Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Write Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get…
Write Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded
Writing in Science
Scientists are professional writers
A paper is only successful when it is cited, not just published
Leaders in the field not only think deeply and creatively, but also communicates well.
Clear writing leads to clear thinking, not the other way around.
We should make the communication easy for readers to follow.
This book is about rewriting. For the first draft, just write as fast as you can
Science Writing as Storytelling
Scientists are poor at telling stories
The story is the understanding and insights derived from data.
Raw data has limited direct value and cannot be understood by most people
Develop your story from the bottom up. Then tell them from the top down
The author tells a story about a research agenda developed from analyzing the outliers in the data: listening to the characters and figure out what they mean
Advice for scientific study: explore the issues to deepen the thinking, to ensure the story ties together with the data, and to identify issues that can trip you up later
Three aspects of a story: content, structure, and language
Preface
The author works on microbiology and ecosystem ecology. So take his advice with a grain of salt.
The examples are from papers and grant proposals
You need to do the exercises to practice
Making a Story Sticky
SUCCES
Simple
Seeing the simple in the complex is what distinguishes great scientists from the competent
Express your thoughts in language that builds off ideas that your readers already know
Define your ideas in simpler terms to reach broader audience
A simple idea contains the core essence of an important idea in a clear and compact way
Unexpected
Novelty and unexpectedness lie in the questions you ask and the interpretations you develop
Make it clear in the writing that you frame new questions and look for new insights
Highlight the unknown in the mass of knowledge to create unexpectedness
We make a good story by identifying the knowledge gap we will fill
Concrete
Stay focused on your core message
Be cautious about the middle zone: small-scale abstractions with jargon that are neither concrete details nor high-level schemas
Link the concepts with widely understood schemas or concrete details to minimize the middle of the ladder of abstraction
Credible
Credibility of your idea: chain your work with previous work and cite the sources
Credibility of your data: describe methods, present the data clearly, use appropriate statistics
Credibility of the conclusions: draw from credible data
Being concrete is the key to being credible
Emotional
Curiosity is the emotion acceptable and fundamental to science
Engage curiosity by asking novel questions
Offering new information instead of asking novel questions leads to weaker emotion
Unexpected things creates curiosity
Excitement is the second acceptable emotion in science, and it grows from curiosity
Get the reviewers excited to make them your advocate
Stories
Stories are modular
Summary: Figure out the simple story. Build it around the key questions that will engage U and E. These will guide you in selecting materials to present to make the story concrete and credible
Story Structure
Four elements of a story (OCAR): Opening, Challenge, Action, Resolution
Four core story structures
OCAR
: Opening, Challenge, Action, Resolution. Simplest but most slowly developing structure. For patient audience
ABCDE
: Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending. Move the challenge up and collapse it into the opening to create the initial Action. Good for impatient readers such as proposal reviewers. Less efficient in moving the story forward since you need to pick up the background after the initial action
Highlighting the spiral structure is the key
to making an OCAR or ABCDE story powerful: after the action, the resolution closes the loop and lifts the beginning to a different level.
LD: Lead / Development: collapse the opening, challenging, and resolution into a single short section in the beginning. For extremely impatient readers who only read page one, mostly used by news reporters under space limit
LDR: Lead / Development / Resolution. Similar to LD but tuned to a slightly more patient audience
Applying story structure to science writing
In science writing: the larger problem and central characters (O), an interesting question (C), research plan and results (A), conclusion and
impact of the work
(R)
Specialist journals: OCAR
General journals (Nature / Science): LDR
Proposals: ABCDE or LDR
Map OCAR to IMRaD: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion
Introduction: Opening, Background, Challenge
Opening: context and the characters we are studying
Background: What information does the read need to understand the work the authors did, why it is important, and what it will contribute to the larger issue
Challenge: What are the specific hypotheses / questions / goals of the current work?
Materials and Methods: begin describing the Action -- what did you do?
Results: continue the Action by describing findings
Discussion: develop the climax and the resolution. What did it all mean, and what have you learned? It often ends with a conclusions subsection that is the resolution.
Resolution is important: how our understanding has changed as a result of the work. It must
map back to the opening
: It must say something about the larger problem
Hourglass shape of the content:
wide opening, narrow to specific questions, expand and connect to the wide problem in the beginning
The Opening
Three goals:
identify the problem
that drives the research,
introduce the characters
, and
target an audience
You can foreshadow the challenge and even the conclusions if you are clever
You must start well: get readers moving, set the direction, establish the expectations, and generate momentum
Target an audience
For a broader audience: two-step approach. First introduce the problem, then redefine the focus
For specialist journals: quickly remind people of a problem they already know
Cater the opening to the interest of your audience. Build connection between your work and their interest
Two-step approach works for proposals since the review panel is interdisciplinary
The two-step opening must be quick. More than two steps will make you stumble
Bad opening
Misdirection: switch the direction from the start
No direction. Common flaw: explain a widely held schema
How wide should the opening be?
You want to make the opening for a wide community to read
Frame the opening to promise the story you will deliver. Better to oversell slightly than undersell.
The Funnel: Connecting O and C
Opening identifies a larger problem, while the challenge defines a specific problem
Develop the logical connections between each step to frame the knowledge gap between the larger problem and the specific question
Bad introduction
Offer a solution before defining a problem
Fail to define the problem concretely
Introduction vs. literature review
Literature review focuses on existing knowledge, while introduction focuses on holes in the existing knowledge
Literature review focuses on core knowledge, while introduction focuses on the edge of the knowledge
Focus on the research findings instead of the researchers in citation
Background is still an introduction, not a literature review
The Challenge
Describe the specific knowledge you hope to gain
Offer a question (must), frame it into a hypothesis (optional, might be required by some community), and then describe specific research goals (optional)
Focusing on objectives instead of questions is weak science and weak storytelling, because it doesn't create unexpectedness or curiosity
A good challenge: "to learn X, we did Y". After posing the question, briefly lay out the research approach
It is also common to provide a brief overview of the Conclusions after the full Introduction
Bad challenge
Present goals after methods. The critical part is "to learn X"
Unclear challenge. Focus on the information rather than the knowledge to acquire. Leave off "to learn X" and just say "we did Y"
Action
Let the story guide you in describing your methods, in choosing which results to present, and in how to present them
Action includes: what you did (Materials and Methods) and what came of it (Results and Discussion)
Best way to describe a method is use a lead / development (LD) structure, providing an initial overview for all and then the details for those who need them
Results and Discussion: (1) Present results and interpretations in a way best develops the story (2) Readers must be able to distinguish what you found from what you think
Results
Deleting data from a paper doesn't mean your work is wasted, since collecting these data helped you figure out the story and identify the parts that could be cut
The reader didn't need all the data to get the point; in fact, it would have been a distraction
We can include all the data in archives and electronic appendices
Present data using LD structure: first frame the major point or pattern, then flesh out the detail
Present data by synthesizing them into a pattern and fit them into the larger story to provide context
The most important decision in describing result is not how to present your data but which data to present
Discussion should form a story within itself. Both OCAR and LR work well for the Discussion. LR is more common
Resolution
The resolution should be "take-home message", your strongest and most memorable words
A good resolution steps backward through OCAR: it reiterates the action, answers the questions raised in the challenge, and demonstrates how those answers contribute to the larger problem
Conclude with a question: the most important thing you discover is a new question. Make the question concrete. Be clear about how it grew from your work: you didn't fail to fill a knowledge gap but identified a new one
Bad resolution
Distracting by (1) concluding with ideas that neither synopsize nor synthesize the results (2) including new information at the end
Undermining your conclusions by using fuzzy expressions that suggest weaknesses in the existing work, e.g., "more research is needed to clarify our findings"
Weak. Synopsize the results without making a concrete conclusion. Fail to answer the question nor synthesize the information into knowledge
Three elements of a resolution: (1) synopsize the key results (2) synthesize those results -- show us how they answer your question (3) how us what this contributes to solving the larger problem
It is important to write resolution to end strong even for proposals using an LD structure
Internal Structure
Scientific writing is successful when it creates the flow and the arc
The story has a hierarchical structure, where each major section consists of subsections, and each subsection consists of paragraphs, sentences, and clauses
Each element in the hierarchical structure should have an arc. The arcs are then linked together to tell a story.
Paragraphs
Paragraph is the unit of composition
A paragraph tells a complete short story with a coherent structure, a story fits into and contributes to the larger work
Two common structures for paragraphs: LD and OCAR / LDR
TS-D structure: topic sentence - development, a simplification of LD structure
Point-first paragraph: TS-D is simple, clean, works well for most jobs. It should dominate your writing
Point-last paragraph: LDR or OCAR. LDR: LD + resolution. Not very common. Amount for 25% - 30% of the paper
Point-last paragraphs often appear at critical story points -- openings, resolutions, and transitions
Long paragraphs benefit from a resolution at the end with LDR or OCAR
A paragraph can shift between point-first and point-last structures. But it is better when the structure is apparent; otherwise the points can be unclear
Bad paragraph: lack coherent structure, confusing and pointless, "stream of consciousness"
Sentences
Map grammatical units to OCAR: O = Subject, C/A = Verb, R = Object
Opening is the topic, resolution is the stress at the ending
2-3-1: the stress carries the most weight, the topic is next, and the middle carries the least
Put the right information to the right place based on your intention and your audience
The verb should immediately follow the sentence's subject to make the connection clear
Pick the right topic: move the real topic of the sentence closer to the beginning. Avoid adding words or clauses to the beginning of a sentence
Unbury the stress: avoid adding extra words after the stress
Good, clear sentences can be short or long, and best writers use a mixture of both
Long sentences should use LD structure instead of OCAR
Flow
Story: Link the stress of the previous sentence to the topic of the next one. More often, you will repeat an idea or a theme instead of a phrase
Link paragraphs the same way as sentences
Make your paper page tuners by creating tightly linked flow between stress and topic, resolution and opening
Energizing Writing
Good writers use verbs well to imbue their papers with life
Bad ways of using verbs: passive voice, fuzzy verbs, nominalizations
Passive voice
Passive voice allows you to choose the perspective for better linking the sentences
Passive voice is useful when we need to say what happened and not who did it
Passive voice weakens the story structure
Fuzzy verb
Fuzzy verbs say that something happened but not what; action verbs show you what
To make a hypothesis compelling, use concrete verbs that make a testable statement
People use fuzzy verbs to avoid making strong statements to avoid being challenged to be wrong. It is good for people to feel challenged, because they are engaged. And if you are doing cutting-edge work, you are not always going to be right
Being interesting is more important than being right
Use concrete, action verbs instead of general, fuzzy verbs
Nominalization
Using nominalization is bad because you lose energy and gain length, without no more information.
Nomalization often accompanies with fuzzy verbs since the action verb becomes a noun
Nominalization is useful to define concepts. You should decide if you need to explain the concept based on your audience
Nominalization turns a verb or an adjective into a noun, e.g., investigate -> conduct an investigation, different -> difference
Words
Academics have a bad habit of using long, heavy words
The big words should not become the road block of reading the paper
Jargon
Defining a jargon makes it a technical term
Introduce a term in the topic position, the readers interpret it as a jargon; introduce a term in a sentence's stress, it is like a definition and you dejargonize it
Positions and technical terms: (1) beginning of the sentence: assume every reader knows (2) end of the sentence: define a new term for everyone (3) middle of the sentence: assume most readers know
Better to be overdefining than underdefining
The worst jargon: undefined acronyms
Spell out acronyms and abbreviations the first time you use them
Using a powerful nontechnical word is better than using technical terms. Don't be overly precise
Jargon vs. technical term: (1) A jargon refers to a schema that the reader does not know, while a technical term refers to a schema the reader knows (2) There is an adequate plan language equivalent for a jargon, while there is no such plan language for a technical term
Propositional phrase vs. compound nouns
Compound nouns are better than propositional phrases, e.g., rate of reaction vs. reaction rate
A noun cluster is worse than a propositional phrases, e.g., modification of resource allocation vs. resource allocation modification
Principle: two nouns, a compound is better; four nouns, break it up; three is tricky, depending on the complexity of the words and whether we conventionally consider two of the nouns one unit
Propositional phrase can be used to change the word landed in a sentence's stress position
Origin of a word is important. Words originated from French or Latin are usually long and heavy.
Principles: (1) Avoid jargon (2) Use short, active words over long, ponderous ones
Condensing
Use SUCCES to identify things you don't need to say
Compact the ideas by building good story arcs. Eliminate unnecessary transitions
Delete unnecessary words: empty adjectives, redundant modifiers, and other types of filler. Especially look at the paragraph that has a word or two hanging on a bottom line
Condense redundancies, obvious, modifiers, metadiscourse, verbosity, actions to verbs,
Modifiers
Unnecessary modifiers
Empty amplifier: use concrete data instead
Vague modifier: use concrete content instead
Good modifier clarifies or changes the meaning of their referent
Metadiscourse: description of our actions and thoughts. Delete obvious or redundant metadiscourse
When not to kill every possible words: (1) first drafts with coauthors (2) words that build flow and coherence
Put it All Together: Real Editing
Structure: get the structure of the story into shape
Clarity: ensure that your ideas are clear and concrete
Flow: make the ideas flow, linking one thought to the next
Language: make it sound good
The SCFL process overlaps, and you may need to repeat it several times
Final secret in revising: read it out loud
Dealing with limitations
"yes, but" puts the "but" last, making it the resolution and most powerful message
Deal with the limitations as early as possible, and then get on with developing a strong story. Constrain your conclusions to fit within the limitations but end with a "yes"
Introduction: frame the knowledge gap you will actual fill
Materials and Methods: discuss limitations immediately to lay any concerns to rest. Discuss how to deal limitations to convince the readers
Discussion: if limitations affect the interpretation of the data, openly discuss them without highlighting them so strongly
Never make the limitation the conclusion. Sometimes you can mention the limitation within the conclusions
No research is perfect, and there is nothing to be embarrassed about in admitting it
Writing Global Science
Good science is new knowledge, not new information
Editing is difficult and time-consuming. Use professional services instead of "friends" to help with editing.
You English-speaking coauthor should be responsible for ensuring the language is correct
Story telling is more important than the language
Writing for the Public (Skip)
Resolution
As a scientist, you are a professional writer
Remember the principle of stickiness (SUCCES), the story structure (OCAR), your target audience.
Science is about knowledge and understanding, not just data
Writing cannot strengthen research that is fundamentally weak
"Publish or perish" may be the basis of survival, but it is not the basis for success as a scientist
Remember who your real peers are: they will identify and cite papers that contribute
Impress your real peers, and you will impress your tenure committee and your dean
In US, the decisive part of a promotion package is letters from your peers