Bioletim Script for Science Communication
In 1993, when a group of undergrads in biology from the (Federal) University of Rio de Janeiro created the BIOLETIM journal, we were aiming to provide a space where students could write about their research, to become familiar with the ‘art’ of article publication.
Open parentheses: Art? No, writing is not an art, neither is a natural talent that you are born either with or without. Writing is practicing! Is training! It is not inspiration, it is transpiration! But at that time we didn’t know that and still many student don’t know that. It is common, for example, to see on the chronograph of a thesis project, the last two months ‘reserved’ for the manuscript preparation. But when the time arrives, the student sit in front of the computer kind of waiting for ‘divine illumination’ to control their fingers to put characters in the computer screen in a way that they make sense. A kind of psychography. Close parentheses.
When in 2007 we published the BIOLETIM online version which should be even more publication friendly (we can’t forget that a printed journal is much more expensive than a online one), we thought that we would have thousands of submissions. But it didn’t really happen like that. We had a beautiful, high tech website, but we had no authors.
There are many reasons for that, but one of these is, I’m sure, that writing is more difficult for the students than they actually think!
That’s why we created a script to get the students out of inertia, out of the ‘writer’s block’. The script is available online in Portuguese at the BIOLETIM website. (you need to register and loggin to access)
But when I was preparing one of my ISMEE classes, I thought that this script could be useful not only to Brazilian students, but for everyone. Thus, we created and English version. I really liked the result! The file is an electronic form in .doc format and is available to download here.
The ‘BIOLETIM script’ is strong influenced by the ‘Autoria (authorship)‘ method (only in portuguese), created by Sonia Rodrigues and if you want to practice even more your writing, we strongly recommend the ‘Almanaque da Rede’ (only in Portuguese) which I have already mentioned hereaqui.
Download the script and write your science communication article. If you have any doubts or comments, write it in here and we will get back to you. We will be flattered if after that you send your article to be published at the BIOLETIM.
Open parentheses: Art? No, writing is not an art, neither is a natural talent that you are born either with or without. Writing is practicing! Is training! It is not inspiration, it is transpiration! But at that time we didn’t know that and still many student don’t know that. It is common, for example, to see on the chronograph of a thesis project, the last two months ‘reserved’ for the manuscript preparation. But when the time arrives, the student sit in front of the computer kind of waiting for ‘divine illumination’ to control their fingers to put characters in the computer screen in a way that they make sense. A kind of psychography. Close parentheses.
When in 2007 we published the BIOLETIM online version which should be even more publication friendly (we can’t forget that a printed journal is much more expensive than a online one), we thought that we would have thousands of submissions. But it didn’t really happen like that. We had a beautiful, high tech website, but we had no authors.
There are many reasons for that, but one of these is, I’m sure, that writing is more difficult for the students than they actually think!
That’s why we created a script to get the students out of inertia, out of the ‘writer’s block’. The script is available online in Portuguese at the BIOLETIM website. (you need to register and loggin to access)
But when I was preparing one of my ISMEE classes, I thought that this script could be useful not only to Brazilian students, but for everyone. Thus, we created and English version. I really liked the result! The file is an electronic form in .doc format and is available to download here.
The ‘BIOLETIM script’ is strong influenced by the ‘Autoria (authorship)‘ method (only in portuguese), created by Sonia Rodrigues and if you want to practice even more your writing, we strongly recommend the ‘Almanaque da Rede’ (only in Portuguese) which I have already mentioned hereaqui.
Download the script and write your science communication article. If you have any doubts or comments, write it in here and we will get back to you. We will be flattered if after that you send your article to be published at the BIOLETIM.