Lessons learned from webinar on publishing scientific articles

In a developing country like Nepal, students or early careers carry out different research activities but face numerous rejections and difficulties in publishing the journals.

Due to lack of proper understanding of elements of standard articles, review process and ethics; most of their research is left unpublished. By chance, if published, it will not get a good readership and chances for replication of study. 

To empower undergraduates, graduates and emerging researchers who intend to publish scientific articles of their research in reputed journals; Project AGRICRAFT, launched by YPARD Nepal, organized a webinar entitled “Publishing Scientific Articles: What Should You Know” on 7-8 November 2020 virtually. Forty participants from diverse backgrounds including agriculture, forestry environmental science actively participated and enthusiastically shared their queries during the webinar.

“Just when I was not clear on how to start reorganizing and editing my thesis for an article publication, I saw this webinar happening and it took me no time to eagerly register my name and hope for the selection. Indeed the session was very fruitful and cleared most of my confusion and paved a path for me towards scientific writing and publication in the suitable journal.” - Akreeti Thakur, participant

The webinar was made feasible with the presence of our resource persons Mr. Dinesh Panday, Ph.D. and Mr. Roshan Babu Ojha. Mr. Panday received his Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States. Mr. Ojha, currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New England, is a soil scientist to the Soil Science Division, Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) since 2015.

The webinar was arranged into different sessions with a fixed time schedule sum of about 10 hours. On the first day (7th November), Mr. Panday clarified to us about manuscript standard, publication ethics and selection of journals. Similarly, Mr. Ojha elucidated on the general outline of the scientific paper, element of style and academic phrases, the reappraised checklist for evaluation of publication integrity. With the hope of making participants inspired and motivated storytelling in a scientific paper was conducted by Mr. Ojha. To test the effectiveness of the session and to plan accordingly for the next day, participants were assigned exercise by resource person after completion of the 1st-day session.

“The workshop was wonderful. I totally enjoyed and learned a lot. I found the program more useful and relevant to the problem we face while writing a scientific paper. Thank you YPARD- Nepal.” - Pramila Koirala, Participant

On the next day (8th November), we were blessed to be enlightened about a systematic procedure that takes place during peer-review and journal communication by Mr. Panday. It was followed by an insightful session by Mr. Ojha on journal abstract components, plagiarism and ways to avoid it. The interactive session was separated after each context throughout the webinar to let the participants to share their queries immediately. To make the webinar more interactive and effective web-workshop on abstract writing was conducted by Mr. Ojha that encouraged the participants to work and correct on their own abstract of research work.

“This webinar has provided great insight of academic ethics and guidelines that we have to follow during publishing of scientific articles. In addition, it helped us to learn about the structure and fundamental basis for preparing a manuscript of research work. Similarly, it was a great experience to learn how a scientific paper goes through the peer review process and how it gets selected by a journal. The teaching materials used during the webinar were effective and simple to understand. The webinar addressed most of my quires regarding manuscript writing and helped me to polish my knowledge of publishing scientific articles.” -  Sambat Ranabhat, Participant

Project AGRICRAFT sincerely thanks YPARD Nepal; especially Mr. Anil Banstola, Program officer of YPARD Nepal and Coordinator of Project AGRICRAFT and Mr. Abishek Khadka, Country Representative of YPARD Nepal for covering the call for applicants and providing us enormous support and cooperation for the organization of this event.

We would like to express heartily thanks to our resource person who blessed us with their presence taking out the valuable time of their busy schedule. We are inspired by the presence of our participants, whose generosity and thoughtfulness are highly appreciated. Additionally, we express our gratitude to the people who directly and indirectly contributed to make this webinar successful.