The Columbia Nanocenter presented a workshop: "Scientific Publishing - How to Write a Good Scientific Paper and Submit it Successfully" on Friday, December 5, 2003 at 11:00 a.m. in Davis Auditorium. The workshop was given by Claus Ascheron, an editor at Springer-Verlag, a leading international publisher. Dr. Ascheron received his Ph.D. in Physics from Leipzig University in Leipzig, Germany in 1980. He served as professor at Leipzig for 13 years and also spent time at Australian National University and Kyoto University. He has been Executive Physics Editor at Springer-Verlag since 1995.

This workshop featured an overall introduction to scientific publishing together with detailed advice for researchers and students on how to prepare high quality scientific papers. Dr. Ascheron drew from his work at Springer-Verlag as well as from his personal experience with the approach to scientific publishing in different countries. The topics discussed included:

• Why is scientific publishing necessary?
• How important is scientific publishing for your academic career?
• Types of scientific publications
• Ethics of scientific publishing
• Contents of scientific publications
• Steps to plan a scientific publication
• Writing style of scientific publications
• Importance of proper references
• Structure of a scientific paper
• Survey of most appropriate scientific journals
• Problems of submission and acceptance of scientific papers

A pizza lunch followed the workshop. At 1:00 p.m., we held the final NSEC student seminars of the fall semester, also in Davis Auditorium.