Preprints as Medium for Teaching Science Writing

The art of science writing is perhaps the most difficult skill to inculcate in students, where lack of practice in science writing often manifest in significant phobia at writing up one’s research for publication or thesis submission. Using preprints as a form of updatable writing on the Web, graduate students could be given training in exercising their critical thinking on published research, as well as the ability to dissect and reframe a research question through a series of writing assignments ranging from post-publication peer review to constant documentation of one’s research project and experiment findings. Specifically, students could post, on a monthly basis, a preprint that articulates their ideas, thinking and critique on a piece of published research that could serve as exercise of their broad scale thinking and ability at identifying gaps in research. On the other hand, students could also post, at regular intervals, new preprints that chronicle a segment of their project work, which while allowing students to gain credit for their work, also provide practice for science writing. Thus, by lowering the barrier of entry to an online publication, preprints is a publication format that could be utilized in teaching the fine art of science writing through regular practice by students.