{"id":873,"date":"2019-12-14T12:58:13","date_gmt":"2019-12-14T12:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/?p=873"},"modified":"2019-12-20T15:02:46","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T15:02:46","slug":"science-writing-courses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/science-writing-courses\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 5 Science Writing Courses for Academics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Did you know that more than <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.cdnsciencepub.com\/21st-century-science-overload\/\" target=\"_blank\">2.5 million<\/a> scientific papers are published each year? That is a huge field \u2013 so it can provide many opportunities for publishing your work. If you\u2019re new to this field or simply want to refresh your knowledge, we&#8217;ve collated some science writing courses that are sure to help brush up on your skills and help you break into the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/science-journalist-salary\/\">lucrative business of science writing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/online.stanford.edu\/courses\/som-y0010-writing-sciences\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Stanford University &#8211; Writing for the Sciences<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This 8-week course is from Stanford\u2019s School\nof Medicine, but it works equally well for other scientific fields. The first 4\nweeks focus on the principles of effective writing, while the second half\nprovides more research-specific tutoring. The latter includes topics such as\npeer review, authorship, and communicating scientific ideas to an average\naudience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The material of this science writing course is delivered through video lectures, quizzes, exercises, and 2 short papers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/masterclasses.nature.com\/online-course-in-scientific-writing-and-publishing\/16507840\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Nature Masterclasses &#8211; Scientific Writing and Publishing Online Course<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This course has 11 hours\u2019 worth of content\ndivided into 10-minute video sessions. It\u2019s aimed at students and researchers\nin the fields of natural sciences. The videos are subtitled and transcribed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The content is divided into 3 parts, each with\nits own certificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Part 1 focuses on the actual\nwriting process. It includes instructions for writing correctly and with the\nappropriate style. In addition, it details how to structure a paper and how to\npresent data.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Part 2 is concerned with\npublishing. It provides advice on finding a journal, making it through the selection\nprocess, editing, and measuring impact.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Part 3 is for writing and\npublishing a peer-review paper.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.coursera.org\/learn\/scholarly-communication\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology &#8211; Scholarly Communication<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This free science writing course has 14 hours\u2019 worth of video material and is available on Coursera. It\u2019s good at easing the new writer\u2019s anxiety because it presents common problems and how to fix them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The course focuses on the unwritten rules of scholarly writing, as well as how to organize ideas, build arguments, and self-edit for science articles. It also teaches you how to write in the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"IMRaD (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/writingcenter.gmu.edu\/guides\/writing-an-imrad-report\" target=\"_blank\">IMRaD<\/a> format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cgi.duke.edu\/web\/sciwriting\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Duke University &#8211; Scientific Writing Resource<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This course is not about grammar. It\u2019s more\nfocused on clear, concise communication principles. It\u2019s divided into 3\nlessons, each one takes about 45 minutes to complete. All lessons have examples\nand exercises provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first lesson is about subjects and action. It explains how to write sentences in a way that takes the least amount of effort to understand, making the work accessible to a variety of audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second lesson is about emphasizing and\ncohesion. In other words, you will learn how to cue the reader to the most\nimportant part of your sentence, and how to make sentences flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The third lesson is about concision and simplicity. This is important not only for scholarly journals but for basic science articles for other media outlets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As you may have inferred, this science writing course is more useful when you\u2019re in the editing stage, but some tips can be translated over to the writing process, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/keneckert.com\/engkorea\/writing\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Dr. Kenneth Eckert\u2019s Academic Writing Site<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This handy website links to a video course\nhosted on YouTube. It provides detailed, hands-on instructions for writing each\npart of your scholarly paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It also dedicates a lot of time to grammar and\nformatting, which may be useful if you struggle with that in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Although all of these courses are about the academic side of science writing, they serve slightly different purposes for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/becoming-a-science-journalist-dalmeet-singh-chawla\/\">science writer who is trying to break into the field<\/a> or maintain their ground. We recommend sampling several of these science writing courses to find out which suits you best. Happy writing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Photo by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@scienceinhd?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Science in HD<\/a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/s\/photos\/scientist-writing?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Unsplash<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With 2.5m scientific papers published annually, science writing is a great career option for those with an interest in the field. Here are our picks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing-courses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clippings.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}