More than 100 post-graduate students and research scholars of various  branches of pharmacy from different parts of the country attended the two- day pre-conference workshop on 'writing scientific papers for publication' conducted at the SRM university on December 5 and 6, prior to the 64 th Indian Pharmaceutical Congress (IPC) in Chennai.

Hosted by the Indian Pharmaceutical Congress Association, this scientific workshop addressed the research scholars’ questions about scientific writing and trained them how to disseminate information about scientific work carried out by them for effective scientific publication.

“We teach good scientific communications about how to write a scientific paper fit for publication. The workshop will help the students to steer away from possible plagiarism while engaging in scientific writing. Training is provided for practising correct and standard referencing methods, following methods of literary survey and statistical tools that can be employed in their medical and pharmaceutical research,” said Dr Jerald Suresh, chairman of the pre-conference workshop.

He said unless the student knows what has been happening in the field of research, he will not have a clear vision about how to approach a problem in an innovative manner. So the focus of the workshop was to equip the students for research work and scientific writing. The ethical issues concerning plagiarism or copying of someone else’ work have been discussed in detail in the sessions. He said this is the third time a pre-conference workshop was held along with the IPC.

Speakers from US FDA, Auckland and from research institutes in myriad places in the country delivered lectures on how to prepare scientific papers on different branches of pharmacy such as pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacology, pharmaceutical analysis, pharmacognosy and pharmacy practice.

Like the three ‘R’s for basic education, the pre-conference workshop was also supposed to explain the three ‘R’s for a scientific writing, which are the keys to getting started in research. They are Reading & Writing, Reckoning & Figuring and Wroughting (converting) and wrighting (manufacturing). The scientific workshop has close reference to the three ‘R’s of publishing of research papers, Dr Jerald Suresh told Pharmabiz.

The students represented 25 pharmacy colleges from various parts of the country and twenty delegates represented various industrial units. There was a panel discussion at the end of the second day.

G Selvaraju, director of drugs control department in Tamil Nadu, inaugurated the workshop on December 5.