On September 13, Aura Christopher Mulanda, Director of Freshwater Systems Research and Chief Research Scientist at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI), visited the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) to lead a session on scientific writing and journal publication. Professor Ming Su hosted the session and introduced Professor Aura to the participating postgraduate students.
Professor Aura began with decisions that shape a manuscript before writing starts. He discussed journal selection, article identifiers and metadata, author and affiliation information, and the difference between open-access and subscription journals. He recommended choosing a target journal early and reading its recent papers to understand the journal’s structure, formatting, and preferred style.
The session then followed the structure of a scientific paper. Professor Aura explained how titles can communicate the broader significance of a study and how abstracts can move from the research problem and objectives to methods, key findings, and implications. He also showed how introductions can move from a global context to a specific research gap and objective. Other topics included scientific language, citations, figures and tables, statistical reporting, and cautious interpretation of results.
The final part focused on submission and peer review. Professor Aura reviewed acknowledgements, author contributions, declarations, cover letters, title pages, blinded manuscripts, supplementary materials, and graphical abstracts. He also outlined the path from editorial screening and reviewer assessment to possible decisions and revisions. The discussion gave RCEES postgraduate students practical guidance for turning research findings into clear manuscripts for international journals.
