A workshop on “Writing and Presenting Research” conducted by CACTUS/Editage on the 25th and 26th of November 2013 at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Turkey, was a remarkable success. The workshop sought to illustrate some of the best practices that could be observed in order to write an effective research manuscript or make a persuasive presentation.
Ravi Murugesan—experienced communicator, trainer, and published author—conducted the workshop, which was attended by over 400 graduate students, early career researchers, and a few senior researchers from ITU as well as other universities in Istanbul. The workshop constituted two sessions that were repeated on both days. Through the sessions, Ravi aimed to orient researchers to communicating effectively.
The first lecture was on Writing Research Papers. In this session, Ravi addressed topics such as ethics in scientific writing, avoiding plagiarism, choosing the right target journal, understanding the peer review process, and ways of writing a paper. He also provided tips on writing for and reaching out to the larger scientific community. The second session of the workshop expounded on Presenting at Conferences. During this session, Ravi educated the participants about scientific conferences, sharing some basic principles to be followed when preparing conference abstracts, background on visual as well as content related aspects critical to creating and designing a poster presentation, and tips on delivering an impactful oral presentation.
The participants found the lectures to be informative, interesting, and helpful. In particular, they felt that such workshops helped them develop a better understanding of the aspects that need to be considered while writing a scientific article, preparing to present a poster, or making an oral presentation.
Since 2002, Editage, CACTUS, has promoted the dissemination of knowledge about effective scientific communication and the workshop at ITU was one such effort in this direction. CACTUS/Editage has successfully conducted similar trainings for researchers across the globe. Further, in keeping with the commitment toward helping researchers understand good publication practices and toward helping journals engage in open dialogue on issues concerning the research sphere, CACTUS launched Editage Insights, a portal exclusively dedicated to helping researchers understand and develop good publication practices.
