Chevron Left
Back to Writing in the Sciences

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Writing in the Sciences by Stanford University

4.9
stars
8,307 ratings

About the Course

This course teaches scientists to become more effective writers, using practical examples and exercises. Topics include: principles of good writing, tricks for writing faster and with less anxiety, the format of a scientific manuscript, peer review, grant writing, ethical issues in scientific publication, and writing for general audiences....

Top reviews

AA

Jan 11, 2023

The best course I attain in Coursera. I struggled a lot to write my first manuscript and it took a lot of time. This course is beneficial for all scientific students. I highly recommended this course.

SD

Feb 25, 2020

Respected Dr.kristiani sainani madam and coursera.

I thank you for the wonderful classes and presentations, it really didn't made me feel that i was learning online course but as in class learning.

Filter by:

1 - 25 of 2,762 Reviews for Writing in the Sciences

By Shahriar

•

Mar 17, 2019

The name of this course is misleading; although the course gives you useful information about writing in sciences it has a serious focus on medical sciences. So if you are a chemist, mathematician or a physicist it might be annoying for you to be bombarded with medicine technical words and journals. Approximately more than 80 percent of the examples of writings are from medicine journals. The course has bunch of interviews with medicine scientists that makes me feel exhausted. If the professor of the course agrees that the medical sciences is not the only science she' should change the name of the course to 'Writing in the medical Science' or she should change the one-sided point of view of this course.

By Ishan A

•

Aug 26, 2020

A very helpful course. My writing has improved significantly in these 8 weeks. I highly recommend this course to everyone. Thank you Dr. Kristin Sainani and Coursera for bringing this course together.

By Shawn O

•

Jun 23, 2019

Great course. Learned so much that will help me be a better writer and editor, not only in the sciences, but in other areas. A fantastic professor, clear thinking, speaking, writing. an inspiration.

By Brandon L S

•

Jun 2, 2020

Overall, this was a great course for any scientist looking to improve their writing and editing skills. I have a PhD in chemistry from Ga Tech and work as a freelance editor with scientists who are non-native English speakers, and I took this course because I never received any formal editing training.

This course has been great for improving my editing skills, allowing me to work more efficiently and quickly. Weeks 1-6 were filled with some of the most useful information I've ever read. I've already started incorporating the skills I've learned in this course into my editing work.

As others have stated, I do wish that there was more non-medical content. I also found the peer-review exercises to be quite useless (at least as far as the grading goes), as most people completing this course appear to be non-native English speakers. The content in Weeks 7 and 8 was not all that useful too me, and seemed to try to cover too much.

A suggestion: when discussing the major sections of a paper, Kristin split the Results and Discussion section into two sections; however, some journals combine the Results and Discussion sections, and I think some commentary on this would also be very helpful!

By kirti k

•

Sep 15, 2020

Hello Kristin

Thank you for teaching me the basics of academic writing and editing with proper grammar. In this course, I was introduced to the scientific panel which further enriched my knowledge.

By Armando L

•

Jun 4, 2019

This was an amazing course that really helped me with my medical writing skills and understanding how making things clear for all audiences can help in spreading scientific knowledge across the world.

By sushma d

•

Feb 26, 2020

Respected Dr.kristiani sainani madam and coursera.

I thank you for the wonderful classes and presentations, it really didn't made me feel that i was learning online course but as in class learning.

By AkvilÄ— V

•

Sep 23, 2019

A very good and useful course focusing not only on grammar and papers but on personal statements and news articles as well. The lecturer shares lots of insight from her vast experience and examples.

By V T

•

Jan 31, 2019

The course is so informative that I think everyone should take a try. It provides us a fundamental elements to write in a professional way that is not only for our study but also for our profession.

By Heba G E

•

Dec 20, 2017

Thanks Dr. Kristin for this interesting course. It was so useful. I have learnt a lot from it. Your pretty way of teaching encouraged me to complete the course. Thanks for this exciting experience.

By Simon D

•

Mar 8, 2019

This is a fantastic course, the best online course I have ever done. Kristin's teaching style is clear and engaging, and there are lots of practical examples to help you apply the principles that she teaches.

If English isn't your first language and you don't have experience of writing essays / papers in English, I would recommend completing a more basic course first, in order to get the most out of this.

By Ananta

•

Jan 12, 2023

The best course I attain in Coursera. I struggled a lot to write my first manuscript and it took a lot of time. This course is beneficial for all scientific students. I highly recommended this course.

By nkosingiphile t

•

Jul 8, 2019

Best course that teach me how to write manuscripts, edits scientific work and also read with understanding the scientific work. Lot I have benefited from this program, when interviewing a scientist what you have to expect and the way of asking questions so that it will allow a scientist to explain clearly. Also peer reviewing assisted me a lot in reading other's work and grade it, I was also benefiting from that.This is the best course indeed!

By Andrea L S

•

May 30, 2020

Dr. Kristin Sainani:

I want to thank you for giving us such a wonderful course. I am not a native speaker and still learned a lot. I am no longer afraid to write but the most important thing is that you really inspired me.

I hope you upload here a statistics course taught by you.

By Sam P

•

May 11, 2019

Fantastic course that's hard to fault. I am not a working scientist but an inspiring writer in the medical / scientific field. This couse refreshed my knowledge and taught me a lot more. Thank you.

By Michele S

•

Feb 18, 2018

The content of the course is great. I received some practical advise about how to improve my writing. I appreciated also the suggestions about the writing process, e.g. starting from preparation of figure and tables. Even if sometimes the teacher recommend using structures against the common practices, e.g. using active verbs vs passive, she was always able to motivate and explain the reasons (and she convinced me!).

I appreciated the opportunity to have some of my exercise corrected by other students.

I did not like the format of the lesson: the slides are poorly designed, sometimes the teachers uses a thin hand writing which is difficult to see. I believe that the presentation can be easily improved using the unique features available in e-learning (see for example Calculus I from Ohio State University). I also suggest to keep always on the teacher's camera: it makes it easier to focus. I would also avoid the last module about social media, I found it boring and empty.

Overall my experience was definitely positive and I would highly recommend this course to other scientists.

By Kristin W

•

Jun 19, 2018

While there were some helpful general tips, this course should really be called "Medical Journal Writing". With a course title like "Writing in the Sciences", you would expect it to apply to all (or a least a broad range of) branches of science. However, 99% of the examples were about medical science journal papers. This is not at all helpful to those of us who aren't doctors or medical researchers. It is very difficult to slog through when you can't understand the underlying examples. Either change the name of the course to Writing in the MEDICAL Sciences or broaden the scope of the examples. Because as is, this course was all but useless.

By Akshay B

•

May 14, 2020

Excellent, excellent course. Kristin Sainani is an excellent teacher. This course made me rediscover my love for writing. Very well structured.

By James W

•

Jul 8, 2019

I got a lot out of this course, more than I thought I would to be honest. It was a relief to hear a writing professional spell out exactly why I have been writing a certain way - overly verbose and, if I'm being honest, trying to sound smarter than I am - since I was young. And to find out it was because of something as simple as meeting a minimum word count in school assignments was bordering on profound and very freeing. Great course.

By Himanshi A

•

May 8, 2020

The course is highly interactive. That is what makes it fun to learn. I learnt so many things about writing, about which i was unaware before taking the course: cutting the clutter, changing nouns to verbs, using active voice, arranging the ideas in a logical way, making the sentences interesting by using colon and a lot more. Thanks Kristin for being an excellent mentor.

By sunil p

•

Jul 2, 2019

If you love "writing for sciences" you definitely need to take this course. It helps a lot for your academic and research career.

By carlos f p

•

Jan 3, 2019

Great material, great teachers, I feel one step closer to become a good scientific writer.

Thanks.

By Lourdes C V S

•

Mar 11, 2019

Un curso genial! Gran profesora. Recomendado para todos los "escritores" de ciencia.

By Sarah O M

•

May 27, 2018

Absolutely phenomenal course and worth taking if you are an undergraduate or graduate student eager to learn more about a writing a scientific paper. This course will put you way ahead of your peers and prepare you to publish in the sciences. If you're a professional science writer like myself, this course gives you an important glimpse into the process of how scientists write about their research - and of course, there are lots of great writing tips that apply to science writing for non-experts. Very informative and enjoyable. Videos are interesting but can feel slow if you are an advanced writer. Still, this is a very helpful course for those who have never published a scientific paper and are learning how to write one, or just want to learn more about how to write well about science.

By Meera P

•

Jul 3, 2019

It was an excellent course. Special thanks to the instructor, Dr. Kristin Sainani, for her genuine step-wise guidance throughout the course. I really find a drastic difference in my skills after attending the course. Now I am confident enough to takeup a career in science writing. I am thankful to Coursera team also for providing financial aid to earn my certificate. I wish everyone to be benefited by this course.