A one week International Workshop on Academic Research Writing, Copyright & Plagiarism was being organized by the Nanda Nath Saikia College Teachers’ Unit in Collaboration with Department of Botany, Nanda Nath Saikia College during 14th-19th November, 2022. The Workshop was organized keeping the interest of academicians, researchers and students of the subcontinent to guide them for effective research writing and quality publications.
The 7-day long workshop has different sub-themes like
- Establishing the right mindset to be a research author
- Key elements of research paper writing
- Effective reference management tools and its application in research,
- Publishing ethics-copyright policies, plagiarism and software to trace it,
- Identifying appropriate research journals and submission process,
- Data management and editing software, concept of citation, h-index, i-index, and Scopus/JCR indexed journal/web of science/impact factor concept etc.
Altogether, six resource persons throughout the globe have delivered their speech before the participants. More than 165 participants across the country joined in the Workshop and interacted with the resource persons. Day 1 of the workshop has started with the felicitation of the Principal, Vice Principal and Chairman of the Workshop. In his lecture, Chairman of the workshop committee, Mr. J. P. Ojah gave a brief introduction about the current workshop and wishes for successful completion of the event. In his welcome address, The Principal of the College, Dr. L. Baruah cited the significance of such research workshops at Academia to generate and disseminate knowledge among the active researchers of the country. Dr. P. N. Bhattacharyya, Co-convenor of the workshop, introduces the keynote speaker, Dr. R. K. Borah, Director, Rain Forest Research Institute (RFRI), Jorhat, Assam, India, and requests him to inaugurate the workshop and give the keynote speech. Following this, Dr. Borah in his speech highlights the importance of background knowledge and data management tools for effective research publications. Dr. M. N. V. Prasad, Retired Professor, Environmental Biotechnology, Department of Plant Sciences University of Hyderabad, India was the resource person for Day 1. In his speech, Dr. Prasad highlighted the significance of right mindset of research fraternities for choosing the proper topic, methodologies, and information sharing tools etc., keeping in mind about the laboratory infrastructure. He gives adequate focus on the scientific presentations in various seminars, conferences, and popular lectures etc. In his lecture, he also mentioned the importance of reference citing tools, Google scholar, Science direct, Springer Link, etc., as very effective in growing the right mindset of researchers. With this, he concluded his speech which was very informative and insightful.
Dr. Sanket J. Joshi, Deputy Director, Oil & Gas Research Center, Central Analytical and Applied Research Unit, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman was the resource person for Day 2. Joshi’s talk basically includes how to prepare a research article for sending to a quality journal. He also discussed the role of reviewer in research publication. According to him, to publish a research paper in a reputed journal, the researcher should need continuous hard work, efforts & novelty of his work. He urged not to go for salami publications. He also cited the importance of ‘cover letter to Editor’ as focus point of quality publication. According to him, while choosing the journal to publish one’s research article, one should keep in mind about the impact factor, SNIP, SJR, etc., of a journal. As additional information, Dr. Joshi provided information on some resources like Elsevier Research Academy, where one can learn how to write a research paper.
Day 3 starts with the lecture of Dr. N. A. Reddy, Assistant Professor of Education, NEHU, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. In his lecture, Dr. Reddy elucidated the significance of Mendeley as reference management software in research. He mentioned some of the most popular reference styles like ACS. He has briefly distinguished between reference list and bibliography. Within his lecture, Dr. Reddy illustrated the installation of Mendeley software and guided the participants, the same.
Day 4 starts with the speech of Dolikajyoti Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam. The focus point of her lecture was publication ethics, copyright and plagiarism. Publication ethics are sets of guidelines that acquaint a researcher with do’s and don’ts in research and publication. Research as well as collaboration suffers, if publication ethics is not followed. Dr. Sharma discussed about the satori project (2014-2017) which aims to improve research ethics. She also mentioned about Indian copyright act 1957; that explains about ‘fair use’ in order to encourage further research. Factors of fair use depends on the nature of copyright work. Dr. Sharma mentioned about scientific misconduct, plagiarism issues as evil factors to restrict quality publication.
Day 5 started with the speech of Dr. Didier Lesueur, Senior Soil Microbiologist at CIRAD, UMR Eco & Sols, Montpellier, France, Alliance CIAT-Biodiversity International/Deakin University/Melbourne-Australia, Vietnam. He has delivered his lecture on identifying appropriate target journals and research submission process. Dr. Didier discussed about science citation index, impact factor concept of research journals. While going through the topic, Dr. Didier mentioned about h-index, SNIP, i-index, cite score matrix etc. According to him, scientific rigor is a key indicator of journal quality. He mentioned about the importance of peer review process, selection of reviewer and their point of interest, handling by the editorial system as certain vital factors for quality publication. He also discussed how to deal with predatory publishers and publishing house. As these journals use excessively spam mails and try to attract the authors, care should be taken not to deal with these publishers. He discussed about several issues related to open access publications. According to him, the cover letter to editors is considered as the preliminary backbone of a research topic, thus, needs extra care to prepare it.
Day 6; the final day of the workshop started with the lecture of Dr. H. Sharma, Associate Professor, Department of Botany, Bodoland University, Kokrajhar, Assam. Dr. Sharma focused his speech on data management tools and different software usually used in research. In his speech, Dr. Sharma mentioned the name of different International journals and submission clues for quality publication. In his lecture, Dr. Sharma cited the importance of research citations, h-index, i-index of published articles. According to him, quality publication should be free of plagiarism issues. He discussed about metadata, web of science publications, PubMed etc., during his lecture. The Workshop was ended with the vote of thanks from Dr. N. F. Islam, Joint Convenor of the Organizing Committee.
