Scientific Publications and Presentations in Hydraulic Engineering

This course aims to provide an understanding of the key components of scientific publications and scientific presentations in the fields of hydraulic and environmental engineering.

Publications and presentations are an essential part within a scientific career as research results, no matter how spectacular they are, are not complete as long as they are not published and have been adequately communicated to the professional community. While the knowledge of undergraduate and graduate students is primarily measured through the performance in exams, PhD-students and scientists are measured, and become known, by their publications and performance at conferences. Thus a scientist must not only carry out research, but must also have the ability to communicate research results. However, the education of scientists at universities is mainly committed to technical aspects, and education related to communication skills is largely neglected. Therefore this course, structured in four parts, is designed to help young scientists to develop their scientific writing and oral communication skills in order to clearly present their research findings.

In the first part, the publication process of a scientific paper will be highlighted from a journal point of view by explaining the submission, review, decision, and publication process as well as the roles of the journal editor, associate editors, reviewers, and authors.

In the second part, we will explore the typical structure of scientific articles considering general rules for the presentation of the paper content such as language, writing style, figures etc.

In the third part, we will peruse the review process due to its significance for the publication process. We will learn how a paper-review is done, how criticism can be formulated in a non-offensive way, and how authors should respond to criticism in the rebuttal letter to the journal.

In the fourth part, we will train oral communication skills through presentations. Each participant will present her/his research topic to the class in form of a typical conference presentation. The individual sessions, including a brief discussion of the scientific content of the presentations, will be chaired by the participants. Following the presentations, the performance of the presenter and chairman will be discussed.

The goals of the course are to enable young scientists to prepare manuscripts of high (formal) quality for submission to peer-reviewed journals in order to have a higher chance for publication; to understand what happens with a submitted paper during the review process; to carry out a review for a journal; to give clear and focused presentations; and to chair presentations.


Skills:
At the end of the course the students should be able to
- explain the submission, review and publication process of a journal paper as well the role of the journal editor, associate editor, and reviewers in the different stages of the publication process
- prepare a clear, focused and structured manuscript for the communication of research results in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings
- rewrite manuscripts taking reviewer suggestions into account;
- prepare rebuttal letters to journals for the resubmission of revised manuscripts (and hence to respond to criticism of reviewers in an adequate way)
- evaluate and criticise manuscripts for journals as a reviewer and communicate criticism in a review-report in a clear and constructive way
- prepare clear and focused presentations and communicate own research in an effective way
- understand the role and significance of the chairman at conferences;

This course will be taught in English language and conducted in a discussion format which will be structured around the four main parts of the course. There will be no regular class-meetings; instead we will meet in the form of a total of five half-day to full day seminars in which the main topics will be discussed in class. The meeting dates will be scheduled together with the participants. Students are expected to prepare for, attend, and participate in each session.

Written assignment: The participants will be asked to prepare a review report of a scientific paper. For this purpose, we will simulate a typical review process of a journal manuscript, where the course-teacher will act as editor and assign the participants as reviewers. In case a participant volunteers a paper for review, he will have the role as author who then needs to respond to the reviewer comments in form of a rebuttal letter. The written assignment is compulsory and the results of the review process will be discussed in class.

Oral presentation: The participants will be asked to present their research topic to the class in form of an oral presentation taking the different scientific background of the other participants into account. The presentation will have "conference-style", i.e. the presentation time will be strictly limited and will be followed by a short scientific discussion. The presentations will be chaired by the participants who will have the responsibility to introduce the speaker, manage the time and discussion.