Research write-up summary

On Tuesday, 9th February 2010, a workshop was organized by the NUR-CGIS at Mater Boni Consilii. This is titled, Writing-up research results as a critical component of the research process: a participatory workshop aimed at developing research writing skills. The workshop was aimed at developing research writing skills among NUR academic and research faculties. The guest presenter is Prof. David Taylor, Professor of Geography, Trinity College, University of Dublin.

Writing a good research report takes time and effort, it is a skill that most of us need at some point, and it doesn’t have to be painful. A research report is the way that information is shared in the scientific community. It is a summary of what you did, how you did it, what you found, and your interpretation of your results. Until the work is communicated or made public it’s invisible. The research process is not yet completed until it is communicated, goes through evaluation by peers and can be repeated by the rest of the scientific community.

The need to develop a personal strategy for writing-up was emphasized during the workshop, and Prof Taylor provided some guidelines for developing such a strategy. Also asking colleagues to read through each other’s draft papers is important, as they will inevitably spot the minor mistakes and typos that they missed and can provide feedback on whether the writing is sufficiently clear and concise. To learn by doing, attendees at the workshop got the opportunity to review some draft manuscripts being developed by their colleagues. Prof Taylor also suggested success, for example when a paper was accepted for publication or when a proposal was successful, should be marked with a small celebration.

Attendance at the workshop featured a good mix of disciplines. A total of 20 NUR faculties, mostly from CGIS were in attendance. Prof. Taylor thanked Dr. Felicia Akinyemi and the Administration/IT staff for the organization of the workshop, encouraging the participants at the workshop to write. Prof. Jean Nduwamungu (Director, CGIS NUR) in closing, expressed his heartfelt thanks to Prof. Taylor for delivering the training workshop and the benefits to be derived from it.

"Finished that arduous and meticulously studied piece of research? Not if it has yet to be written-up and successfully passed through a process of independent, peer-review. In the sciences, independent peer-review generally involves submitting a research write-up in the form of an article to an internationally-recognised journal, and ideally one with a high impact in the field of study" says Prof. David Taylor.