Most of the section members or students of Faculty of Physics, Vilnius University in general are in the earliest stages of their scientific careers, thus, only a few of us are familiar with scientific publishing, taking into account both the concepts (f.e. scientific paper composition and process of peer reviewing) and the technical part (manuscript preparation, reference managemen). During the activity, lectures of invited speakers (“How to publish your manuscript” by Peter E. Andersen and “How to publish your manuscript: Editorial point of view” by Rachel Won) and chapter members (“Introduction to scientific publishing using LaTeX” by Vytautas Butkus) were held.

The lectures of the invited speakers took place during the “Open readings 2015” conference and attracted around 200 participants, including members of the section and faculty staff. The lecture by Vytautas Butkus was attended by ~20 people, excluding the chapter members. There also were several workshops, where the chapter members and the faculty students were introduced to LaTeX/LyX scientific text preparation tools. Some of the attendees were involved into development of lecture notes of the “Mathematical Physics” subject. The lecture notes were printed and distributed and the selected books about scientific publishing were bought. Workshops were continuously attended by 3-to-5 chapter members and ~5 students. The participants were introduced to many different tips and tricks in scientific publishing. In the lecture and workshops, led by the chapter members, participants were introduced to the history and specificity of the scientific publishing (journals, use of language, publishing and peer review process, etc.) as well as to LaTeX/LyX tools for scientific documents preparation.

This event provided a great understanding of the publishing process, essential skills and practical applications. OSA and SPIE Student Chapters of Vilnius University also played a huge role in the funding of this activity. The funding was used to reimburse the travel expenses (flight tickets, airport transfer and local transport cost and the accommodation cost) of our main lecturer – the editor of Nature Photonics, Rachel Won. We have also bought several books on scientific writing: “Trees, maps and theorems” by Jean-luc Doumont, “The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing” by Richard Dawkins and “The Craft of Scientific Writing” by Michael Alley. They are held in our special Students Scientific Association library and are open for every young mind.

Look here the video of Rachel Won talk “How to Publish Your Manuscript”!

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International scientific conference for students of physics & natural sciences “Open Readings 2015” took place in Lithuania, Vilnius on 24-27th of March, 2015. This year we had almost 300 participants from all over the Europe (Belarus, Germany, Latvia, Poland, Spain, etc.) and a program rich of invited lecturers and social events, which gathered more than half of thousand visitors from local research institutions, companies and society in general.

The newly established EPS YM Section of Vilnius University took a big role in this conference. The goal of this conference is to create an ecosystem for learning and spreading the knowledge with a great atmosphere for everyone while improving and delivering young minds to the scientific path of life. The pursuit of this goal was deeply strengthened from the social side. In other words professional development was at high level during oral and poster sessions and is true that sessions create the base for the conference, but social activities including coffee-breaks make the atmosphere, so this grant was directed towards the conference coffee breaks.

All members of EPS YM Section of Vilnius University had their impact in the preparation and were present during the four days of the conference. The growth of the submissions from last year number of 200 to 300 including some submissions from fellow EPS members was quite surprising and of course it would not have been the same without the support from EPS. The expected outcomes were reached as students successfully presented, shared and explored the beauty of the science.

The granted amount was properly used together with the additional support from Center for Physical Sciences and Technology for six coffee breaks during the span of this international conference. The EPS YM Section of Vilnius University is hopeful of continuing the work next year and making the EPS impact visible once again!
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