PhD Courses in Denmark

Department for Technology and Innovation, Odense
Teaching language: English - ECTS / weighting: 5 ECTS / 0.083 full-time equivalent.

Teacher: Joseph Russell
Period:  Each spring – THE COURSE IN SPRING 2025 IS FULL
Offered in: Odense

Teacher: The teacher is Joseph Russell, Biomedical Engineering Centre, Department for Technology and Innovation.

Sign-up: Send an email to Charlotte Bruun – cbp@iti.sdu.dk to be enrolled to the course - remember to write your name, email and course name (e.g. : WSP Spring2025).

Prerequisites: The course is open to students from all scientific disciplines. It is intended to help students to write their first scientific paper, and as such, students must have already completed some research with suitable results to write about. It therefore may not be appropriate for new PhD students who have just started their projects.

Content - Key areas: This course will provide support for each student in writing their first scientific paper, from producing their first draft, through two revisions and an outline of the process of submitting the paper to an academic journal or conference, and handling peer review.

Lectures will take place both in person and online, covering the key components of good scientific writing, including how to find relevant papers to cite, how to structure a paper, and the appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI. Students will produce their first draft independently, using the information from the lectures, and submit this to the teacher. They will then prepare a 5-minute presentation explaining the background to their work to present to their peers.

Following these presentations, students will choose which of their classmates’ papers they wish to review. Each student will then review two papers, following an emulation of the typical journal review process. Guidance will be provided on this in lectures. Students will then edit their papers based on the classmate reviews, and must provide appropriate responses to all feedback. The reviews and second draft of the paper must be submitted to the teacher.

Following this, each student must identify a suitable non-student reviewer (i.e. a lecturer or academic in the field) to review their paper. With this feedback, they will then produce a third draft, which will be submitted to the teacher along with the review.

All three drafts will be assessed by the teacher in the context of the reviews, assessing how reviewer feedback has been incorporated into the paper. The teacher will then review the final version of the paper and provide feedback for the paper’s submission to a journal or conference.

Learning outcomes: The students will gain knowledge and experience of the process of writing, submitting, reviewing and revising papers, along with practice at presenting their work and information on the appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI. This will improve the quality of their scientific writing in English and boost their chances of their papers being accepted.

Literature: None

Time of classes: The course will run in Spring (the first course will start in May due to teacher availability). Lectures will take place in person, with an online livestream for those who cannot attend. The spring presentation day will usually be in May (June for the first year).

Lessons: Most of the work will be completed in the students’ own time. Deadlines will be widely spread to allow for students’ other commitments.

Form of instruction: Lectures online and in person, emails, presentations, written material.

Course type: Lectures, presentations and written work.

Evaluation:
Individual examination, pass/fail, approval by the teacher.

To pass, students must show satisfactory production of:

1. A paper they have written about their own research.
2. A 5-minute presentation of this paper.
3. Two reviews of fellow students’ papers.
4. An improved version of their own paper, incorporating feedback from their fellow students’ reviews.
5. A final version edited following the professional reviewer’s comments.
6. A covering letter.

Any use of AI in the papers, reviews or covering letter must be disclosed and justified in an accompanying document.

Comments: This course accepts a maximum of 18 students and may be cancelled if less than 8 participants enroll.

Price:
* PhDs enrolled at the Faculty of Engineering at SDU: Free
* Other PhDs: DKK 1.200,- per ECTS