You ve finished the first draft of your manuscript. Now what?
Well, now you must revise. Many novice writers think this involves mostly catching and correcting
errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
But depending on how rough the first draft is,
you may also need to strengthen the logical argument,
add more detail to the methods,
include more up-to-date citations, or make changes in the structure of the paper.
You will also likely need to improve the narrative flow and generally polish the writing.
But how do you go about revising efficiently and effectively?
Hi. I m Karen McKee and in this video, I provide some tips to make the revision process less painful.
The approach I describe is, of course, not the only one, just one that I've used successfully.
In my approach, the author revises in four steps, narrowing the focus with each step.
The first step scrutinizes the overall message, making sure that the paper is based on a clear
thesis or argument.
The second step examines each major section of the paper to see if they provide all the necessary information.
The third step focuses on polishing the writing to improve clarity and narrative flow.
In the fourth and final step, you look for and correct typos, punctuation, and grammatical errors
and check that the formatting matches your target journal requirements.
This approach is not only efficient but will minimize the number of times you read the paper from start to finish.
The more times you read the paper, the less you are able to see it with fresh eyes. In fact, the best way to start is to put your
first draft away for a week or so to get some distance from it before beginning to revise.
Let me emphasize here that from this point on, you need to be looking at your paper from the
eyes of your readers.That is, the editors of the journal, the reviewers, and colleagues and
students who will read your paper. This is very important. If you revise without considering
your audience, you will have problems. I have other videos that go into more detail about how to
do this. I'll put those links in the description below the video. OK. The first step in revision
is to reexamine your overall argument or thesis and see if you've done a convincing job.
And by argument, I mean you have articulated a clear problem and resolution and shown how
your work is of value to the reader. The reason to start with the overall argument
is that problems here often require the most work, involving some restructuring of the manuscript.
Sometimes, you may find after finishing the first draft that you need to rearrange the main points
or add more evidence to strengthen your argument or more clearly state the benefit of your work
to the reader. I find that the easiest way to see problems of this nature is to outline the
main points made in the draft to see if there is a clear argument. Let's look at an example.
In this study we looked at how recovery of a clear-cut mangrove forest was facilitated by
herbaceous vegetation, grasses and forbs, which aid in tree seedling establishment and survival.
The introduction explained how nurse plants might aid in tree seedling colonization and growth,
information that is not only important to an understanding of how plant communities
are organized, but also how to restore disturbed coastal ecosystems. Additional questions about
the nature of facilitation and what coastal plant species might act as facilitators were
described. The introduction ended with the hypotheses to be tested.
The methods involved surveys and experiments designed to identify the ways in which nurse
plants affect tree seedling establishment and growth. The results presented the characteristics
of herbaceous patches, and an experiment showed that tree seedling colonization and growth was
enhanced by nurse plants but the magnitude and type of effect varied by species. The discussion
compared the results to work conducted in other ecosystems and then explored how facilitation
aided seedling establishment through trapping and structural support and by ameliorating harsh
environmental conditions. The discussion ended with implications for restoration,
which relates back to the overall benefits of the research presented in the introduction.
If you have trouble outlining your main argument, you may need to restate your
ideas or restructure your paper so that the benefit to the reader is clearer.
In this particular example, I made sure my paper articulated how our study of facilitation could
be applied to an environmental problem. I knew to do this because the journal required it.
Here is the first sentence in the description of the journal's aims:
Ecological Applications is concerned broadly with the applications of ecological science to
environmental problems. I suggest you carefully read the aims of your target journal and ensure
your paper addresses one or more of them. Once you are sure that your main argument is solid,
it's time to examine each main section of the paper. Here, you want to ensure that each
section is not only complete but is consistent with your main argument. In the introduction,
have you clearly introduced your topic or problem and explained why it is important?
Have you thoroughly described what is known about the topic and what is missing or contradictory?
Here, you may need to add more citations or rephrase some parts to build the case better
for why your research needed to be conducted. Finally, have you stated your research questions,
hypotheses, or objectives and why the results will be of interest to the reader?
Next, examine the methods section. Have you provided sufficient detail so
that a reader has a clear picture of what you did and why you did it that way?
Mainly, you want to convince the reader that your approach was thorough and rigorous.
Was your field site, experimental facility, or laboratory setup described in sufficient detail?
Did you explicitly state your experimental design and sampling protocols? Were all analytical
methods described or, if a standard method was used, an appropriate reference provided?
Have you described all of your statistical tests, data transformations, etc.?
In the results section, you want to first reexamine all figures and tables to see if
each one is necessary to support the central argument and can be understood on its own.
Pay close attention to the table and figure legends. Have you provided sufficient detail
for a reader to understand what is shown without reference to the text? If a table or figure
doesn't provide key insights, consider omitting it or moving it to supplementary information.
Go through the text description and eliminate repetitive or overly detailed descriptions of the data.
Instead, provide data summaries and descriptions of major patterns in the data or
perhaps important deviations from a pattern. Next is the discussion section. Have you provided
an in-depth interpretation of the findings and compared and contrasted your results
with other work? You may also wish to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your study.
As well as implications for other types of systems or any practical applications, if relevant.
As you revise each section, you may want to add subheadings to help orient the reader.
Once you've revised the major sections, then you are ready to take a hard look at the conclusions
and abstract. In the conclusions section, have you pointed out the broader implications of your
work and how it will move the field forward? You may also want to list questions raised by your
work and recommend areas for future research. Pay particular attention to the abstract.
Have you stated your main question or hypothesis clearly and why it is important, how you studied
the problem, your key findings, your conclusions and broader implications of the work?
Once you have finalized the overall structure of the manuscript, the next step is to polish the
writing. This is done word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. Here, you are
striving for clear, concise wording. Do all the sentences in a paragraph support the main point?
Are they presented in a logical sequence? Do you need transitional words, sentences, or paragraphs
to improve the narrative flow? Finally, you need to go through the manuscript looking for typos,
errors in punctuation and grammar, inconsistent use of terminology, and other minor errors.
You will catch some of these errors earlier, but it's important to go through the manuscript
just searching for such mistakes. At this final level, you will also be checking that
the formatting throughout the manuscript matches the journal's recommended style.
This includes the references cited section. I always use a reference manager such as EndNote,
which will automatically format in-text citations and the bibliography for a
specified journal style. But I still go through the reference section to catch any mistakes.
So, there you have it. When revising the first draft, start with the big picture and work your
way down to the minor edits. This approach will save you time and effort in the long run and give
you a solid second draft. At this point, it's helpful to seek feedback from colleagues.
They will point out weaknesses that you have overlooked. You may also
want to hire a copy editor, especially if English is a second language for you.
Thanks for watching and let me know in the comments if you have questions.