Overview of the Foundations of Scientific Writing for Staff Members: Assessing Impact

Rationale
The Foundations of Scientific Writing for Staff Members concept was designed to provide a basic introduction to scholarly writing in the biomedical research settings. Developed and produced through the Duke AI Health Community of Practice in partnership with the Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), the course is particularly focused on equipping staff members with the knowledge, mentoring, and tools needed to participate actively in the entire process of developing, authoring, and publishing scholarly works such as presentation posters, abstracts, and peer-reviewed manuscripts.
The course is structured around and culminates in a class project that consists of selecting a topic of interest and developing it into a formal poster that each student or student group will present in a culminating showcase. Notably, while project topics may include the presentation of formal research, educational, operational, or process-oriented topics are also welcomed.
The Foundations of Scientific Writing for Staff Members course has been held twice, with a third session planned for the fall of 2025.
Winter 2023-24
We first held the Foundations of Scientific Writing for Staff Members course in winter 2023 and early spring 2024 with 27 participants. 26 of the participants were staff members from CTSI, and 1 of the participants was from Duke AI Health.
Fall 2024
Given the success of the first course, we offered a second course in fall 2024 open to any staff member within Duke. We had 17 participants from 6 different organizations.
Foundations of Scientific Writing for Staff Members: Fall 2025
We are currently preparing for a third course in fall 2025, again open to any staff member within Duke.
Table 1. Participation in the first 2 Foundations of Scientific Writing for Staff Members course.

Workshop Syllabus
The course’s instructional elements comprise 4-5 virtual sessions, each combining lecture elements and interactive discussion. Topics include:
- Introduction to Scholarly Writing. The origins of peer review; the evolution of the research article as a form; discourse communities; elements of diction and style in scientific writing; the idea of genre in scholarly writing; audiences and tacit knowledge; basics of rhetoric.
- Writing for Publication – Structure and Process. Organizing your ideas; developing your drafting process; revising with intent; different ways to structure writing; the journalistic toolbox; proofreading.
- Writing for Peer Review – Abstracts and Papers. Parts of structured abstracts and their functions; unstructured abstracts; design and use of tables; concepts of visual rhetoric in graphic design and typography; design and use of figures; elements and structure of IMRaD-style scientific papers.
- Scholarly Publication Practices. Roles and responsibilities of scholarly authorship; choosing a venue for publication; submitting an article for peer review; revising and responding to critique.
Each lecture is accompanied by an interactive session intended to 1) reinforce the application of lecture topics to the ongoing class project (each class member’s poster presentation) and to afford an opportunity for further questions and discussion.
At the end of the Workshop, the organizers also administer a survey designed to elicit participant feedback on course topics, organization, presentation, and applicability. Subsequent course offerings are continuously refined based on this information.
Impact
We asked participants to rate their understanding of seven key concepts related to scientific writing, before and after taking the course. For both workshops, the participants came into the course with a wide range of understanding, and most felt that their understanding had improved after taking the course.
Specifically for the Winter 2023-24 course, of the 14 participants who completed both surveys, all of them reported improvement on at least one key concept. The below table shows that for each concept, 70% or more of the participants who completed both surveys reported improvement. Eleven (79%) reported improvement on six or more topics.
Similarly, for the Fall 2024 course, of the 4 participants who completed both surveys, all of them reported improvement on at least two key concepts. The below table shows that for each concept, 50% or more of the participants who completed both surveys reported improvement. Three (75%) reported improvement on five or more topics.
Table 2. Results of the evaluation survey.

A paper comprising a more detailed evaluation is currently in development.
Quotes from Prior Participants
- “I feel much more equipped and less afraid to present in the future.”
- “I appreciated the opportunity of Poster Showcase the best as it provided an opportunity to meet our colleagues and talk to them about their projects.”
- “It helped me develop a concrete communications tool for sharing programmatic achievements and also lessons learned during a five-year program pilot phase.”
- “I liked the opportunity for professional development. It provided me the chance to interact with CTSI colleagues and also focus my attention on scientific writing and personal development.”
Course Personnel and Roles
The course team consists entirely of staff members with extensive experience.
- The workshops are designed and taught by Jonathan McCall, MS, Director of Communications for Duke AI Health
- This opportunity is produced by Shelley Rusincovitch, MMCi, FAMIA, Managing Director of Duke AI Health and Co-Director, CTSI Biomedical Informatics & Data Science (BIDS) Pillar
- Jessica Johnstone is the project manager for the workshop series
- Whitney Welsh, PhD, is the qualitative scientist providing evaluation for the series