Workshop on Writing Successful Manuscripts for PRL, RESCHEDULED FOR Friday, Nov. 9

Dr. Saad Hebboul, Senior Assistant Editor for Physical Review Letters, will present a 2-part workshop on Writing Successful Manuscripts for Physical Review Letters, from 3:00 - 4:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 9 (NOTE RESCHEDULED DATE), in Rm. 151 Loomis.

Time: 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. on Friday, November 9, 2012

Location: 151 Loomis Laboratory

Title: Writing Successful Manuscripts For Physical Review Letters: Parts 1 and 2

Speaker: Dr. Saad Hebboul, Senior Assistant Editor, Physical Review Letters

Part 1 of 2: Friday, November 9, 2012, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.

Abstract: I will present techniques for organizing and writing accessible manuscripts that are ideally suited for Physical Review Letters. I will address three common writing styles, namely, abbreviations and acronyms, new terminology, and rough drafts, which prevent manuscripts from achieving their maximum impact once they are published in Physical Review Letters. I will introduce the path diagram of a sentence as a graphical aid for restoring the full length of abbreviated words without expanding the affected sentences. I will also show that the distracting author-name terminology can be minimized by returning the focus to an appropriate science-based terminology. For example, the "Faraday effect" becomes the "magneto-optical effect". Next, I will describe a self-similar layered structure that allows the authors to include the maximum amount of technical information in the limited space of a manuscript without sacrificing clarity. I will also use the "word cloud" diagram to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of manuscripts as potential Letters. The combined effect of these tools is a systematic method for transforming a rough draft into a polished manuscript that makes a better case for a Letter in Physical Review Letters.

Part 2 of 2: Friday, November 9, 2012, 4:00 - 4:30 p.m.

Abstract: I will describe a method for testing published Letters, as well as manuscript drafts, using the tools from Part 1. The method consists of selecting one published Letter (LM1) that is difficult to read and another published Letter (LM2) that is easy to read. Both Letters are selected from the same field. Each Letter can be graded in four test categories which include (1) abbreviations and terminology [20 points], (2) the introduction and conclusion [40 points], (3) self-similarity [100 points], and (4) the word cloud [40 points]. This 200-point test contains instructions, sets of key words as starting basis vectors, and examples to help students grade LM1 and LM2 in small groups. The idea is to show that LM1 consistently performs less well than LM2 in the 200-point test for all fields. The students can use the results as a future guide for writing and testing their own manuscripts. Successive drafts of a given manuscript should produce increasingly higher grades that reach a maximum then saturate at the transition from a rough draft to a polished draft. For more practice, I will describe three additional problems that invite students to edit text versions of LM1 and LM2.

Bio of Dr. Saad Hebboul:
EDUCATION:
Ph.D. in Physics, 1988, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
M.S. in Physics, 1982, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
B.S. in Physics, 1981, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH

EMPLOYMENT:
(1). 02/1999 - Present: Editorial Staff Member, Physical Review Letters,
The American Physical Society, Ridge, NY
(2). 10/1998 - 01/1999: Lecturer, Physics Department, Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH
(3). 02/1993 - 09/1998: Senior Research Associate, Physics Department,
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
Research project: Transport properties of high-temperature and low-temperature superconductors
(Associated with J. C. Garland Group)
(4). 07/1988 - 12/1992: Postdoctoral Researcher (J. C. Garland Group),
Physics Department, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
Research project: Radio-frequency response of two-dimensional superconducting arrays of niobium Josephson junctions
(5). 09/1982 - 06/1988: Graduate Research Assistant (J. P. Wolfe Group),
Physics Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
Ph.D. Thesis: Imaging of large-k phonons in III-V semiconductors using superconducting tunnel junctions
(6). 09/1981 - 05/1982: Graduate Teaching Assistant, Physics Department,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL