Writing in the Health Sciences For Faculty and Students: Key Writing Resources

This guide explains what plagiarism is and provides a short quiz to help you test your knowledge. Includes link to printable .pdf handout summarizing this tutorial.

Compare citation managers.

Includes links to guides for popular citation managers such as EndNote, Lean Library Workspace (Sciwheel), Zotero; copyright basics; APA & AMA Style guides; Plagiarism & Citing Sources; Citing & Writing: How to Write Scientific Papers

Provides a basic explanation of how US Copyright law impacts reuse of published resources. Includes a brief quiz to test your knowledge.

Through this tutorial, you will become more familiar with the issues surrounding plagiarism and will receive instruction on how to address this academic issue.

What it is and how to avoid it.

From the University of Minnesota Health Sciences Libraries (Bio-Medical Library). Sources are considered primary, secondary, or tertiary depending on the originality of the information presented and their proximity or how close they are to the source of information.

• Explains the standard parts of a medical research article
• Compares scholarly journals, professional trade journals, and magazines
• Explains peer review and how to find peer reviewed articles and journals

Learn about topics such as accuracy, currency, point of view bias that are important for evaluating sources of information, including internet and social media sources.

From the AACC (American Association for Clinical Chemistry). A series of educational articles on how to design and write scientific research papers for publication. These articles will help users write more clearly and effectively, improving their chances for success. Easy to read and humorous at times, yet are full of useful information and examples to illustrate important points. The articles will benefit anyone interested in scientific writing.

Video demo version of Understanding Assignments Handout.
The first step in any successful academic writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

The first step in any successful academic writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

In much of your academic writing, you will use outside sources of information. How can you integrate sources into your papers? And how should you cite them?

You know that instructors want you to cite your sources, but do you know why citations are so important?

The major difference between science writing and writing in other academic fields is the relative importance placed on certain stylistic elements. This handout details the most critical aspects of scientific writing and provides some strategies for evaluating and improving your scientific prose.

This handout will define what an argument is and explain why you need one in most of your academic writing.

This handout will help you understand and write for the appropriate audience when you write an academic paper.

This handout will provide a broad overview of gathering and using evidence. It will help you decide what counts as evidence, put evidence to work in your writing, and determine whether you have enough evidence.

This handout explains what plagiarism is and outlines steps students can follow to avoid plagiarizing. It also references UNC Honor System information and resources.

Collection of handouts and multimedia demos for all aspects of academic writing, including Writing for the Sciences, Annotated Bibliographies, Literature Reviews, and much more.

Writing a research manuscript is an intimidating process for many novice writers in the sciences. One of the stumbling blocks is the beginning of the process and creating the first draft. This paper presents guidelines on how to initiate the writing process and draft each section of a research manuscript. In addition, the author lists different strategies for successful revision. Each of those strategies represents a step in the revision process and should help the writer improve the quality of the manuscript. The paper could be considered a brief manual for publication.

The Scientific Writing Resource is course material that teaches how to write effectively. The material is not about correctness (grammar, punctuation, etc), but about communicating what you intend to the reader. It is intended for science students at the graduate level.

From the Duke Graduate School

George Gopen, Judith Swan
American Scientist, Vol. 78 (Nov-Dec 1990), pp. 550-558.

.pdf booklet compiled by Marc E. Tischler, PhD, University of Arizona. Includes good material on developing an outline; word usage; grammar; writing the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections; and more.

A free, comprehensive, peer-reviewed, award-winning Open Text for students and faculty in college-level courses that require writing and research.