Friday, September 18, 2009

Open Access, PLoS article level metrics part of syllabus for PhD course at Uni Hyderabad

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