However good your science is, if it is not communicated effectively, its value is lessened. Whether you like it or not, the modern scientist is a professional writer. Yet despite the ‘publish or perish’ culture in scientific research, almost no investment is made into teaching researchers how to become better writers. Since 2006, Craig Riddell has helped edit hundreds of scientific papers to successful publication, many for high-impact factor journals. This experience led to the development of a bespoke scientific writing course, Effective Scientific Writing (ESW), for researchers working in educational institutions and commercial research institutes. Writing is a fundamental professional development skill that can and should be learned. ESW uses real-life examples to change your way of thinking about writing and your approach to it.

Successful graduates of the course will:

− develop a philosophy of scientific writing

− consistently apply key principles of style to their writing so that their message is communicated in a clear, concise and reader-focused way

− understand and produce the structure the editor and reader requires for each section of a scientific paper

− be aware of the most common grammar mistakes made by non-natives in scientific writing and, thereby, avoid making them (or at least significantly reduce them)

− not only develop writing skills but also the enhanced editing skills necessary to properly self-edit, as well as to give constructive feedback on the work of their students and colleagues

Furthermore, and this is crucial, many participants actually learn to enjoy the writing process; partly because the sense of structure gives them more confidence in what they are doing, and partly because they learn to recognize

that by thinking (really thinking) about how to improve their writing they are also thinking about how to improve their science.

In the end, it is all about the output, which is that, typically, all participants demonstrate improved scientific writing and, thus, are much better positioned to get their scientific papers published.

All materials are supplied as needed on the course.

1 Text analysis: What are the key elements of good writing style?

2 Achieving clarity: keeping it simple, direct and concise; removing redundancy

3 Complexity as the enemy of clarity: recognizing what causes it and learning how to break it up

4 Articles change meaning: how to more regularly choose the one that accurately reflects your meaning

5 Key principles of word order: using them to guide and test your sentence structure (syntax)

6 'empty verbs' and 'lazy nouns': recognizing and eliminating nominalizations

7 Using phrases strategically: repositioning them to make your message stronger

8 Understanding clauses and sentence types

9 First impressions: the qualities of a good Title

10 Model Abstract: structure brings clarity and flow to your 'story'

11 Toning your Abstract: issues of tense, voice, verb and modality

12 Mid-semester and end-of-semester Abstract presentations: edited, restructured, edited again, rewritten to a publishable level

13 Revision

14 Revision