I once wrote the first draft of a scientific paper in twelve days while I was in the field
conducting the research.
I was able to do this partly because the study’s objective was fairly straightforward:
to determine how forest clear-cutting and sand dredging had altered the potential for
soil erosion on mangrove islands off the coast of Belize.
Also, I was able to conduct most of the analyses while in the field, which allowed me to crunch
the data and write it up before returning to the U.S.
Basically, I collected the samples and made measurements at my field sites during the
day and wrote at night.
And I was able to write in the evenings because there was not much else to do at the remote
field station where I was staying.
Granted these were somewhat special circumstances that allowed me to simultaneously collect
data and write.
Also, I had quite a bit of experience writing and publishing scientific articles by this
time, which meant I had the requisite skills and discipline to tackle the task.
But this example shows just how quickly a scientific paper can be written.
Now, of course, I later had to spend some time revising, that is, polishing the text
and finalizing the figures and tables.
But revising is much easier than producing the initial draft.
In this video, I’m going to describe how to get that first draft written and provide
a few tips about how to be more efficient in preparing it.
Let’s begin by talking about the main obstacle to writing a paper.
And that is getting started.
If procrastination or writer’s block is your problem, you’ll never write papers
quickly or efficiently.
To get over this problem, you need to do four things that address the underlying anxiety
hindering you.
First, begin by reading the literature on your topic and take notes.
You need to do this anyway, even if you don’t have a problem.
But if you are looking at a blank screen and can think of nothing to write, it may be because
you have not really thought in depth about your topic.
Reading what other investigators have done will stimulate your own ideas.
Taking notes about each paper you read is also important because it gets you writing
in a way that is less likely to cause anxiety than trying to write about your own work.
Also, these notes can later be worked into your introduction or discussion to show what
work has been done in the past.
Second, to further jump-start your writing and to save some time, use a manuscript template.
A template helps you side step the blank page paralysis.
Instead of starting with a blank page, you begin with a written framework.
Here is one of my templates.
In most papers, you’ll need a title, a running title, a list of authors and their affiliations.
You may also need a disclaimer statement, depending on your institution’s requirements.
Filling out your title page, even if you change it later, will get you writing and thinking
about how to best represent your work.
And the title page is followed by headings designating the main sections of a typical
scientific paper.
Abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion.
You might be able to include some subheadings, for example, in the methods section.
You can also have generic text for the acknowledgements, which can be modified for each paper.
This template is basically the beginnings of an outline for your paper, which I would
encourage you to use.
But a template also has a positive psychological effect on a writer, showing them that they
are not starting from scratch.
You can also save time by formatting your paper at this point, the headings and so forth,
for your target journal.
Once you’ve reviewed the relevant literature, made some notes, formatted your template,
you are almost ready to begin writing.
But first, you need to prepare your figures and tables and arrange them in a logical sequence.
You have already conducted statistics on the data at this point, but I believe it’s helpful
to have a visual picture in mind of what those data show and how best to present it before
beginning to write.
And you need to do one more thing before writing a word, and that is to turn off your internal
censor.
This is the third suggestion to protect against writer’s block.
Just get your ideas and main points down.
You can word-smith later.
Don’t agonize over word choice or whether you need a comma or a semicolon.
You can even write incomplete sentences to describe the main findings of your research
and why you think it’s important.
After you get the main points outlined and organized, go back and flesh them out with
complete sentences and relevant citations.
In other words, your goal in the beginning is to get a rough draft, which can be polished
later.
Now, you’ll hear recommendations about which section of a paper you should or should not
start with.
For example, some authors suggest not starting with the introduction because it’s the most
difficult section to write.
The fact is that you can begin with any section of a paper that you feel comfortable tackling
first.
Sometimes I begin with the methods section, as I did when writing that paper in twelve
days.
That and the introduction were the only two sections I had to start with because I had
not yet collected any data.
And by the way, writing the introduction is not as hard as you might think.
There is a simple formula for writing a great introduction, which I cover in another video.
Another point is that you don’t have to complete a section before moving on to another
one.
It’s OK to jump around.
If you get stuck writing the discussion, for example, work on another section or on your
figures for a while.
Or read the literature and take some more notes.
Then go back to the discussion.
The point is to keep moving forward.
Now, how rough your first draft will be and how much revision will be required to produce
an acceptable paper will depend on your writing skills.
If this is your first scientific paper, then you should expect to do a lot of revising.
If you have substantial writing experience, on the other hand, you likely can write and
edit at the same time, producing a respectable first draft that may require just a few revisions
before submission.
Another tip is to schedule your writing, especially if you have a deadline.
Set aside one or more hours per day, whatever you calculate it will take to get your first
draft done by your deadline.
Stick to that schedule and ignore distractions.
Having a regular writing schedule guards against procrastination.
A final major time-saver I’ll mention is to use a reference manager such as Endnote
to avoid having to spend time formatting and reformatting your paper’s bibliography.
If you’ve conducted a thorough literature review prior to writing your paper, all the
relevant citations will be in your electronic reference library.
You can use the cite while you write function of a reference manager to quickly insert a
citation in the narrative and simultaneously build your literature cited section.
You can also import the reference style template for your target journal, which lets you automatically
format in-text citations and the paper’s bibliography to journal specifications.
That will save you a great deal of time and help you avoid mistakes in preparing your
first draft.
In the end, there are several ways to be a more efficient writer.
I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to write a paper in twelve days, as I did.
In fact, I don’t recommend trying.
When it comes to scientific writing, you want to take as much time as necessary to get your
facts straight and to convey your results clearly and unambiguously.
Thanks for watching and, if you found the information useful, please share this video
with colleagues and students.
.