Most of the section members or students of Faculty of Physics, Vilnius University in general are in the earliest stages of their scientific careers, thus, only a few of us are familiar with scientific publishing, taking into account both the concepts (f.e. scientific paper composition and process of peer reviewing) and the technical part (manuscript preparation, reference managemen). During the activity, lectures of invited speakers (“How to publish your manuscript” by Peter E. Andersen and “How to publish your manuscript: Editorial point of view” by Rachel Won) and chapter members (“Introduction to scientific publishing using LaTeX” by Vytautas Butkus) were held.
The lectures of the invited speakers took place during the “Open readings 2015” conference and attracted around 200 participants, including members of the section and faculty staff. The lecture by Vytautas Butkus was attended by ~20 people, excluding the chapter members. There also were several workshops, where the chapter members and the faculty students were introduced to LaTeX/LyX scientific text preparation tools. Some of the attendees were involved into development of lecture notes of the “Mathematical Physics” subject. The lecture notes were printed and distributed and the selected books about scientific publishing were bought. Workshops were continuously attended by 3-to-5 chapter members and ~5 students. The participants were introduced to many different tips and tricks in scientific publishing. In the lecture and workshops, led by the chapter members, participants were introduced to the history and specificity of the scientific publishing (journals, use of language, publishing and peer review process, etc.) as well as to LaTeX/LyX tools for scientific documents preparation.
This event provided a great understanding of the publishing process, essential skills and practical applications. OSA and SPIE Student Chapters of Vilnius University also played a huge role in the funding of this activity. The funding was used to reimburse the travel expenses (flight tickets, airport transfer and local transport cost and the accommodation cost) of our main lecturer – the editor of Nature Photonics, Rachel Won. We have also bought several books on scientific writing: “Trees, maps and theorems” by Jean-luc Doumont, “The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing” by Richard Dawkins and “The Craft of Scientific Writing” by Michael Alley. They are held in our special Students Scientific Association library and are open for every young mind.
Look here the video of Rachel Won talk “How to Publish Your Manuscript”!
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