The participants will be taught conventional and emerging techniques in publishing scientific
research results in the field of biodiversity sciences. There will be a focus on Biodiversity
Ecosystem Functioning research, to primarily promote publications along this line of
research, but the tools taught in the summer school are sufficiently broad to be transferable
to other topics related to biodiversity research, also including soil science, geosciences,
agriculture or forestry.
In addition to the mere provision of information, it is the aim to take into account the
individual situation of the participants. Thus, every participant of the summer school will be
asked to give a outline of her/his research and to present one project that will used as a
template for developing individual publications strategies. This also means that the lecturer in
the summer school will devote a considerable part of the summer school time for individual
discussion and advice.
Particular techniques to be learned will be
- to identify the main message of the paper, and from this develop a story to be told,
- to structure the manuscript with emphasis on a clearly visible argumentation line,
- to justify why the particular topic was studied (gap identification)
- to formulate at maximum 3 clear and testable hypotheses
- to design suitable figures and tables
- to cite literature in a concise and correct way
- to describe the broader implications of the study
Simple exercises will be used to learn these techniques, and templates will be given of a
typical introduction and discussion in this field of research. In particular, the teamwork will
foster the cooperation between Chinese and German students.
Finally, we will discuss authorship issues and copyrights, particularly in the context of large
research consortiums. We will also explain open source intellectual property.

It is required that students bring their own laptops. To experience the dimensions of a
transdisciplinary research project the summer school is planned to take place in Wuyuan
(Jiangxi Province), in close vicinity to the experimental site of BEF-China in Xingangshan, Jiangxi Province. To loosen up the indoor seminars we plan one field excursion to visit the
experimental sites and the laboratory facilities of BEF-China.