Your Peer-Reviewed Publication: process and product

This online workshop gives you tools to craft peer-reviewed publications that meet the needs and the expectations of your readers. We consider (1) the product: how to meet the requirements of clarity, coherence, concision, and persuasion at the English word, sentence, sentence to sentence, paragraph and discourse levels, and (2) the process: how to move from data to story, to motivate yourself to write, and to draft and revise to create clarity and flow in your writing. The workshop will cover topics such as:

• Understanding the writing process and your own writing style. Overcoming writer's block and procrastination, and making writing part of your daily research.
• Tools for finding your storyline and crafting your draft: focused freewriting, macrotexting, outlining, storyboarding, and speedwriting.
• Crafting your take-home message, clearly communicating results, making clear your contribution, and engaging readers.
• Meeting the needs of your reader and managing their energy.  Reader versus writer-oriented scientific text.
• Contrasting weak and strong paper writing; turning weak into strong and common shortcomings and how to avoid them.
• Tips for paper parts: titles, abstracts, introductions, methods, results, figures, discussion, and conclusions. Structuring information effectively at all levels of text.
• How to write clear, concise, and compelling sentences that communicate your ideas and persuade your readers.
• Solving flow problems: creating smooth, readable texts that guide readers logically from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, and section to section.
• Strategies for revising: seeing your own writing as a reader does, self and peer-review, and reverse engineering text.
• Polishing your paper: word and sentence checks, punctuation, and online writing tools.

• Welcome email: Participants receive a schedule and script approximately 10 days / one week before the first session.
• Participants will be asked to briefly describe their research and writing challenges, and to send a PDF of a peer-reviewed publication in their field (not their own or from the University of Vienna).
• Supplementary handouts on topics to come and covered are provided during the course of the workshop. Participants are expected to do some preparation before the sessions.
• Participants’ own writing: Participants are asked to bring a piece of their own writing (draft and/or final form) to the workshop for self and, if they wish, peer review.
• Participants are given various opportunities via exercises to work on their paper(s) during the workshop.