I think by preparing a problem set from those papers and ask the grad. students to do it can attract their attention to the paper.

Dear Steph,

I started my lecture/workgroup on reading and writing last week with classical music and asked if there were students playing a musical instrument the whole idea behind it is that music and writing have a lot of similarities like solos, harder and softer part etc.

I then gave them two articles one with a nice structure and one with a more difficult writing style (You know these articles that are almost impossible to get through) I divide them into 4 groups each doing a different part of the article.

They needed to find out which article is the difficult one and why. I walked around and gave them hints on structure and asked them what they thought of the two articles. throw in your own experience on reading and writing and the students are all ears.

When they were ready (or almost) I asked each group what they found and whether there were some striking findings that they want to share . Then I talked about structure and the use of words, words like; hence, in addition, we also found, finally, previous experiments have .... articles are full of those in between words giving structure like music has structure.

At the end of the lecture/workgroup the students wrote a 5 minute article

I presented a silly research question (effect of white and dark chocolate on student learning ability) and each group wrote in 5 minutes a section of the article (abstract, introduction, results and discussion). Doesn't matter that as long as they provide structure to the writen section.

Teaching is really a lot of fun

Kind regards Edwin

Nice strategy! :) During my first experiences reading papers in the university, I was asked to make a referee report on papers. I considered it difficult by that time, but I recognize that it was highly helpful for me to gain "paper-reading-skills" - in order to clarily identify which is the objective of the study/the research question, the methodology, in which type of literature the authors based themselves, which are their main results and... finally... reading the paper in a critic way, giving an opinion, some suggestions for extensions...

Good day ! :-)

I am pleased to follow this question because I teach "learning strategies for post-secondary students" at the master level this semester, and I found a very interesting way to make them learn how to read properly the articles I ask them to read before the classes.

I asked them to read a very long and hard text, as they would normally do it, during the week. During the class though, instead of a traditional reading test to see if they remembered the important notions, I did a "battleship" game. The class had to split up in 4 sub-groups. Then, they would place 3 "boats" on a grid I'd provided. I would ask questions about the text, focusing on the aspects that appeared important to learn. I gave them 3 minutes to find the answer in the text. The first team to find the answer would have the right to try to hit a boat of another team.

After 3-4 questions, I could hear comments like "Oh my god I so didn't anotate my text properly, I remember reading the topics but can't find it anywhere" or "Geez this team is good! They must have wrote something in the text that would help them find the topics quikly" ... etc.. Metacognitivly, they were mobilized...

After the game, the students were mesmorized by one specific person that had found almost all the answers in a very short period of time. She stood up and explained her strategy. Peer mentor.

The next class, for the same game, the students could EASILY find anything they wanted to find in that second text I've asked them to prepare. 3 minutes was then too long. :-)

The students learnt how to go from MACRO structure to MICRO structure, how to anotate a text in order to be able to do a second reading in 5 minutes, to see the evolution of the argument during the dissertation, etc. Everything made sens, now with that game in mind, while reading.

Any comments?

Cheers!

Elaine

My supervisor muttered to me one day that my study on lipophilic cation membrane potential probes was interesting and it should be published. I wrote it up and submitted it without telling him and it got accepted. He was shocked. He helped me respond to the referee's comments. I am the first author on nearly all my papers and I prefer to publish alone. From some very unpleasnat experiences, I am careful who I show my manuscripts to.

I tell my students to take charge of their own fate. They are the first author so they have to do most of the work. If they give the stearing-wheel to their boss the paper will most likely die and they are liable to lose their first authorship. Never allow nominal authorship. Some demand authorship if they are shown anything so be careful who you show it to.

Raymond, while I appreciate your warning, I believe you misunderstood the question. I am trying to teach students to read and write papers. Your answer does not address this question. Also, I would never encourage a student to submit a paper without consulting their principle investigator; it can get them in trouble.

Steph - Very american. I am Australian and so there is a cultural issue. When I was a post-doc in America they were stunned that I wrote papers by myself; that most of the 10 papers I published out of my PhD were single authored floored them at Cornell.

Students often lose due credit on their work because of multiple authorship and nominal authorship. Who the hell is the principle investigator on a student's work? They are. While PhD students writing and submitting papers on their own is unusual, if they can and have the balls to do so why not? There is another point. There is no question who did all the work on a single-authored paper. It is the best way to learn and there are plenty of papers to use as models. My supervisor encouraged me to do my own work and take charge of my own fate so I took him at his word. I still publish with him.

A very nice yet impractical (in my opinion) way that has been adopted by my course co-ordinator is to write a review article first and then conduct the research. I am doing a 2 year course in Clinical Psychology and have finished my 1st year. I was asked in the beginning of the course to submit a topic for the research that I have to conduct as part of my dissertation and also to prepare for a review article, literature for which should be related to my area of research. In the first year Review Article should be prepared and the student would be required to do a thorough literature reading. After the end of the first year that review article would be sent for publication. This method is not adopted anywhere in India in any university in any psychology course. Although after the end of the 1st year I am not ready with my complete review article but this effort helped me to become focused in my research and helped me to refine my research agenda and guided me to formulate my hypotheses properly. I could not have got that much understanding in my topic in a span of 1 year (as it is customary to do research in 2nd year only) which I have got while I was preparing for my review article since the beginning of first year. I could correct the loopholes in grasping the topic, I could look for more relevant literature, I could review many related topics too. Currently I am doing my data collection for the research, and I am finished with the Introduction and Literature Review sections of my research, I could get enough time to look for my methodology also and practice for my experimental procedure even. By this time I would be doing only literature review if I had not worked for preparing the review article.

Why I called this method impractical in the beginning of my reply is because in my view it is very early to publish a review article, at this foundational stage when student is beginning to learn proper research conduction. Writing the review article requires a great deal of study. Whatever be the intent of my co-ordinator, it really helped me in organizing for my thesis and focusing only on the relevant problem that I wish to study and not getting confused with abundance of literature available on any topic. Only while preparing this way I learnt why every part of the research article is necessary in its own right and how a whole research should be conducted following previous researches. Students generally do not spend much time in refining the literature and problem, hence are not able to read much and gather literature irrelevant to their topic. Most of the researches at this stage only contain abstracts and their unrelated conclusions as parts of their literature. Usually it happens that academic theses are not published in India as students are generally not able to work on all aspects of research (as my mentor also couldn't do that in her time, around 10 years ago), most of them are not able to collect all the data even. So haphazardly conclusions are drawn. This greatly effects the quality of research on the one hand and student doesn't find him/herself able to grasp the whole topic concretely. What becomes more disastrous is that students after passing the course lose interest in research. This is one of the major reasons why research standards are poor in India as the roots are laid in-adequately.

So if alternatives can be applied, I feel such efforts can greatly help students to learn the purpose and need of research as they would get sufficient time to prepare and read.

Ferfect method

There are some very good and interesting answers already, I especially like the contribution by Elaine. I'd like add add or summarize the following:

1. Answer the question "qui bono?" together with the student. Make transparent how the student and you will benefit from the results and the process leading there.

2. Define, track and adapt goals. SMART goals to be exact (Specific, Measurable, Actively achievable, Realistic and Timeable). This will help you and your student the break down the whole "act of creation" into handable pieces.

3. Define the processes needed, assign accountabilities.

4. Keep discussing and improving.

5. Hire a professional to implement such processes and be willing to live them.

Very general advice, I know. But worth applying, nonetheless.

Sound advice for learning to understand the literature but you need to be careful about using the format for your current research. Beware the academic who turns up at such things and you tell them everything you know. You may find they put a graduate student onto the project and the poor graduate student given the project my never find out where the idea came from. What can you say? Some academics are great at "fishing expeditions" or vacuuming around and picking through the dust bag. Newton was right in saying he saw further because he stood on the shoulders of giants, but some trample over the heads of others. Slightly different things.

It is purely depends on the motivation of a experienced teacher who can make understand his/her students the value of writing research papers.

I like that. I also suggest that students should provide at least one page per week on what they have learned and what is new in general.

Naim

I teach physiotherapy to undergraduate students. While a research project is only formally included in their final year, I include a research component at every year level that I teach. It's usually as part of an assignment where I give students a question that has no clear cut answer. They need to find research papers that support both (or more) sides of the argument, demonstrating that their own critical review is an essential aspect of learning how to interpret research findings. They have to "answer" the question I presented, using the evidence to support whatever side of the argument they agreed with, and then defend their conclusion.

I find that the students (after several iterations) develop a sense of critical thinking through this process. They learn how to identify the key points of a paper, extract the most relevant evidence that are used to generate those points, and then use the information to support their own conclusions. They also learn that "knowledge" and "facts" can be open to interpretation, which is valuable in a world where information overload is a very real problem for people to deal with.

Hi Steph,

How about trying to ‘enthuse volunteers’ instead of trying to teach students :-)

Let us also differentiate between reading and writing academic papers because the purpose for which we do each of these activities can be very different.

Now that the problem has been broken into more manageable parts, I hope to enthuse you to delve into this matter further by addressing one of these parts:

“How do I enthuse volunteers to read academic papers?”

The chances are that your volunteers are there for different reasons, and focusing on one aspect of motivation theory, that is, Goal Orientation, we could divide the volunteers onto two broad groups, Mastery oriented (I want to understand this deeply) and Performance oriented (whatever it takes to get passed this stage).

First, you need to find out the groups the volunteers belong to, but you can kill two proverbial birds with one metaphorical stone here by simply asking:

“If you were a teacher and wanted to encourage your students to read, what strategies would you use to make them enthusiastic about the idea?” *

Alternatively, you could suggest different strategies, like the excellent ones suggested in this forum already or the one that you pointed out yourself and ask the volunteers to rank their effectiveness at enthusing students to read/write.

Your knowledge that you are dealing with two groups of people comes in handy when you are trying to make sense of the responses, because you can now divide them into two broad groups: Those answers that reflect a need understand, grow, develop, learn, improve, etc. and the other group which follow a different theme; fastest, easiest, get a feel for, capture the essence of, decide whether it is useful or not, etc.

* I have used the words teacher and student here because we cannot escape the context, which is probably a more important aspect of the situation for the Performance oriented individuals.

Same for writing …

Alternatively, you could take the behaviourist approach and try to ‘condition’ your 'volunteers' into reading. Here’s an example:

Give each person a text to read and a checklist onto which they would place either ratings or counts (ratings: quality of abstract, structure of paper, flow, …; counts: number of sections, number of paragraphs, number of words per paragraph/sentence). Then, make it quantitative: use the mean of as many papers as possible, but no less than five papers. [note, encouraging students to read at least five papers, but that’s not what you are telling them!]. Students could then plot their ratings against counts to see if there is a relationship between for example, various aspects of the structure of the paper and their own ratings [note: individualized, so can compare with others and can stimulate discussion].

From a behaviourist perspective, what I am saying is that familiarity reduces resistance. So, the more they ‘interact’ with papers and the more time they spend discussing aspects of the exercise that is related to them, the more familiar reading and looking for detail will become and the less resistance and hopefully, the more enthusiasm there will be (Notwithstanding Herzberg’s seminal two-factor theory)

Over to you!

This is idea is good on away to teach the graduate students how to write or evaluate a scientific article. But what's more important is to teach the student how to analysis the data and write a comment. Thus, if you have the data of a paper (from the results section), can you discuss it and whats your recommendation. In this case, the gradtuate student will interact and learn more regarding research activity.

Steph Hays

Love the topic of physics education, and have worked with some grad students on writing research papers, but my goal is to make physics more assessable to undergraduates.

I like your idea of removing the title and abstract. When I write a research paper, the abstract is the last thing I write, drawing from the paper. For me I find this makes the abstract clearer and more concise, even though I had a rough abstract in mind at the start of the paper, and I often change the title after I have finished. Thus students reviewing the paper may see other things they consider more important when they write their own title and abstract for it.

Perhaps the most important thing is to pick the right research paper for them to examine. Our group online has a number of graduate and undergraduates in it.

We pick a topic and individuals find a paper on it that interests them, or they think might be relevant, and post a link to it for the group. The reason they think it is important and a short synopsis of their own is usually given as well, then the group reviews each paper and gives their comments on it.

Of course this is an informal group, but could be used in a more formal setting.

Another choice is to pick a paper that will catch the students interest and provoke discussion. For this I like to use a quality paper from outside the mainstream physics journals. “Galilean Electrodynamics” is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes high quality papers that challenge accepted models. For an online journal, “The General Science Journal” is a fair choice, not peer-reviewed, so it has some garbage papers not worth reading, but a few good ones as well. Then again, a garbage paper for the students to tear apart might be a fun learning experience as well.

One of the harder things to overcome is the student’s fear of making a mistake in a paper for publication. Writing a paper that covers your subject, while remaining within the word limits of most journals is no easy task and frightens many grad students in our group. To try and help with this, the group has links to papers I wrote while learning physics and which have mistakes and errors in them.

I am not ashamed of my mistakes, because I learned from them. I am one of the few members of our group that is self-taught in physics, having retired from a successful career as a stagehand. I used writing research papers as a teaching tool. I would write a paper, then latter, tear it apart, find mistakes, and try again. I have learned so much from my mistakes, I will probably make some more!

But that is how science progresses. We make models based on the best knowledge we have, test them, find their mistakes, and try again, hopefully with an improved model. The student should not fear making a mistake.

Sadly there are few places an undergraduate or grad student can publish papers for the informal peer review of other students, I think this would help as I learned something. When I posted a paper online for others to look at, it was a type of release, a letting go of the paper and what was in it. Only after I did that was I able to look at my own paper objectively and reexamine it.

Well I hope my long rambling reply was somewhat useful.

I like a lot of the suggestions on how to teach students to read/analyze/write a paper. It certainly works for students grounded in western education, as the fundamentals are there, they just need some help applying principles and techniques.

However, what about if you work with students or graduates who don't come from the western system? Some of the basic above techniques will need to be supplemented with extra teaching activities (I'm open to suggestions here from everyone!).

Critical analysis, abstract thinking, and open questioning are very western concepts embedded in our cultural and education system. We learn to question everything in the West from the day we can talk. We are born critical thinkers and encouraged to stay that way. As the West currently dominates the research world and English is the global scientific language, western scientific methodology rules which is great for those of us brought up in it. Home advantage!

However, big disadvantage if you are not brought up in that system and a really tough topic to teach! I learned that after working with researchers of all levels in Asia for 3 years trying to support them in conducting and publishing research internationally when they had no Western education background. I actually had to go back and learn the very fundamentals and the origin of western science as opposed to any other science. To teach skills on how to read and analyse a paper you assume the students know some basic skills, but for many foreign students those skills are not embedded in their culture or education system. They don't know them.

For example, you have to teach western logic, hypotheses formulation, the reason for our obsession with repeatable methodology, our particular style of critical thinking, and abstracting ideas. Criticism is another big cultural topic to teach. Questioning an author's scientific integrity is all part of our critical process in the West. To many of us, its fun to have open debates. To others it is possibly the worst, most humiliating thing to could ask them to do. They have been taught never to question or doubt a peer, quietly or openly.

I'm still looking for good ideas and ways to introduce Western scientific methodology to non-western scientists so that they can understand it at a fundamental level and be able to play on a level playing field with their western colleagues..... all suggestions welcome!

There is an interesting, recent article related to this:

Facilitating novice researchers in project publishing during the doctoral years and beyond: a Hong Kong-based study

Becky Siu Chu Kwan

Studies in Higher Education

Vol. 38, Iss. 2, 2013

DOI:10.1080/03075079.2011.576755

pages 207-225

This portal offers interesting considerations: http://www.enotes.com/how-write-research-paper-how-to/how-write-research-paper

A key aspect in the construction of the article is the organization, universally considered: (i) Introduction (What is the problem?), (Ii) Materials and methods (how we study the problem?), (iii) Results (What were the findings?), and (iv) Discussion (What do the findings?). there are only few exceptions where a different structure most appropriate for an article "primary" (this structure often is not suitable for A review of the literature).

Sorry to introduce a sour note into proceedings, but is there any evidence that academic writing courses are effective, especially when compared to the control condition of simply reading a large number and variety of papers and Letters to the Editor. I have been to a large number of Journal Clubs, mainly to learn more about the paper under dissection. These teach you how to pick nits, but I am dubious what else of long-term value is acquired, and there can be an over-analytic air of cynicism.

In reply to Anthony's comment above, I think it depends on the writing course. A one off course on how to write manuscripts is of limited value I would say as it is too generic and short to really embed useful knowledge in scientists relavent to their specific research.

Journal clubs, at least the ones I knew, were really about in depth review of a selected paper rather than a technical writing lesson. Used as a technical exercise it also has some merits but really only shows half the writing story. Students need to study not only what worked but very importantly what failed to get published to really learn how its done and that's difficult if you only read published literature.

A focussed course run over an extended time should be able to offer more value, e.g. over 1 year 6 workshops that cover the stages of the research process from hypothesis formation to manuscrit drafting. Each student would use their actual research project as the basis for the course and aim to try and publish. I emphasize here that a scientific writing course should begin at the hypothesis and study design. Without a good study it won't matter how well you can write, you won't (shouldn't!) get publish.

I think courses can be a valuable resource if designed with specific projects in mind, and should be coupled with an honest attempt at writing your own manuscript for publication, failing/succeeding and doing it again as early in your career as possible.

I am particularly interested in Laura's response concerning non-Western students and academic reading and writing. I teach academic writing both to undergraduates and to students trying to gain admission to American graduate schools. These students have their undergraduate degree from foreign universities and the problems faced by these students are multiplied many times by their lack of acculturation in Western science, logic, and academic research writing. I also teach these students the elements of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) that they must pass to enter graduate school programs. For students from Asia and the Middle East this test and nearly every element of academic research writing is complicated by their unfamiliarity with stated and unstated assumptions, enthymemes, and the whole system of the scientific method as advocated by American scientists. Their cultures do not persuade in the same oral and written discourses that Americans use. Although they can follow a peer-reviewed article in their own discipline, writing even a short essay at academic research levels is nearly impossible.

As Laura points out, we must go back to Western logic and all elements involved in the presentation of that type of logic in writing. For the students from the Middle East and Asia, the questioning of other scientists, researchers, and/or most any authority creates serious distress for these students, who are taught chiefly that these authorities are not to be openly questioned. In fact, the indirect method of presentation and/or the additive, coordinate form of persuasion used by Arabic speakers in academic writing is a direct result of this non-questioning of authority. Gaining sufficient acculturation to write in the Western, particularly American form of persuasion and academic writing is a huge problem for instructors of these students. At lower levels of writing (expository, informative, comparison, etc), a foreign writer may be able to draw upon strategies that are not so dissimilar to WEstern models; however, academic research writing is a totally different subject altogether.

I do want to point out that my students are not at a level to be concerned with publishing materials. We are concerned with learning to write graduate level research papers and shorter persuasive essays. I have found over a number of years that students from most European nations can draw upon some significant similarities to American English demands; if there is not significant language cognates or other linguistic structures,there will probably be similar demands in what constitutes a strong hypothesis, evidence, repeatability, etc. For students without the Western mindset, the entire subject is fraught with problems. If anyone has suggestions about those important early skills in learning a second language's demands for academic writing, I'd love to hear all ideas.

Aysha Bey

In my opinion best way to answer above question is to focus on each quary seperately.

1- How to encourage graduate students to read research papers?

There are always different ways, depending on mix of class and syllabus. In one of my courses, which I taught in spring 2012, I divided the class in teams each comprising of two members and assigned different topic to each team. Topics were mutually conflicting to in certain areas. The class was given common reading material. Each team has to defend the assigned topic. The results were astounding.

2- How to encourage graduate students to write academic papers?

This I found a difficult problem to resolve. May be because most of students in my class were employed and taking evening classes. Differences in background knowledge and aptitutdes was also a major hunderance. I approached this problem by giving students targetes assignments. After students developed adequate background knowledge, I encouraged them to write conference papers initially for conferences held locally. At present results are not much encoraging. Any further recommendations/suggestions for encouraging students to write are most welcome from other teachers.

I think it's a very good idea and especially for us, spanish universities, because as more papers are in english also helps students improve their level of english

I insist that my students show me an outline of what they have read and the sources for that writing. Before they begin to write an academic paper, I insist on seeing a detailed, skeletal outline of what they plan on writing. This allows me to see in which direction their paper is heading and helps me to keep them on-track. They find that writing an academic paper is relatively easy once they are sure they know and understand what they are writing. An outline gives them a good head start.

Other way may be by asking the students to evaluate a published article providing a standard evaluation form to fill and follow as well as to write a short comment on the article i.e., acts like a referee, of course, this could only be done after having a cousre about writting a scientific report..

Interesting Ahed's opinion in which he suggests the use of critical thinking.

Likewise, we must consider the title, as this is the main determinant of our work so that will capture the attention and interest of the public. Also we must take into account these other questions:

1 - This work is an original and useful?

2 - this contribution is appropriate for readers of the magazine?

3 - is the review of current literature and places the study in a proper context?

4 - and analysis methods are valid and clear?

5 - tables and figures are clear?

6-is reasonable discussion?

7 - What are the relevance and implications of the work?

Some considerations to keep in mind when reading or writing a scientific paper are:

1 - Read the article carefully, if necessary, two or

three times, to capture the main ideas. although

write the abstract the same person who wrote

Article, not always easy to decide the ideas of

text that should be noted.

2 - Tick visibly points where

is the most signifi cant text.

After a careful reading is easy to see that

parts of the text are more relevant than others sometimes whole paragraphs can be deleted without

losing the basic information of the article.

3 - Rephrase a first draft from the fragments

that have been marked in the text, but trying

express the same ideas in other words, without

copy the original sentences (though is what makes

many people).

As a graduate student I think the best way to learn the way of dealing with research papers is to do routine presentations before a group on one research paper every week.

In my opinion we should not voluntarily teach some one to write papers: rather those interested in writing should voluntarily follow their teacher who is an expert and learn the nuances of writing. And with able initial guidance one gets to understand the art

I will share my experience: My mentor Dr S K Mohanty, the now emeritus professor of Microbiology

Way back in 2005 i was fortunate to work under him

During regular diagnostic reporting i observed that i have isolated Kingella kingae from the sample of a patient. I discussed with him and what he said was that i should write a paper on that.

As i was new to that i asked for his guidance: He then asked me to initially write some thing and get relevant literature.

I put on his table and later followed it up regularly while he has developed the paper

So its just a good experience initially and our own interest and the ability to work hard results in papers

Compare abstracts to Lonely Hearts adverts: Turner & Beaumont published a nice method getting students to re-construct personal profiles on the basis of Lonely Hearts ads and a reverse technique of summarising a celebrity in 3 words such that others can guess their identity - published in Innovatice Practice in Higher Education, and a nice summary in Times Higher: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/derby-biologists-lonely-hearts-club-strand/2005137.article

This is obviously am important question for graduate students. However, I ask students even in entry level undergraduate courses-in my field-to read and critique scholarly literature (which is carefully selected to be accessible to them) . The idea, for me, is that what distinguishes a post-secondary education, from what may have come before, it is a focus on critical thinking. I enjoy building these students confidence in their own capacity to analyze and critique the reasoning of any author or speaker (including, most particularly, me.) I try to encourage students at all levels to develop and use their own reason in reading literature-regardless of whatever the credentials of the writer may be.

As a teaching fellow of academic English I teach students to read and write in the style and register needed for academic study. It is a fully academic area of study in itself with extensive research being done to find the most effective methods of enabling students to adapt their writing to conform to those standards. Even the shortest courses still last several weeks of intensive instruction. The problem as I see it, is that universities expect students to be able to read and write academic papers as well as being able to listen to academic lectures and give high quality presentations without the additional training needed to do it. It appears that most universities expect their students to learn as they do their course, a kind on the job training. The number of questions on this site would indicate that this is not a successful strategy and there should be training for native speakers of whatever the language of instruction and not just for international students.

I suppose the best approach be to teach the student the basics; How to come up with a title, writing an abstract, intro, explaining results, discussions and conclusions. Let them learn from published papers as you point out the key areas of each section. Then if they have data, allow them to write a manuscript and point out areas that requires redoing or more effort. After doing this several times, students can learn the tools of the trade. In short, it is learning by doing!!

I believe the most effective method is to incorporate the reading of scholarly material with incremental assignments involving APA elements as the class proceeds. The title page is something that can be clarified with just an example. Once reading the requirements for the title page and seeing where the information has to be located, it becomes virtually automatic. The university I am attending used a title page example for each course so all the students can start off on the same foot.

I also think that we should not voluntarily teach students to write papers.

I found 101 tips in the net, please take the time to read them.

Planning your Manuscript

1. The research paper topic should be unique and there should be a logical reason to study it.

2. Do your homework. Make sure you know what investigators in your field and other fields have published about your topic (or similar topics). There is no substitute for a good literature review before jumping into a new project.

3. Take the time to plan your experimental design. As a general rule, more time should be devoted to planning your study than to actually performing the experiments (though there are some exceptions, such as time-course studies with lengthy time points). Rushing into the hands-on work without properly designing the study is a common mistake made by young researchers.

4. When designing your experiment, choose your materials wisely. Look to the literature to see what others have used. Similar products from different companies do not all work the same way. In fact, some do not work at all.

5. Get help. If you are performing research techniques for the first time, be sure to consult an experienced friend or colleague. Rookie mistakes are commonplace in academic research and lead to wasted time and resources.

6. Know what you want to study, WHY you want to study it, and how your results will contribute to the current pool of knowledge for the subject.

7. Be able to clearly state a hypothesis before starting your work. Focus your efforts on researching this hypothesis. All too often people start a project and are taken adrift by new ideas that come along the way. While ideas are good to note, be sure to keep your focus.

8. Along with keeping focus, know your experimental endpoints. Sometimes data collection goes smoothly and you want to dig deeper and deeper into the subject. If you want to keep digging deeper, do it with a follow-up study.

9. Keep in mind where you might like to publish your study. If you are aiming for a high-impact journal, you may need to do extensive research and data collection. If your goal is to publish in a lower-tier journal, your research plan may be very different.

10. If your study requires approval by a review board or ethics committee, be sure to get the documentation as needed. Journals will often require that you provide such information.

11. If your study involves patients or patient samples, explicit permissions are generally required from the participant or donor, respectively. Journals may ask for copies of the corresponding documentation.

General

12. Read and follow ALL of the guidelines for manuscript preparation listed for an individual journal. Most journals have very specific formatting and style guidelines for the text body, abstract, images, tables, and references.

13. HYPOTHESIS: be sure to have one and state it clearly. This is, after all, why you are doing the research.

14. Write as though your work is meaningful and important. If you don’t, people will not perceive it as meaningful and important.

15. Use an external peer review service (available through JournalPrep.com) to get your manuscript reviewed prior to submission. Rapid and expert peer reviews, before you submit, may significantly increase your odds of getting your manuscript accepted for publication.

16. Critique your own work. Look for areas that reviewers might spot as weaknesses and either correct these areas or comment on them in your manuscript, leaving reviewers with fewer options for negative criticisms.

17. Always present the study as a finished piece of work (although you may suggest future directions). Otherwise, you can be sure reviewers will suggest additional research.

18. Be painstaking. Be thorough and patient with several rounds of editing of your work while considering all the tiny details of the specifications requested by the journal. It will pay off in the end.

19. Focus. If you have a hypothesis to develop, be consistent to the end. Have substantial and convincing evidence to prove your theories. Brainstorm your ideas and have a definite direction mapped out before beginning to write an article.

20. Write in a precise and accurate way. Avoid long sentences; the reader may find them difficult to follow.

21. Team-like spirit is an important attribute that contributes to successful publishing. Welcome advice from those around you with potentially valuable input. No matter how competent you feel, having your work seen through a different lens may help to spot flaws that you were unable to identify.

22. As a final step, after completing your research paper, edit, edit, edit. You need to identify and correct any and all mistakes that you may have made.

23. Short papers are more likely to be read than long ones.

24. Select a descriptive title. Flash and puns are rarely as appealing as they may seem at first. You are better off going simple and descriptive. This will also help you get cited.

25. Focus on the information the readers require when following your experiment, modeling description, or data analysis instead of overloading them with details that might have been important during the study but are irrelevant for them.

26. Your paper should advance a particular line of research. It does not need to answer every remaining question about the topic.

27. If you present your work at an academic conference prior to submitting it for publication, get constructive criticisms from as many potential reviewers as possible.

28. Make sure your paper reads well. A bunch of choppy, simple sentences, while grammatically correct, is unpleasant to read.

29. Clear, concise, and grammatically correct English. Period.

30. Non-native English speakers should ALWAYS try to arrange for a review by a native speaker. If you know someone with excellent proofreading skills and a general knowledge about your research discipline (ex. Biological Sciences), ask them to help you out. If you don’t know someone who meets these criteria, use a professional editing service such as that offered at JournalPrep.com. You will save yourself from a great deal of frustration and lost time.

31. Show friends and colleagues your work, including those in different fields of research. Get as much feedback as you can before you submit.

32. The body of the paper supports the central idea and must show a thoughtful, comprehensive study of the research topic; it should be clearly written and easy to follow. It generally includes three main parts: 1) Methodology, 2) Results & Data Analysis, and 3) Discussion.

33. When referencing other papers, do not simply reference work in the same way other papers have. If paper X says that paper Y showed a specific result, check for yourself to ensure that this is true before saying the same thing in your own manuscript. The number of reputable authors who misunderstand their colleagues’ findings is shocking.

34. If you are in the process of running a follow-up experiment, write your manuscript in such a way that it begs for that experiment. When reviewers respond and request it you will already have it completed.

etc ...

Introduction

35. Start your article with a comprehensive yet concise literature review of your exact subject and highlight in which way your paper will make a new contribution to the field.

36. Throughout your introduction use the past tense. One exception to this is when you are speaking about generally accepted facts and figures (ex. Heart disease is the leading cause of death…).

37. Avoid using new acronyms. They will simply confuse the readers.

38. The introduction of a research paper is extremely important. It generally presents a brief literature review, the problem and the purpose of your research work. It should be powerful, simple, realistic, and logical to entice the reader to read the full paper.

39. Avoid unnecessarily long paragraphs. Break up your paragraphs into smaller, useful units.

40. Do not be afraid to use headings in your introduction (and discussion).

Materials & Methods

41. Do not over-explain common scientific procedures. For example, you do not need to explain how PCR or Western Blotting work, just that you used the techniques. If you are using a novel technique, then you need to explain the steps involved.

42. Use third person passive tense. For example, “RNA was extracted from the cells.” Compare this with, “We extracted RNA from the cells.”

43. Be sure to mention from which companies you purchased any significant reagents for your experiments.

44. When in doubt about how to report your materials and methods, look to papers published in recognized journals that use similar methods and/or materials.

45. Do not mention sources of typical labware (beakers, stripettes, pipet tips, cell culture flasks, etc).

Results

46. Make sure your graphs and tables can speak for themselves. A lot of people skim over academic papers.

47. The Results section should contain only results, no discussion.

48. Do not repeat in words everything that your tables and graphs convey. You can, however, point out key findings and offer some text that complements the findings.

49. Be sure to number your figures and tables according to journal guidelines and refer to them in the text in the manner specified by the journal.

50. Clear to read graphs are essential. Do not overload graphs with data. Make sure axis descriptions are not too small.

Discussion

51. Your discussion section should answer WHY you obtained the observed results. Do not simply restate the results. Also address WHY your results are important (i.e. how do they advance the understanding of the topic).

52. If multiple explanations for your results exist, be sure to address each one. You can favor one explanation but be sure to mention alternative explanations, if some exist. If you don’t, your reviewers will.

53. If your research findings are suggestive or supportive rather than decisive then make sure to indicate so. NEVER overstate the importance of your research findings. Rather, clearly point to their true significance.

54. Understand the message of your paper. You may discover what the message is only after a literature search, as is occasionally the case for some manuscript types such as case reports.

55. Highlight how your research contributes to the current knowledge in the field and mention the next steps or what remains. Feel free to explain why your results falsify current theories if that is the case.

56. Make sure that your discussion is concise and informative. If you ramble and include a great deal of unnecessary information, your paper will likely get rejected or at least be looked upon less favorably.

Conclusions & References

57. The importance of the conclusions section should not be overlooked. It includes a brief restatement of the other parts of the research paper, such as the methodology, data analysis and results, and concludes the overall discussion. It should be brief, concise, and worth remembering.

58. Reference page: All references used as sources of information in your research paper should be mentioned to strengthen your paper and also to avoid your work being considered plagiarized.

59. Failure to include every obscure reference to a topic will NOT prevent publication. What WILL prevent publication is procrastination by insisting on including such references.

60. Use bibliographic software such as EndNote or RefWorks. This will help you format your references section readily when you make changes throughout your paper after getting suggestions from friends, colleagues or reviewers.

@Michail Kalogiannakis I must disagree fundamentally with your assertion that we should not voluntarily teach the students how to write academic papers. This is not only because it is my job to teach them how to write but also because as with any complex activity, there is a level of skill needed to complete the activity to an acceptable standard. There have been studies done on the effect of interaction on the processing of information and the understanding of that information. To assimilate the information fully the students need to read papers and then be able to differentiate between what is good and what is not, and on its own, a list of instructions cannot do that.

@Gary Stobbs, I agree that a list of instructions cannot teach the students how to write academic papers but I am still very skeptic about the “voluntarily” .

On my part I feel a case is good one to start writing/learning to prepare a scientific communication.

Many graduate students enter their course of studies with the basic writing proficiencies and the ability to comprehend and summarize much of their assigned readings, be it the required text or assigned journal articles. Generally speaking, these students are able to relate the literature to their own experiential knowledge and offer their opinions. However, some students are not successful writers which may mask or thwart their critical thinking skills. For these students, specific instruction is essential and may need to begin at a writing lab. On my syllabus for the graduate course I teach, there is information on our campus about the Writing center for those students who need this extra assistance; During a previous semester I had several graduate students whose writing skills were in need of improvement to pass many of the writing assignments in the course. Because of this early intervention, there was a significant improvement during the course of the semester regarding their writing. Both students and faculty assume that undergraduate writing skills will easily transfer to the graduate level performance. But as I have found and I am sure many on this discussion have found, that the majority of our students produce work at a beginning graduate level, not at a polished scholarly writing. This is not to say that there are not those students who do produce a polished paper.

Within many baccalaureate programs students are expected to master writing ‘good term papers’ that illustrate an understanding and the ability to articulate opinions. However, a significant difference exists between scholarly writing style and term paper writing style. This difference creates a struggle for students and necessitates instruction from professors- not necessarily teaching a writing intensive course. This additional shadow workload puts a strain, not only on the student but the Instructor as well. Another point to consider is that as beginning graduate students attempt to articulate the depth and breadth of their understanding, they frequently become immersed in jargon, fragmented ideas, unsupported opinions, and a disorganization ‘fog’.

Going back to the question of how do we teach the elusive scholarly writing style will depend on several factors. First, scholarly writing has several different learning stages or developmental levels that build upon each other. First and foremost, I always encourage and recommend my students to take a proactive approach to enhancing their writing skills. I use myself as an example for my students in the following sense: I do media reviews for the Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO); prior to submission I will have my wife take a look at the reviews prior to submission as we are both educators; on several occasions, she has caught what she calls “fragmented ideas” I indicated above, thus forcing me to take another look at my work.

The responsibility for developing clear and effective writing skills lies primarily with the student, even though many faculty will provide direction, assistance, and feedback as part of our courses. In working to master academic and professional writing, my students are continually advised to consult a variety of resources that are available and may even participate in writing workshops, invite peer feedback from classmates, or complete a writing assistance program. My students are continually informed that they will need to practice writing on a daily basis, carefully attending to feedback, and then practice more. On each page of my syllabus are three words: Practice Makes Perfect.

Check out this webpage:

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/examples.html

Psst! Please don't be offended. Plagiarism alert, Laroi! Please edit your above text to show us where you got text from. {Hint: try Harris.} RG is not a lecture venue or a phone call. RG is Googleable and citable. We may wish to cite you. Remember we are trying to set the standards here. (All we excuse is bad typing and poor grammar from non-English speakers... which matters can be fixed.) Thanks in advance.

IAN. Thank you. No offense taken. Between helping a student at the references desk, taking in a telephone reference, I made the error. Going forward will tend to this forum when not too unindated with other duties.

@Michail. At least you wrote: I found 101 tips on the Internet. This made it easy for me to find your source. However just listing the URL would have been more brief, giving the essence, and shortening this thread.

As always, plan your exercises so that they mean something to your students.

You could ask them to produce a written introduction into their project for laymen, and then let the other students read and comment on it. Students could describe facilities, equipment, and processes. And let them define their most important terms. Being taught in this way they see that English language has to do with their work and what their limitations are, if they are going to publish a paper.

One trick for all students (and teachers alike) is to use 'ESL' in your Google search plus any term you want to know about, be it grammar, vocabulary, reading, or whatever.

Between my junior and senior years of my BA program, I was honored to be a participant in the Ronald E. McNair program. My colleagues and I spent the summer completing a full research project under the direction of the McNair staff and our advisors. The started with square on teaching us how to use the library, take notes, etc. We went from the very basics to a full fledged research paper that we later presented at conferences. The point of the program is to prepare students to succeed in graduate school. It was fantastic! In my mind, that is one of the best educational programs ever designed. It was practical and hands-on. For me, that the McNair program made all the difference in my success through my PhD program. So, the time to teach graduate students to read and write is before they become graduate students. Even if a program like the McNair program were taught the summer prior to any other graduate courses, the outcome might be equally successful. Break bad habits before grad school and give each grad student the tools needed to succeed. If a student cannot succeed in such a program, they probably should not go to grad school to begin with.

I believe that the success of the program centered on the very focused curriculum. It walked each participant through all the steps of completing a good research project. Every step was critiqued and each student received hands-on instruction as needed. As long as the student was committed to their success, they could not fail. Because the program was so focused and specific, there were no distractions of other courses or activities. The program was designed for success. Once success was tasted, there was no turning back. Students who went through the program were extremely well-prepared for grad school.

Dear Angela Koponen,

The program you are talking about, sounds amazing. Can you please share more details about it with us.

I am teaching the chemistry by cooperative learning process. Due to this every student get alert in the class. Every student get participate in the class as well as everybody get their knowledge and try to share themselves. as a result every body involve in learning. They present his knowledge to others. This process make learn as presentation by talking and finally writing - as a write a papers (research).

More about the Ronald E. McNair program can be found here. I qualified because I was a first-time-in-college, female. http://mcnairscholars.com/

I give them an article to read and then I ask their opinion about the consistency of the abstract. Or ask them"If you were the author, what abstract would you write?"

Another note on the McNair program - I received a $2000 stipend that summer to focus solely on my work in the program. It was 8 weeks long and we were together 30 - 40 hours a week, I believe, if memory serves me. It was very focused. While in the program we had one basic job, to complete a grad school quality research paper. I attribute much of my own success in grad school to that program. Without it, I probably would not have even considered grad school. Because of that excellent program, I had the confidence and skills to complete both my MA and my PhD. I would love to see similar programs available to all graduating high school seniors and to all college students (BA/BS) between either their junior or senior year or after graduation. Targeted programs such as that could prepare students for the rigor of their next level of education in a way taking multiple courses at one time cannot.

Just a side remark. Angela, you can still edit your comment if you wish. Just move the mouse to the upper right corner of your post then click on the arrow that will show up.

Hope this helps.. -)

Thanks. That was easy.

Teaching students to read academic papers should not focus on simply reading the whole paper. They need to learn "how to fish" (that is, how to read or write the academic paper). Instead of focusing the whole papers, I suggest to break down the tasks and focus on critically examination of important parts such as ABSTRACT, INTRODUCTION, CONCLUSION. The assessment can focus on selected parts. Therefore, I suggest teaching NOT to read the whole paper, but teaching in-depth each part.

For instance, writing the conclusion. The concluding bridge moves readers back to their private space and enlighten them with insights. In my opinion, conclusion is the most important part and most difficult part to write. Readers want to be satisfied that they have read the paper and that the paper has given them something that they can take away to help them see things differently. The broader implications suggested will enrich their lives in some way. So students can imagine themselves as the authors and EXPLORE to UNDERSTAND how they CREATE and SHARE THE LAST WORD on the paper. What opportunity did the author maximize to push boundaries to elaborate on the significance of the findings, to consider broader issues, and to foster new connections.

(continuation...) I likewise suggest using the "Conclusion" section as a threshold to critically think about the academic paper. By threshold, I mean imagining it as an entrance door. Through focusing on the conclusion, the teaching and learning can CONNECT to the "Introduction" section (another difficult section to write but not as difficult as the "Conclusion" section) , "abstract" section, and all other sections.

How do you teach graduate students to read and write academic papers? is such a nice question...I would say one of d best mechanisms is to inculcate early research models by exploring their innate potentials by setting up a mini research guild whereby students could come together to share ideas.

Excellent methods described above..

Just wanted to point out the fact that there will be abundant examples of good quality as well as 'less than ideal' quality papers in the published literature and it is a skill of the teacher to pick out examples on both ends of the spectrum.. learning to pick out the difference in the conduct of a methodologically sound and a methodologically flawed article is a good start, and quite insightful...

it will also be beneficial for students to know that write-up is just a part of the whole research process, which always has to start with a question in mind... this question should determine the context of the research as well as the write-up..

regards, raza

@ Onyegu osokam shadrach - You are right. Highest approach to learning happens when (mature) students conceive themselves as co-teachers and co-learning in a community of practice. Good insight.

@ Onyegu osokam shadrac and Francisco Cua - The idea of a mini research guild brought to mind my vision of the ideal PD program.

First I see new students divided into small cohorts that take classes together, work directly with a faculty adviser on research project from day one, and are encouraged to work together to study and solve challenges. The research would also include a small cohort of more advanced students that serve as peer advisers and tutors. The faulty adviser, the older cohort, and the new cohort would work toward researching and publishing on a regular basis. Classes would be sequenced to best facilitate the students' growth and contribute to essential knowledge needed to successfully work in the research/publishing group. Part of the success criteria would be related to participation and group work with some peer evaluation. By the end of the program, each student would have several publications and would have develop skills in team work, critical thinking, communication, leadership, and so on, in addition to discipline specific knowledge. They would also, if successful, have a network of peers with whom they could exchange ideas, gain and give support, and learn from going forward after graduation. Dissertations would also have the option to be group projects. The program would be rigorous and very challenging, but no one would be "left out in the cold," as we say, to fend for themselves. The program would develop great faculty and educational and corporate leaders. I'm sure this could be adapted to any level of program.

Alas, I am idealistic. My own experience was nearly as far from that as can be. But I still dream!

I very much like the idea of "mini research guilds" on teaching how to write research papers and have an example how it could work from my undergraduate classes in political theory:

In Germany students partly chose lectures and seminars themselves, thus one only meets them for one semester and their is more change in the combination of backgrounds in each course. Many still have to write longer essays after the course is finished (versus the system of smaller assignments during the semester, although the latter become more popular as well). While they have to hand in research ideas to me to be commented upon bilaterally I have reserved two classes of the course for mini-workshops among the students. There they have to present their research ideas following the what, why and how-scheme. Their classmates have engaged them in good grilling and supported them with literature, with sharpening their what-question and perfecting their approach (how). Peer-review at an early stage seems to work in this environment and students expressed support for this kind of interaction. (One could go further and ask similar topic-students to comment the paper of others, since I was able to group them according to their research ideas into several groups).

Regards,

Stefan

Encourage my student by giving an exercise in which he comes out with the first draft of the intended manuscript, gradually develop the paper with his/her involvement:

Another thought comes to mind. When I was in my BA program, during my junior year, I was invited and accepted into the Ronald E. McNair program as a research scholar. The purpose of the program was to train me to conduct graduate level research and writing with the intent that I would go on to graduate school. For my 8 weeks of the summer, working 30-40 hours a week, I was given a stipend. At the end of the program the opportunity to present my work to the group was followed by additional opportunities to present at conferences. It was the most significant experience of my academic career. The program has been highly successful, touching hundreds of lives and compelling many scholars to complete graduate school successfully. I recommend the model as an ideal. Preparing student pre-graduate school, when possible, makes more sense to me than trying to train or retrain, as is often the case, students during graduate school.

Hello everyone, It seems like there was an in depth discussion on this topic. I would like to ask another question related to the original one. "How do you teach/improve students to read or write scientific literature, whose primary language is not english. Infact when english is the second or third language of students/researchers, it is difficult to make them interested in these activities. Can anyone suggest an inspiring activity to help motivate students/young researcher from non-english speaking countries?"

Thanks and regards,

Tejas Sharma

@Tejas: If English is a second language it presents greater obstacles. I would get the the new researchers to search for papers in English that they are really interested in, to motivate them. Get them to mark how the paper is in academic English, and not in informal English. Then, give them a rubric to criticise an interesting paper. If they all have to choose their own papers themselves, they will not be able to copy answers. However, show them first how they can use Google Translate to convert their keywords to English, before searching Google Scholar. ESL students will usually experience a culture shock when they (horrors!) have to criticise something printed!

My system is as follows:

*** Do not TEACH anything. Start DOING it.

*** They will learn as they DO IT. Advance them through the steps one by one, they will ask the right question along the way ...

*** When I know what to write, I create the template for the paper. Without loss of generality to my answer, I use LaTex. I have the template for the conference/journal paper. We start writing ... I gather with the students, make a Dropbox shared directory, and we keep different revisions. Never delete the old revisions ... We go PAPER001, PAPER002, PAPER003, ... by the time we submit, we might be at PAPER045.

*** I start with an OUTLINE. We dump "homework" , i.e., what each person has to do, in each section.

*** We start writing ... WRITING is about three things : 1) Technical content, 2) STORY TELLING, 3) English (or, whatever other language it is written in)

*** Add, on top of that, there is LEARNING LATEX, which takes time.,

*** This is way too much to TEACH, so, this is why I don't try to teach up front, since it is overwhelming. We start DOING IT.

*** As we proceed through the sections that were allocated to each person (assuming a 3, 4 co-author paper), students will learn the LaTex language, and I am assuming that, everyone is up-and-up on (1) (technical content). They will make a mistake on (1), and I correct it., So, (1) is pretty straightforward

*** The big question is STORY TELLING. This makes the article FLOW. How do they learn that? It only comes with practice. I keep changing the way they describe things, and they keep looking at the way I change it, and their article starts flowing. This takes a while. It won't happen with one article. Some students take 1, 2, some take 5 articles to get there. My adviser was real hard on me, and forced me to write nicely flowing articles. I forced myself to learn. This was the best thing that happened to me ! More than the technical content !

*** How about (3), English ? No different than (2). If the student is reading a lot of other material, say, Business Week ,etc ... and trying to use a different phrase, a new grammar construct, etc ... in every new paper, (s)he will improve (2).

By the time we reach the end of the article, not only they learned a lot, but, also, we have a submission :) This is the best system that worked for me ...

Extensive literature search and continuous reading will certainly help a starter to at least think about writing his own paper

@Tolga Soyata. Exactly the same way, I have been taught. My mentor is also a very good teacher and he only expects one thing from us that don't repeat the same mistake again. Tolga, really you have illustrated all the necessary points and justified the question. But when it comes to guide them on their mistakes, I bet it is quite difficult to convince them for the same!

Thanks and regards,

Tejas Sharma

I am pretty INTERACTIVE with my students. Every article will have different issues. So, interactivity is the key. Since I am a co-author in them, we write it together, and the students learns as we write, rather than a big teaching session upfront.

Every student is different in HOW FAST and WHAT they pick up ... I adjust to their speed, and try to push them as fast as they can go without losing side of the most important thing : QUALITY of he article ... I make surethat, they understand that, it is OK to go slow, but, it is NOT acceptable to LOWER the quality.

In time, they start writing more and more ... with fewer of my edits ... eventually, they write everything, I barely have to make any changes ... I proof-read only, and the article is submitted ...

Indeed, there is a vast difference between writing a manuscript and attending a session on 'how to get yourself published?'!

@ian, when English is the second language for a student (and, in my Electrical Engineering world, this ratio is about 80%), the biggest challenge becomes English when writing a technical article, more than the technical content.

My adviser was a fabulous teacher, since he kept pushing me NOT to send an article unless the English was flawless. I am looking at how I communicated with my adviser. He would hand-mark his edits on the printout, and I would go change the article based on his hand-marked contents. Back then, we didn't use a collaboration program like CVS, or RCS, or SVN. We used a simpler system called PEN :)

When I went into academia, I realized that, this was a blessing in disguise. Now, I have the students printout the final version, hand-mark it, and have student change it. This allows the student to latch into my thinking, pick up grammar constructs, phrases, style and more... Also, (s)he will keep correcting his/her mistakes. If there is a continuous issue, I do a 10 minute lecture session, and that's usually sufficient. I have seen students improve their English about 3-5x faster this way.

Dear Soyata, Please tell us more about the structure and perspective of your lecture sessions. It seems an interesting solution.

@Babak, clarifying a few points: I was talk talking about writing a technical paper and submitting it to a conference or journal, by MYSELF and ONE or MORE GRADUATE STUDENTS. Without loss of generailty, I am assuming graduate students (typically Ph.D.). However, I have seen BS students do a real good job, MS students too ... This technique I am describing below works for every student ... Tested for 5 years, and proven ! Tested on almost 15 nationalities !!!

It usually starts by formulating an interesting idea that can be submitted ... That's great, technical content is ready ... let's start writing ... Oops ! there is a problem: the students do not have 1) story telling skills, 2) good English. My solution was to solve (2) which is a deal-breaker, although (1) is very important too. I was primarily responding to @Ian Kennedy, who brought up the ENGLISH issue, when you are dealing with foreign students (in my case, majority). Technical content is not the biggest problem, English is ...

I was suggesting the same solution that my adviser used:

*** Do not teach the student anything UPFRONT. This is tedious, boring and it causes attention deficit :)

*** Start writing ... Jump in with two feet ... Your actions will teach everything on the fly.

*** First, do the outline, and put in a "TO DO" list in the outline, just the shell. This will teach the students the TOP DOWN approach, i.e., putting together the shell, and thinking about everything at a MACRO level, without worrying about the details. The biggest mistake students make is THINKING ABOUT THE DETAILS BEFORE THINKING ABOUT THE OUTLINE (i.e., BIG PICTURE and the MESSAGE).

*** Then, write the ABSTRACT, which is the heart of the paper. This is where the STORY TELLING starts ... I usually write this myself, and let the student read it. After the first paper, I let the student write it, and I modify it. This teaches them how to SIMPLIFY THE MESSAGE, NOT BLUR IT.

*** Then, the INTRODUCTION starts ... This is also story telling, but a longer one. The biggest mistake people make is pay too much attention to the technical content, and forget the importance of ABSTRACT and INTRO. If these are not good and FLOWING, you lose the reviewer. The game is over. So, it is extremely important to have the student practice this. I let the student completely write this, and I ONLY HAND-MODIFY IT, GOOD AND OLD-FASHIONED WAY. Then, the student takes the hand-modified notes, and goes back to the document, and applies the changes. By looking at how you changed things and applying the changes to the document, (s)he is IMPROVING (1)story telling, (2) English. I INTEL=INTENTIONALLY DO NOT APPLY THE CHANGES MYSELF.

*** Then, we write the technical content ... Same thing

*** Then, the most important part : CONCLUSIONS. Ditto everything I said about the INTRO.

*** When the paper is done, it is 8 pages. We have to clip it down to 6, since the submission is 6 pages. I can't tell you how much this part teaches the student. Clipping a 6 sentence paragraph to 5 pages and keeping the same message teaches more ENGLISH and STORY TELLING skills then 6 hours of lecture ...

*** Then, we submit the paper, and there is a REBUTTAL period

*** When we have to write the REBUTTAL, this teaches the skills of WHAT YOU SAID WAS PERCEIVED AS SOMETHING ELSE, SINCE YOU THINK TOO MUCH LIKE YOU, YOU HAVE TO THINK LIKE THEM ...

That's my story in a nut shell ...

Thanks for clarifying your teaching technique in such accurate details. It was quit informative and useful. The only question is why did you insist on GRADUATE STUDENTS with too much stress. As you have said: "I have seen BS students do a real good job, MS students too ... " . Besides, just as a note, I am not a student; but a professional researcher. Thanks for sharing your experience again.

Babak, I think this system works for anyone. Since I specifically experienced them with grad students with a 80% majority, I figured I should note it. I had a few undergrad students go through this with me, and the results were similar.

As I said the method is fascinating and thank you for sharing it generously with us. I think any body can understand from your descriptions that years of practical experience is talking here. I do really appreciate your method and I do believe in its' outcomes. :)

In my view, first it deponds on students' education level whether they are undergarduate or postgarduate with undergarduate I usullay provide students with guidlines and check list to look at, but I think for undergarduate it would be so hard to remove the title and bastarct and sking them to write atitle unless they are provided alraedy with enough information and skills about acadmic redaing and writting

Beginning graduate students often have difficulty structuring a professional level argument -- especially for a given journal (journals differ somewhat in terms of what is considered normative/desirable in terms of their style and what to include where and how). So, let's say we are interested in writing an article in journal "x." I'll work with students closely on 5-10 excellent articles from a recent issue of that journal. The objective is to ask paragraph by paragraph (and sentence by sentence within a paragraph) what the authors are trying to do here (more abstractly). Almost invariably the abstracted answers form a "template" that tells readers and prospective writers what needs to be included and why paragraph by paragraph those "answers" structure the argument that is typical for this journal. Using 5-10 articles helps the students get at what is "common" across articles and avoid the more idiosyncratic variants. Different types of articles (reviews, research articles) have their own "templates"... Showing how to "template" like this can generalize to other tasks. For example, this also works extremely well with writing grants for a given granting agency (e.g., an R01 for NIH using examples of successful grants). Once we have the template, then students work on filling it out for their specific projects.

The scientific paper is a written and published for the first time communicating the results of an investigation. This definition limits the primary publications scientific article does not consider other documents published as review articles or monographs. This is due to reasons of homogeneity between social practice and the scientific community, it must be clearly distinguished from the original report of an investigation and that it is not original.

Confronting the scientific literature for the first time can be overwhelming. Not all scientists are good writer , many exaggerate the significance of their findings , and what is worse, are full of references indecipherable , at least for the novice reader . However, this literature must goad if they are to keep up with a theme and especially if you want to advance research .

In the reading process should ask these questions:

- What is the hypothesis that this study attempts to verify ?

- What are the main research questions ?

- What are the objectives of the article?

- What research had been done before on the subject ?

- How this study contributes to the discipline ?

- What are the sources of information used in this article?

- What were the methods used in the research?

- What are the data presented as evidence in this article?

- What are the main conclusions of the article?

Also be critical and ask:

- What is the importance or relevance of the research?

- Do you agree with the way the author dealt with the investigation?

- How appropriate are the procedures and investigative techniques used by the author ?

- To what extent the evidence substantiates the author's arguments ?

- Did the enough evidence to judge the results of the research for yourself ?

- The findings presented , can they be applied to other observations ( own or others) ?

- Are the conclusions adequately represent the population under study ?

- Do you agree with the conclusions ?

- Are the conclusions generalize too much or are careful enough ?

- The interpretations and reflections used in the article, seem to respond to a particular interest of the authors ?

The answers to the questions , may help to have a clear picture on the topics discussed, methods, results and the application to the solution of the initial problem.

Well, I might have come late to this discussion - but, usually students would complain if the article is more than 5 pages - and there is no article (talking social sciences here) that would be a peer-reviewed and five pages - it would be more.

Thus, to help them, would identify three-four questions - then, I will advise them to read the abstract and the conclusion and see how they can try then to find the answers to the questions which I try always to take them of the same words from within the article... and it seems it works!

Regards

Theodora Issa

I think the best way is to give them the knowledge of very good and high quality scientific papers in their field of interest.

Regards

João

Extensive and regular Journal clubs and constant discussion would really help post graduate students to have a go at writing papers

I think first find out the good journal in the area of research the go through the paper of reputed journals. it will not only improve the writing skills even improve the knowledge.

In my opinion, abstract, proposed algorithm and result are main important part to under stand a research paper.