Webinar "Successful Scientific Publishing: From the Project to the Advertising."

Date and time: 13 April 2020, 4:00 PM-5:35 PM

A group of lecturers from the Information Technology Department, Ibri College of Technology, attended an IEEE webinar entitled "Successful Scientific Publishing: From the Project to the Advertising". The webinar was organised by IEEE CIS/GRSS Hyderabad Section, IEEE CIS/GRSS Jt. Chapter. It was delivered by Prof Alejandro Frery through the Cisco Webex Video Conference service on 13 April 2020, at 4:00 PM. 

Prof Frery is a full professor at the Federal University of Alagoas (Ufal), Brazil. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters for the period 2014 to 2018. He was one of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Distinguished Lecturers from 2015 to 2019.

The main goal of the webinar was to review the good scientific practices that may lead to more success and less stress for the active researcher. The webinar also intended to emphasise on the importance of reproducibility in every step of the research process: from the conception and writing of the proposal to the publication and support of the results.

The speaker started defining the key elements of a scientific publication and discussed the impact of accessibility on researchers. Moreover, the speaker shed light on the difference in reproducibility and replicability of a research paper, and the influence of these two terms on the research community. 

The second part of the talk was about the cornerstones of scientific research. The speaker identified three elements by which scientific research is built on: ethics, state-of-the-art and contribution. The speaker emphasised the code of ethics a researcher should follow and presented some real-life examples of malpractice done by some researchers and publication institutes. After that, the speaker stressed the importance of conducting a systematic literature review to provide a critical assessment of the current state-of-the-art. 

In the third part of the webinar, the speaker presented the main elements of a research project and how to develop the research idea and convert it into a successful project. Forming right research questions, doodling the research idea, organising the main concepts of the research and managing the time and expenses of the project were covered in this part. Moreover, the speaker gave a simple overview on how to prepare a manuscript using Latex. 

The last part of the webinar was on how to choose and approach a scientific journal highlighting the main differences between paywall and open-access journals. Additionally, the speaker shed light on how to carry out self-advertisement to spread your ideas to the rest of the world.

The webinar was attended by 220 participants from all over the word, out of which 12 participants were from Ibri College of Technology. The webinar concluded at 5:35 PM after the Questions and Answer session.