BIOL3144L Writing resources

This is a writing-intensive course, and in order to succeed in it, you need to be able to write succinct, comprehensive papers about your investigations in scientifically accepted format and in a good, grammatically correct English. The good news is that you can get a lot of help along the way from the instructor and other resources, and that by working on your assignments you will learn how to communicate and present your ideas in a clear, professional way that is understandable and acceptable by other professionals. The bad news is that it would involve commitment and hard work on your part, as well as willingness to cope with the temporary failure, to accept imperfections and to work on improving them (or was it the good news?).

In this course, you will write three module reports summarizing results of multiple laboratory exercises devoted to the studies of stream, forest or pond ecosystems, respectively. These papers should follow strict guidelines and be written in the format accepted by one of the top peer-reviewed scientific journals, Oikos.

Guidelines for writing the module report paper can be found here.
Please make sure you carefully read them and strictly adhere to them in your writing. Your papers will be judged on their content, quality of results, critical analysis of your data and of the previous research, as well as the correct format, grammar and spelling.

In addition to the above mentioned guidelines, I recommend that you check out these sources (specifically written for the students' audience):
S. Steingraber et al. Guidelines for writing scientific papers.
W. Magnusson. How to write backwards

A highly recommended resource, which is available free of charge to all UNC Charlotte students is Writing
Resource Center (http://www.uncc.edu/writing/WRCindex.html). They provide one-on-one sessions with the
students to help them improve their writing. Although they may not know all the conventions of scientific writing,
but they can provide excellent help with your grammar, spelling and style. Moreover, they do not simply
correct your mistakes - they will teach you how to handle those issues yourself in the future.  

Additional links you may find useful:

Writing Guide in Biology. George Mason University.
Writing help for scientific papers, Cornell University
How to write a scientific paper (  highly recommended to read but not recommended to use)