Effective Science Communication
Scientific work is incomplete unless the results are disseminated to a wider
community. Effective science communication is a formidable task to
everyone, but is important to the individuals, organization, scientific
colleagues and funding organizations.
Dissemination of science is essentially through paper writing and
presentation.
Scientific paper writing
Preparing manuscripts that get published is critically important for many of
today’s scientific professionals and their organizations. Scientific publishing
capabilities, both in terms of quality and quantity, to a great extent reflect
the strength of science and technology of a country. India is yet to achieve
success in this aspect. India publishes a huge number of journals but, the
quality of these publications remains to be vastly improved. In the absence
of a regular training, young researchers lack the skill of effective science
communication, which gets manifested even after they gain experience in
their field of expertise.
The training offers a full curriculum of writing for scientific professionals. It is
about organisation and taking a systematic approach to preparing and
publishing a scientific paper. You will learn skills and techniques for turning
scientific data into publishable papers. These skills will significantly improve
the chances of having papers accepted for publication by editors and
reviewers. Our unique and powerful framework enables scientists,
academicians and students to gain control and consistency in their
communications.
It will be a learning-by-doing programme with around 25% instruction time
and the rest working on a real journal paper with support from peers and
facilitators. At the end, the trainees would have a completed draft
manuscript.
By attending the Writing Scientific Papers workshop, you/your employees
will learn to:

Assess one of their manuscripts against a set of proven criteria for a good
scientific paper
 Apply the IMRAD format to effectively write sections of their paper (i.e.
introduction, materials & methods, results, and discussion)
 Assess the clarity and effectiveness of their writing
 Incorporate graphs, statistics and visuals into their text
 Write informative yet concise abstracts.
Scientific Presentation
The communication expert Garr Reynolds says that of the thousands of
presentations given every day, most are dull and ineffective; not because
presenters lack intelligence, but because they lack knowledge about what
makes for a great presentation. A typical presentation consists of a stream of
information in the form of bullet points squeezed into a 20-minute time slot.
According to John Sweller, this is often a disaster. Daniel Pink says that this
type of “left-brain” reasoning was important for the “information age”, but not
for the “right-brain” reasoning of “conceptual age” of today. It is being
increasingly realized that right-brain directed aptitudes are necessary for
successful professionals in the more interdependent world we live.
The Scientific Presentation training aims to improve the delivery of scientific
and technical information/advice. It is designed to provide the skills needed
to communicate clearly and confidently to a wide range of audiences. It will
be a learning-by-doing workshop with around 25% instruction time and the
rest will be spent organising, preparing and delivering a short scientific
presentation, and receiving feedback from peers and facilitators. At the end
participants would have a completed short presentation. By attending the
Scientific Presentation workshop, you/your employees will learn to create
and deliver presentation that is different, simple, more visual, more natural
and ultimately far more powerful.
Who should attend?
Developing expertise in respective core areas of science in different from
developing expertise in science communication. These workshops will be
useful to all those who have keen desire to excel in their professional
scientific career; to those who are experiencing difficulties in getting their
messages across to relevant audiences, and want to improve their scientific
writing and presentation skills. In several developed countries, even senior
level scientists, professors and managers attend mandatory workshops at
periodic intervals to refresh their knowledge on science communication.
Scientists, researchers, academicians, managers and students from research
institutions, universities, colleges, science management bodies and nongovernment organizations will be benefitted by the programmes.
Faculty
We have a faculty of scientists and professors, who have years of
experience, travelling overseas and within India, and imparting science
communication training to Indian and overseas participants. We also have
overseas experts in the faculty.
Training modules
Scientific Writing training: 2, 3 or 4 days
Scientific Presentation training: 2, 3 or 4 days
Depending on the requirement, the workshops can be arranged either (i) as
two independent programmes, or (ii) back-to-back programmes, or (iii) with
days of break between the two programmes for the same set of trainees.
The intake for each programme is 10 to 20 participants.