The 2012 ASHS Annual Conference

A popular graduate course at Iowa State University improves students’ skills associated with the preparation of manuscripts for refereed journals in horticultural science and related disciplines.  The class, Publishing in Biological Sciences Journals, has been offered for nearly two decades in a face-to-face, classroom format.  The objectives of this poster presentation are to share information on the class and to solicit interest from colleagues at other universities in partnering with us as we offer, for the first time, a version of the class to students at a distance.  This poster summarizes keys to the success of the class as it has been taught to date, including the unconventional approach we require students to follow in developing a manuscript.  Students whose class manuscripts later were published in refereed journals will be profiled, along with other outcomes data.  The textbook for the class, Getting Published in the Life Sciences (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), was written by some instructors of the course and will be displayed.  We also will review how the course will be modified to accommodate students at a distance and explain how faculty at partnering universities can participate as peer-reviewers of the manuscripts written by students at their home institution.  In an era when few universities invest in courses of this nature, we hope to extend the success we have witnessed, thereby benefitting a larger number of graduate students, as well as ASHS and other organizations that publish journals in the life sciences.