3 Scientific Writing
“As a scientist, you are a professional writer.” - Joshua Schimel, Writing Science
“The purpose of science writing is not explaining what you did or what you learned, but rather what you want your audience to understand. Start by asking: Who is my audience? What are their goals in reading my writing? What message do I want them to take away from my writing?” - Turbek et al. 2016
“A scientific research paper is the product of erasure. It’s all that is left over after everything has been stripped off except for exactly what needs to be there.” - Judy Swan
“You succeed as a scientist by getting [your papers] cited.” - Joshua Schimel, Writing Science
The above quotes highlight several key qualities of effective scientific writing & writers. To be an effective scientific writer….
- You need to understand the importance of writing well. Invest in yourself as a writer. Take the time to learn and improve.
- You should write for your audience - every word, sentence, and paragraph that you write should be chosen and crafted to convey a specific message to your audience.
- You should write concisely. You need to cut clutter that will distract your audience from your main message.
- Your overarching goal is to get cited; It is not enough to get published - people actually need to use your work. Only when others are citing your work - because they are discussing it, building off it, or using it to inform their own work - has your research truly become part of the scientific body of knowledge.
Resources
Online resources
The Writing Scientist has a great blog with many posts about how to approach and execute scientific writing projects. I also highly recommend signing up for the newsletter, which often has helpful tips and interesting insights pertaining to writing scientific papers (and dissertation chapters).
The Duke Graduate School Scientific Writing Resource consists of 3 sections (lessons) all aimed at teaching you how to write more effectively.
In this lecture, entitled Scientific Writing: Beyond Tips and Tricks, Judy Swan discusses what makes for good writing, and how to get readers to pay the most attention to what you think is the most important.
Books
When I find books about scientific writing that I think are really good and helpful, I will list them here and also ask that they be ordered for our department. So you should be able to find the following books on our 5th floor mini library:
Writing Science by Joshua Schimel
Scientific Writing and Communication by Angelika H. Hoffman
Papers
Simple rules for concise scientific writing; Hotaling 2020 is a great paper that outlines 10 rules for approaching and writing scientific papers, with a focus on keeping things “tight” and concise.
Ten simple rules for structuring papers, Mensh & Kording 2017 is an excellent paper that outlines 10 rules for approaching and structuring a paper, so as to make it as easy as possible for your audience to understand your message.
Finding the “Pitch” in Ecological Writing, Cahill et al. 2011 is about how to approach writing a scientific paper, such that it is catchy and sticks with your readers.
Courses
Writing in the Sciences, offered by Stanford University on Coursera, is a free class that covers big-picture and detailed nitty-gritty best practices of scientific writing. The focus is on original research manuscripts, but review papers and grant proposals and other types of written work are also covered. The course also reviews the writing process, with tips for how to approach writing projects. Although the examples are mostly taken from medical/clinical research, the lessons are taught clearly and can easily be applied to ecology/animal behavior research.