How To Write a Paper to Optimize its Chances for Publication Success, Part 2

It’s the season when many interns’ thoughts turn to Publications – how to translate the work everyone’s been doing into Something Worthy of Acceptance at one’s Best Venue. For some, this is a daunting prospect. Paper writing takes practice, for sure, but it’s a practice of Skills. To that end: a two part workshop on paper skills for successful publication.

Two Session Workshop:
8/09: Part 1 is about learning some key skills of paper writing
8/16: Part 2 is about practicing those skills with some coaching/feedback/critique (TODAY)

The goal of this two session workshop will be in session one, to go over skills for the gnarliest parts of papers: main story to tell, abstracts, intros, and conclusions; session two will be an opportunity to review your practice of these skills together. Nothing builds skills like trying to explain what’s working, what’s not, and how to make a work in progress better.

Speaker Details

Your Coach for this Skills Development Workshop: m.c. schraefel is a professor of computer science and human performance at the University of Southampton. Relative to MSR, she holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellowship, co-supported by MSR, to investigate Creativity, Innovation and Discovery in Science. The work so far has led her to the stunning axiom behind every brain there is a body, and that the inverse is also true. How to optimize this relationship may be at the heart of creativity, innovation and the cure for cancer. This brain/body relationship opens up a rather interesting dilemma for research: what if we haven’t found the cure for cancer because our offices best support sitting rather than say standing or moving? What if we would produce better cognitive results in less time if we actually worked less and slept more? If happiness makes us smarter, how do we design to support that? Is there such a thing as too much bliss for work?

m.c. has also developed and repeatedly run a graduate seminar on research methods for both electronics and computer science students across the curriculum where a big chunk of that course is how to present one’s results for successful publication. m.c. herself has taught undergrad and graduate courses in a number of faculties including, science, engineering, humanities and arts. She has published across these fields as well. In Computer Science, she has lead or been involved in 4 best papers (one of which is shared with MSR’s Ryen White), 1 best note, 1 honorable mention, and 1 best conference presentation (that latter was perhaps due to the snorkel and skate board). Despite all this practice, paper writing is still not a favorite activity, but, as m.c. asserts, it is a skill. And any skill can be taught. And then practice, practice, practice.

Date:
Speakers:
m.c. schraefel
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
    • Portrait of Jeff Running

      Jeff Running