BackgroundThe Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences (SUND) is part of the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) and contributes to the understanding of disease and it’s prevention, health promotion, diagnostics and treatment.
SUND is one of the largest faculties for health and medical sciences in Europe. In addition to its 1,350 researchers and 1,550 PhD students, the Faculty is home to 7,800 graduate students – future doctors, dentists, veterinarians, and pharmacists and health science professionals.
Many of SUND’s 7,800 graduate students will start publishing their work to share their research and contribute to scientific development; collectively the Faculty generates over 21,000 publications each year.
The leaders of two graduate study programs at SUND (Neuroscience and Molecular Medicine) felt their graduate students were learning too late how to navigate the publishing process, and often learning through experience alone. Furthermore, the majority of students lacked an inside view into the editorial process at journals.
To give their graduate students the opportunity to develop their writing and publishing skills earlier in their careers, and to help them really get ‘behind the scenes’ of what it takes to publish, SUND’s Neuroscience and Molecular Medicine study programs invited the publisher, Nature Research, to provide on-site training.
On 29-30 October 2019, the Nature Research training service, Nature Research Academies*, ran a two-day training workshop at the Faculty. Around 60 graduate students from the Neuroscience and Molecular Medicine program attended.
The workshop covered a comprehensive range of publishing topics including: Effective Academic Writing, Logical Manuscript Structure, Publishing Ethics, Effective Submission Strategies and Successfully Navigating Peer Review and Editorial Decisions. The training was delivered by Dr Jeffrey Robens, a publishing expert from Nature Research who has conducted 200+ Nature Research Academies workshops worldwide.
Hosting the Nature Research Academies workshop has enabled SUND to equip its graduate students with important knowledge and skills in how to write, submit, and publish manuscripts. When asked to rate the workshop, the attendees gave the following feedback:
“The best seminar on writing and navigation of journal article submission I have ever attended.”
“All of it was really good! I’ve learned so many things and will for sure use much of it in the future when writing, submitting, revising papers.”
Looking to the future, the Faculty and students can use the Nature Research Academies insights to improve the quality of their publications and achieve success with their publications.
On behalf of Dr Jeffrey Robens, we would like to wish SUND’s Neuroscience and Molecular Medicine programs every success and we look forward to working with SUND again in the future.
“It was the best workshop I have attended during my scientific career.”
Student Faculty of Health and Medical SciencesUniversity of Copenhagen
