Writing a Scientific Paper

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/S_WSP

Course Objective

The course ’Writing a Scientific Paper’ has the following objectives: Knowledge and Understanding: - Students gain insight and knowledge of the publication process in academia. Application / communication (skills): - Students are able to prepare a paper for publication in a scientific outlet. - They improve their writing skills. - They are able to analyse a problem from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives. - They acquire the skills to prepare and present research results and interpretations in a way that is fit for scientific publication. Judgement formation: - Students develop the skills to make critical, balanced, and responsible judgements about the quality of scientific articles (composition, writing style, argumentation etc.). - They reflect on the social and ethical aspects involved in social scientific research, particularly related to the publication process. - They reflect critically on the scientific and societal relevance of research results.

Course Content

In this course, students gain insight and knowledge of the publication process in general and of writing scientific articles in particular. At the end of the course, students should have finished a paper that can be submitted to a peer-reviewed international journal. To get to this end, the course coaches the students in their writing skills and in finding the right form and formulations to present their findings and conclusions. Over the four weeks of classes, we focus on topics like research relevance, formulating your research question, article composition, use of concepts and visuals, connecting theory-empirics-conclusions, and submitting to a journal. In the assessment there is a strong emphasis on one’s own research projects, while we also engage in peer review and learning from the experience of other, more senior scholars.

Teaching Methods

The teaching mixes interactive lectures, working groups and workshops:
• The interactive lectures are there to present general academic writing principles and examples of good publication practice.
• In the working groups students present their own work and review each other’s work.
• In the workshops, invited professionals talk about their own “behind the scenes” experiences in preparing their work and getting it published. All sessions require active preparation so that students come to them with a clear idea about what the focus is of each session, what they aim to learn, and what questions they have.

Method of Assessment

The main form of assessment is a scientific paper (6-8,000 words) that must be produced by the end of the course (70%). This paper needs to be complemented by a short reflection note (800-1,200 words) in which the student discusses the main lessons they take away from the course and how these have in-formed some of the critical choices made in composing the scientific paper. The scientific paper is assessed against the following five criteria:Focus & relevanceStructurePresentation & writingFormatting; andIncorporation of course input. The remaining 30% of the final grade involves an assessment of the participation in the course, in particular on the production of intermediate products and on the constructive engagement with the work of others.

Literature

will be announced in due course and will be made available on Canvas.

Target Audience

Second-year students of the research master Social Sciences for a Digital Society.