Publishing in different academic communities requires writing skills as well as background knowledge about the often implicit "rules of the game" in different disciplines, communities and groups. In this course we will discuss the following issues and train the respective skills:

• introductory reflections on academic research and its key logic
• fundamental differences between writing a master thesis and publishing journal papers
• the process of academic writing (structuring techniques; tools to overcome writer´s block; how to make academic writing more enjoyable)
• the mostly implicit rules of the different communities (challenges of inter- and transdisciplinary research; paradigms, schools and approaches)
• the anatomy of a successful journal paper and how to ensure high quality of submissions
• key characteristics of review processes and how to respond to reviewer comments

Andre Martinuzzi, an experienced coordinator of EU-wide projects in a broad variety of disciplines and head of the WU Institute for Managing Sustainability, will hold this course in collaboration with Svetlana Ivanova, who worked for more than three years in an independent research organization in Italy.

After attending this course, students will be able to:

• understand the logics and practices of different scientific communities
  
• position a study in a stream of literature
  
• identify key success factors of publishing in scholarly journals
  
• deploy several methods for making scientific writing more enjoyable
  
• avoid the most important mistakes in publishing scientific findings
  
• further improve their writing skills
  

You have to attend at least 80% of the course blocks.

The course is organized in four modular sessions. Participants will be working on improving their own academic paper(s) throughout the course and process sample material and several sets of guidelines. To a certain extent, the course design can be adapted to the needs and questions of the participants, in order to provide them with the best possible support in deepening and enhancing their knowledge and skills. The working language and all written materials will be in English.

Successful completion of this course requires attendance of at least 80% of the sessions and of all the assignments. Grade evaluation will be based on

1. active participation during the course blocks (1/3)

2. a summary of the lessons learned during the course, which will take the form of an individual guideline for publishing in academic journals. This should be about 2.000 words and should be submitted four weeks after the last block (1/3)

3. three small assignments between the blocks (1/3):

3a. a pecha kucha presentation of your own community (see http://www.pechakucha.org/)
3b. an abstract on a journal paper
3c. a brief review of this journal paper

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