ACADEMIC WRITING 2

The academic writing course for students of the Ca’ Foscari international college (from various disciplines including humanities) aims at the familiarization with the structure and the drafting of scientific articles, showing that all scientific publications in journals have common characters and a common writing strategy regardless of the specific research discipline.

The expected learning outcomes can be divided into the following specific aspects:
1. Knowledge and understanding
i) knowledge of the different types of scientific publications, ii) knowledge of the sections of an article and their preparation.
2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
i) Ability to draft a simple example of a complete scientific article in all its parts.
3. Ability to judge
i) ability to organize experimental data for the drafting of article ii) ability to summarize in writing a scientific article.
4. Communication skills
i) Ability to appropriately highlight the strengths of research results in a context of comparison with literature, ii) ability to describe the state of the art in a particular research sector in drafting the introduction of scientific articles , iii) ability to prepare graphic material (diagrams, tables, figures) of high quality and clarity.
5. Learning skills
i) ability to evaluate the quality and prestige of a scientific journal; ii) ability to draft scientific articles and scientific reports (including oral ones).

In order to fully understand the teaching, no particular prerequisites are required

The course treats the following topics in order:
-description of what is meant by scientific publication, experimental scientific method, research guided by curiosity or by problem solving
-descriptions of the different types of scientific journals and comparison, impact factor, green, gold and diamond open access
-preparation of the title
- preparation of the abstract
-affiliation and list of authors, common criteria to choose the co-authors of a scientific work
- preparation of the introduction, typical structure and key steps towards the presentation of the results
- results and discussion, in which order to report them and following which criteria
- fundamental importance of the meticulous preparation of figures, scheme and tables
-conclusions and future outlook of the paper
- preparation of the bibliography

websites
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/acs-webinars/collections/writing.html

Written multiple choice exam (10-12 questions) on the course topics and preparation of a simple scientific article written on a topic chosen by the student (also based on imaginative data) of the length of a couple of pages following a model provided by the teacher. In the article, all parts of the publication must be prepared by following the instructions given in class. The article will not be evaluated based on the experimental data, rather on how these data are presented, on the effectiveness of the title, on the clarity of the abstract, on the ability of the introduction to be concise nevertheless to bring the reader to the heart of the results reported in the next section results and discussion, on the clarity of the figures, tables and diagrams. The cover letter and / or a graphical abstract to be added as material to the scientific article will also be assessed. The final mark will be the average between the test mark and the mark attributed to the scientific article plus cover letter or graphical abstract.

The course is organized in lectures (2.5 hours each) in the classroom with the aid of a projector and PowerPoint slides that will be provided to students and possibly uploaded to the moodle platform.
On the University's "moodle" platform there are pdf files relating to the slides of the presentations projected during the lessons.

The lecturer is available for discussion with the students on the topics of the course, Please, get in contact by email: alesca@unive.it
Accessibility, Disability and Inclusion
Accommodation and support services for students with disabilities and students with specific learning impairments:
Ca’ Foscari abides by Italian Law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) regarding support
services and accommodation available to students with disabilities. This includes students with mobility, visual, hearing and other disabilities (Law 17/1999), and specific learning impairments (Law 170/2010). In the case of disability or impairment that requires accommodations (i.e., alternate testing, readers, note takers or interpreters) please contact the Disability and Accessibility Offices in Student Services: disabilita@unive.it

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