Writing for the Sciences

Indian Journal of Medical and Paediatric Oncology, 2019

Scientific writing in English started in the 14th century. Human beings have been able to communicate for thousands of years. Yet scientific communication as it is today is relatively new. It was only 300 years ago that the first journals were published. Writing is the most vital means for communicating scientific work. It helps document and communicate ideas, activities and findings to others. Good writing can be beneficial to scientists in a number of ways. In this article we have discussed the basic overview and principles of scientific writing.

Winston Churchill is reported to have said of literary critin who insisted that sentences never end in a ~reoosition ( I ) .

Although doing science is at the heart of discovery, the effort would have very limited consequence in the long term without writing science. As a social enterprise that depends on collaboration, scientific inquiry requires its practitioners to write on a regular basis. From time to time, some members of the scientific community have been critical of the overall quality of writing by researchers. If scientists do indeed write less effectively than writers in other professions, at the root of that circumstance may be the sentiment that time spent writing is far less important than time spent doing research. Shouldn't fussing over writing and language be left to the "literary" writers? Won't the results, after all, speak for themselves? This book stands with other scientific writing guides in responding "no" to such questions. The profound impact of science in our world demands special care and the most rigorous standards for communicating its outcomes to the multiple constituencies affected by their implications and applications.

Education 3-13, 2013

The essay deals with sentence structure, style, and logical flow when writing scientific text. Ten suggestions for optimizing sentences are presented followed by ten published examp les of stylistic variations. Although the emphasis is on chemistry, the reco mmendations are applicable to all areas of non-fiction writ ing.

Write with precision, clarity and economy. Every sentence should convey the exact truth as simply as possible." Instructions to Authors Ecology 19 64 ScientiÞc research demands precision. ScientiÞc writing should reßect this precision in the form of clarity. Unfortunately, a glance at almost any scientiÞc journal will reveal that the above-stated ideal is often not attained in the real world of scholarly publication. Indeed, many of the accusations by non-scientiÞsts of "obscurity" and "elitism" within the scientiÞc community probably originate in the sad fact that many scientists are not capable of expressing their hypotheses and conclusions clearly and simply. Fortunately, much of the confusion can be eliminated if writing is considered part of the pretentiousness. In practical terms, the Þrst of those two suggestions implies that as much effort and consideration should be given to the organization of the paper as was given to the execution of the study, and the second implies that the writer should employ crisp sentences not cluttered with excess verbiage. The purpose of this handout is to help you achieve your goals. This argument may seem more compelling if we look at it in terms of dollars. Much is spent to perform research, and the publication is the distillate of that expensive work, all that will survive and communicate what was learned. Moreover, the scientist pays to have papers published, currently $50 per page for many journals. If the content is not clear, the research will be lost, and the money spent to perform it was wasted. If the text is verbose, the author will pay dearly in page charges. Do not consider the following guidelines as unbreakable rules. The particular format and style adopted for a given paper depend upon both the nature of the report and the journal or other publication in which the paper is to be published. For our purposes, we will use the format of Ecology, the publication of the Ecological Society of America; refer to recent issues as models. All journals publish "Instructions to Authors" annually in one of the issues. In other words, there is often more than one "correct" way of doing something, depending on your intentions. However, the practices adopted here are straightforward and intuitively simple. You are advised to become familiar with details of organization, section headings, methods of data presentation, and ways of citing and listing references by examining recent papers in any well-established scientiÞc journal. 1. the purpose of the study (the central question); 2. a brief statement of what was done (Methods); 3. a brief statement of what was found (Results); 4. a brief statement of what was concluded (Discussion, in part).

International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology, 2022

Scientific writing is a technical form of writing that is designed to communicate scientific information to other scientists. Scientific writing is predicated on the rigors of scientific inquiry; therefore, it must reflect the same precision as that demanded in the research process. Successful scientific writing depends on the individual writer’s projection of a shared professional context. Writers seek to embed their writing in a particular social world which they reflect and conjure up through approved discourses. The objective of scientific writing is to record data and all ideas which must be supported by evidence, with appropriate citations of the source of the evidence. This paper therefore looks at introduction to scientific writing, types of scientific writing and their styles. This is underscored by the fact that without a written record of the findings and observations of researchers, no proof exists that any research was conducted. Scientific writing should build on and extend prior research. Becoming familiar with existing scientific literature is a crucial first step in planning. In fine understanding the criteria of doing good scientific research is key for communicating your findings in a clear and interesting fashion focusing on the subject matter.

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 2014

Scientific writing is a demanding task and many students need more time than expected to finish their research articles. To speed up the process, we highlight some tools, strategies as well as writing guides. We recommend starting early in the research process with writing and to prepare research articles, not after but in parallel to the lab or field work. We suggest considering scientific writing as a team enterprise, which needs proper organization and regular feedback. In addition, it is helpful to select potential target journals early and to consider not only scope and reputation, but also decision times and rejection rates. Before submission, instructions to authors and writing guides should be considered, and drafts should be extensively revised. Later in the process editor's and reviewer's comments should be followed. Our tips and tools help students and advisors to structure the writing and publishing process, thereby stimulating them to develop their own strategies to success.

In Cronin, B. (ed) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Vol 42: 297-338, 2008

This review article seeks to offer an analytic and critical overview of research on scientific writing from a largely linguistic perspective. This perspective, we believe, complements the interests of those working in Information Science, with its central concern with the literatures involved in scholarly communication through bibliometrics, citation analysis and information retrieval. Such studies have long drawn upon insights from linguistic theory and analysis as a means of understanding knowledge, and our discussion is an attempt to systematize the sources of these insights.

2008

Abstract. What makes one author a good communicator and another a poor one? What turns out one manuscript a swift editorial task, and another an editorial nightmare? Based on direct experience from the manuscripts of the lectures and papers presented during this school, advice is given on what to do and on what to avoid when writing a scientific paper. Some feedback recommendation is also provided on how to prepare manuscripts, handle copyright and permissions to reproduce, how to anticipate plagiarism, how to deal with editors and referees, and how to avoid common errors. A few illustrations of English grammar and style for the foreign author are given. This meeting is very special in the sense that less than a dozen scientific talks were delivered by senior scientists, whereas 75 % of the papers in this book were presented by PhD students. As the sample of students was expected to show wide variance in research experience, writing skills and capabilities of communication, all stud...