（请想报名参加该课学习的同学于7月1日前到116教务办公室登记）

Schedule: Class begins on Aug 4, and ends on Aug 18, 2008

Classroom:

Teacher: Chenjian Li, Associate Professor, Dept. Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, 10021, USA

Course Description:

Scientific reading, writing and presentation are necessary and critical skills for scientists. Reading with a true understanding and a critical view is the basis for a scientist to obtain necessary knowledge and perspectives for research. Scientific writing and oral presentation are necessary for communicating one’s results and ideas to the scientific community, via publications of original research papers, grant proposals or other forms of scholarly exchange.

This course is designed for teaching the skills of scientific reading, writing and presentation. It is divided into three parts: Reading, writing and presentation. The first part, Scientific Reading, is for senior year undergraduate students and freshmen graduate students. The second and third part, Scientific Writing and Presentation, are targeting two groups of audiences: A) the registered senior graduate students or postdoctoral fellows (no more than 10) who actually face the task of writing manuscripts for their research, and B) a general auditing group of undergraduate students, graduate students, or postdoctoral fellows. Group A participants will write actual manuscripts and give slide presentations. These students need to sign in at each class. All students are expected to participate actively in classroom, since this course will be taught in a didactic and interactive way.

The course will have three classes for Scientific Reading, five for Scientific Writing, and two for oral presentation. The group of registered students for Scientific Writing and presentation should obtain written permission and confirmation from their PIs what results they should use to write manuscripts and prepare slide presentations.

Date	List of Classes
4/Aug	Class 1 & 2
6Aug	Class 3 & 4
8/Aug	Class 5
11/Aug	Class 6
13/Aug	Class 7 & 8
15/Aug	Class 9
18/Aug	Class 10

Syllabus:

Scientific Reading:

Class 1:

• What are the different types of scientific literatures?
• The importance of cultivating a diligent reading habit
• The science and scientists as part of the humanity
• The original research literature
• The IMRAD method of scientific research papers
• How to cover a wide range of topics?
• How to search deeply into a particular field?

Home work: Search and find important papers in a particular topic

Class 2:

• How to read a paper by “scanning”?
• How to read a paper with thorough understanding?
• The “scrambled IMRAD” method

Home work: Read an assigned research paper

Class 3:

• Class discussion: the assigned research paper
• How to make and update one’s own literature library from day one?

Homework: construct your own Endnote library

Scientific Writing:

Class 4:

• What is scientific writing?
• When is it time to publish?---the “Least Publishable Unit” question
• The ethics of scientific publishing
• “Publish or perish” vs. “Publish and perish”
• What journals to submit your manuscript?
• Be sure to understand ALL the instructions from a journal
• A brief recount of the IMRAD method
• The problem of “a writer’s block” and how to solve it

Homework: evaluate your data and decide if it is up for publication, and if yes, on what journal.

Class 5:

• Logic and clarity---the most important aspects of scientific writing
• The “Why”, “What” and “How” of a research project
• The skeleton of a manuscript---an outline
• How to decide the title of a manuscript?
• How to write an abstract?
• How to write the Results section?

Homework: Write the outline of a manuscript.

Class 6:

• How to write the discussion?
• How to write the Method and Materials?
• How to present data through appropriate tables, photos, graphs?
• How to use on-line supplementary material option?

Class 7:

• Use and misuse of English language
• Common mistakes by writers
• Common mistakes by Chinese authors
• Helps for writers whose native language is not English

Homework: correct the mistakes

Class 8:

• Authorships and their orders
• Acknowledgements
• How to write a cover letter to editors?
• Suggestions or exclusions of reviewers
• Issues in revision of a manuscript
• Scientific publication and related patent issues

Oral presentation

Class 9:

• The difference between written and oral presentations
• Effective organization of data
• The smooth transition between sections depends on clear logic flow
• The time concern of a slide presentation
• Use and misuse of fancy effects
• Achilles’ heel of many speakers—question and answer session

Homework: prepare a 10 minute seminar

Class 10:

• Students’ presentation and critique