Finnish Doctoral Programme in Oral Sciences FINDOS-Turku and the Faculty of Medicine Postgraduate Education Unit PGE organized a two-day academic writing course “Academic reading, writing, and reviewing” towards the end of November. The course raised interest among doctoral candidates and other academic staff.
Teaching academic writing is one of the most important tasks of doctoral training. Writing takes time, and a writing process is not necessarily any faster or easier for even an experienced researcher.
The course “Academic reading, writing, and reviewing” covered issues concerning academic writing extensively. In addition, topics during the course included acting as a scientific reviewer, how to critically read expert texts and also how to deal with so-called “predatory journals”. To conclude the second day of the course, a workshop was set up, in which participants completed practical exercises related to plagiarism among other things and shared experiences from the review process of publications.
The course was taught by Professor Vibeke Bælum from the University of Aarhus and Professor Peter Svensson. Both are editors-in-chief: Bælum of European Journal of Oral Sciences and Svensson of Journal of Oral Rehabilitation. Altogether approx. 80 doctoral candidates, supervisors and other teaching and research staff attended the course.
Vice Director of the FINDOS-Turku doctoral programme, Assistant Professor Ulvi Gürsoy, was responsible for the course and its planning. The course was funded by the Faculty of Medicine Postgraduate Education Unit PGE.