The goal of the 2021 NISS Writing Workshop is to provide instruction for writing journal articles and grant proposals. Participants will be required to provide a recent sample of their writing, which will be reviewed by a senior mentor. The sample could be a current draft of an article to be submitted for publication or an early version of a grant proposal. Senior mentors will be former journal editors and program officers, who will critique the submitted material and provide individual feedback. Participants will be expected to initiate a revision in response with additional feedback from their mentors. The deadline for the Writing Workshop application submission is June 30, with notification of acceptance soon thereafter.
"The writing workshop was tremendously helpful! Thank you so much for organizing this workshop and helping us a lot. Thank you so much for sharing all the slides too. I am very grateful to take all advantages from the NISS writing workshop."
The workshop consists of two sessions plus a final meeting with the mentor. The first tutorial is an all-day session that covers scientific writing, as well as how to organize a paper. It also discusses ethical issues, writing grant proposals and issues of journal choice, and understanding and responding to reviewers' comments. At the end of this session, each participant meets with the mentor who analyzed a paper the participant submitted prior to JSM. The second session focuses on the specific issues covering the writing process and details of grammar, sentence structure, and word choice, especially helpful for participants whose native language is not English. A panel of senior researchers will discuss their experiences with technical writing in English.
"Thanks for your thorough guidance in the NISS Writing Workshop! I found that the one-to-one mentoring is very helpful for us to get insights into our shortcomings in academic writing. I really appreciate your work in organizing such a wonderful event."
Target Audience
The workshop is designed for researchers with a Ph.D. awarded or anticipated during 2015-2021 in statistics, biostatistics or related field. Attendance at the Writing Workshop will be limited and applicants within 6 years' post-PhD and members of the participating societies will receive preference. See testimonials from the evaluation at last year's event.
How to Register
You can register by clicking on the link just ahead, but, please note that you will need to submit a copy of your writing sample during this online registration. To register, click on the (Pre-Registration Information Webform) Please answer all questions! All submitted material will be handled confidentially! If you have trouble with the submission of your paper on the registration form, please send a PDF or Word version to officeadmin@niss.org after you have completed the entire registration form. Thank you!
Registration Deadline: June 30, 2021
Registration Fees
Workshop applicants are asked to first register online by submitting their writing sample using the form above. If your submission is accepted, to confirm your interest in participation you will then be asked to pay the $150 registration fee after you have been accepted. Funds have been secured for eligible participants without their own funding and registration (and travel and housing costs if in-person) can be reimbursed for those who complete the program.
Agenda
Schedule (Workshop is Virtual via Zoom)
Part I: Friday, August 6, 2021
10:00 am Eastern Time
10:15 – 10:30 am Opening Remarks and Introductions
10:30 – 11:20 am Tutorial 1: Writing Skills, Evaluation, and Visualization
- Leland Wilkinson (H2O.ai & U. of Illinois at Chicago)
11:20 – 11:25 am Coffee Break
11:25 am – 12:15 pm Tutorial 2: Choosing Where to Publish
- Nick Jewell (University of California, Berkeley & London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
12:15 – 1:15 pm Virtual Lunch (Mentor & Mentee Meetings in Breakout rooms)
Mentors meet mentee(s) and agree to use the 3:30 time if needed.
1:15 – 2:45 pm Panel 1: Statistics and Data Science Journals
- Xuming He (University of Michigan)
- Karen Kafadar (University of Virginia)
- Nicole Lazar (Penn State University)
- Tyler McCormick (University of Washington)
- David Rocke (University of California, Davis)
2:45 – 3:30 pm Tutorial 3: Reviewing and Revising
- Naomi Altman (Penn State University)
3:30 – 4:15 pm Optional Mentor and Mentee follow-up meetings in Breakout rooms
Part II: Friday, August 13, 2021
10:00 am Eastern Time
10:15 – 10:45 am Tutorial 4: How to Write a Collaborative Paper
- Susan Ellenberg (University of Pennsylvania)
10:45 am – 12:15 pm Panel 2: Speaking from Experiences and Career Development
- Emma Benn (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)
- Eric Laber (Duke University)
- Ali Shojaie (University of Washington)
- Judy Wang (NSF DMS Statistics Program Director & George Washington University)
12:15 – 1:15 pm Virtual Lunch (Mentor & Mentee Meetings in Breakout rooms)
1:15 – 2:00 pm Tutorial 5: Ethical Issues and Reproducibility
- Peter Imrey (Cleveland Clinic)
2:00 – 2:05 pm Coffee Break
2:05 – 3:20 pm Panel 3: Grant Writing
- Cheryl Eavey (NSF SBE Program Director; to be confirmed)
- Karen Messer (NIH BMRD Study Section Chair & University of California, San Diego)
- Edsel Peña (NSF DMS Statistics Program Director & University of South Carolina)
3:00 – 3:30 pm Discussion, Evaluation and Certificates
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Lingzhou Xue
Pennsylvania State University
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