Impressed by PLoS style, our university here decided to teach Open Access, creative reuse and article level metrics to entry level PhD students in Life Sciences. I am grateful to the university authorities for enabling us to direct such a timely and important course for the first time in the history of graduate teaching in India; see the course curriculum approved by the university below. I hope many other universities and institutes will be able to replicate this course:
Course name: Scientific writing; Course director: Dr Niyaz Ahmed; Course credits: 1 (12 lectures in a semester)
- 1. Documentation of scientific observations and maintenance of raw data in a biology lab
- 2. Primary research articles and secondary content - commentaries, reviews, book length evaluations
- 3. Creative re-use, semantic enhancements and reproduction of open access scientific material
- 4. Copyright and Creative Commons attribution licences
- 5. Publication ethics
- 6. Malpractices in scientific reporting - examples and case studies
- 7. Citations, evaluations, article-specific metrics and impact factors
- 8. Scientific deliberations
