Professional Skills - Scientific Writing

Course manual 2024/2025

Course content

“Publish or perish” –  science only advances when the fruits of your scientific labour are communicated, be it to peers, the general public, policy makers or financiers. As scientists, you will spend a considerable part of your time turning your work into words. Although you probably have a clear idea about the content of your writing, writing it down effectively is another matter. How do you make your writing stand out against all other highly interesting papers?

This goal is the main focus of our module. You will learn to approach your writing as a hierarchical organisation of story arcs; paragraphs and sentences are self-contained stories, and should be organised as such. By learning to use clear argumentation and effective word use, you will find it easier to get across your ideas. By cleverly connecting the dots you can minimise your reader’s cognitive load.

After learning this, you will focus on editing: how do you polish your text to make each word have meaning, and how do you cater to different readerships? You will also learn to identify what causes writer’s block, and how to effectively deal with this.

Each week, you will complete both a reading and a writing assignment, followed by a seminar, in which the studied theory is discussed. The completed writing assignment is subsequently subjected to peer review, in which you provide and receive feedback informed by the studied theory.

Study materials

Literature

• Selected chapters from Schimel, J. (2012) Writing Science – How to write papers that get cited and proposals that get funded. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-976024-4

Other

• Selected on-line resources (e.g. Purdue Online Writing Lab)

Objectives

• The student can identify different audience types and can tune texts to the needs and expectations of the readership
• The student is able to write effective paragraphs and can avoid common pitfalls in paragraph construction
• The student understands what makes sentences to appear convoluted and/or diffuse, and can rewrite them as to improve clarity of the message
• The student recognises fuzzy terminology and ‘weasel words’ and can replace these by clear and exact alternatives
• The student can condense a scientific text into the bare minimum of words while maintaining readability
• The student can edit a text as to maintain consistency of language and style while maintaining clarity and flow
• The student can apply techniques to overcome writer’s block

Teaching methods

• Seminar
• Self-study
• Supervision/feedback meeting

Learning activities

Attendance

Requirements of the programme concerning attendance (OER-B):

1. Attendance during practical components exercises is mandatory.

Additional requirements for this course:

All sessions take place on campus; we do not offer hybrid sessions.

To meet the course objectives, participation in group discussions, peer feedback and student interaction is essential. Active participation during all four sessions is therefore mandatory. If you are unable to attend a session, contact the course coordinator prior to the session to discuss your options for passing the course. Missing more than one session will result in a negative assessment (fail; “NAV”) of the course.

Assessment

The quality of the peer review is assessed weekly and graded using a rubric (published on the Canvas page); this counts for 80% of the grade. The amount of work put in is graded semi-automatically by the used software (20% of the grade). 

A final score > 55% counts as a passing grade, provided all assignments are done.

Inspection of assessed work

Grades and a rubric are published weekly; feedback can be discussed during sessions or by appointment.

Assignments

Each week, you will complete both a reading and a writing assignment. The writing assignment is followed by peer review. 

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Additional information

This course is part of the Professional Skills learning trajectory.

Be aware that students on this course are expected to have proficient English reading and writing skills (i.e. at least CEFR C1 level). 

Contact information

Coordinator

• Boris Berkhout