CTSI Manuscript Writing Intensive Course

The purpose of this 10-week course is to promote the dissemination of research findings through training on best practices in manuscript writing, with interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration in that process.

This course aims to help participants achieve greater success in writing competitive manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals. To this aim, participants will learn about and practice using the tools that professional writers employ to speed up progress, elevate quality, and reduce anxiety.

• Enhance participant ability to
  • write an accurate and compelling title and abstract
  • build a strong case for their work in the introduction
  • achieve clarity and precision in the methods section
  • present findings in a logical and understandable manner
  • construct a focused discussion that gives context to the findings
  • write a conclusion that matches the data
• Increase participant confidence and self-efficacy in the writing process
• Enhance participant ability to critically evaluate the written work of self/others
• Improve participant capacity to effectively use feedback
• Encourage participants to recognize and seize opportunities for professional writing development

This course is intended for clinicians, investigators, and other faculty at MCW, Children’s Wisconsin, Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee VA Medical Center, Versiti, Milwaukee School of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Marquette University. The course is designed for those at any stage of their career who would like the structure, pacing, accountability, guidance, and support to complete one competitive manuscript in 10 weeks. Participants may bring a manuscript to work on that is at any stage of preparation: outline, partial or first draft, or rejected submission.

Four participants form a small cohort to support each other in the manuscript writing process under the guidance of a professional writing coach. The writing coach has over two decades of experience empowering researchers to write more productively. Participants will be introduced to best practices as the writing coach leads the cohort in collaboratively editing manuscripts line-by-line. This hands-on approach will engage all participants in the deep editing required to produce competitive manuscripts.

Cohorts will meet with the writing coach for one virtual 2-hour session each week for a total of 10 weeks. Attendance at each session is mandatory. In addition, outside of the weekly sessions, participants are expected to spend approximately two hours per week making progress on their own manuscripts, and two hours per week critically reading a cohort member’s manuscript. 

This course will be available again in the fall of 2024. Kindly revisit for further information.