Have you ever read a paper by a well-known researcher and wondered how you would ever
be able to write as well or with such elegance?
Hi.
I'm Karen McKee and in this video I'm going to talk about what it takes to become an expert
at scientific writing, focusing on the mindset of exceptional authors.
To publish your research in good journals, you not only need important research findings,
you must be able to write as well or better than other researchers who are competing with
you for space in those journals.
As I've pointed out before, high impact journals typically accept less than 20 percent of submissions,
which means that your paper must be better than 80 percent of papers submitted to such
a journal.
In other words, it s not enough to master spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
You must be able to write a convincing and compelling article that clearly conveys what
you found and why it's important.
Now, talented writers are not born with some mystical ability to effortlessly transfer
their thoughts to the page.
Most learned their writing skills through hard work and lots of practice.
In previous videos, I've talked about the mechanics of writing and offered some ways
to improve those skills.
But to become an exceptional writer requires a special mindset, which I m going to explain
now.
What I will describe are mental exercises that will prepare you for writing an excellent
paper.
If you are a student or recent graduate trying to publish your research, one of the first
things you must realize is that you are no longer writing for your teachers, showing
how much you know.
You are writing for a different audience who want you to tell them something new and worth
their while to read.
So, your first mental step is to think about what is newsworthy or interesting or useful
about the information you are going to provide in your paper.
Then consider what your core message is going to be.
What insight or key finding your paper will convey.
Ask yourself how your paper will benefit your readers.
Will it move the field forward by introducing a new technique?
Provide a solution to a problem?
Settle a conflict in the literature?
Challenge a long-held notion?
Report a discovery?
You should be able to articulate your core message and its benefit to readers in one
or two sentences.
By articulating your message and how it will benefit your future readers will help you
focus when writing your paper.
The next point to consider is who your audience will be.
Your paper's content may be of interest mainly to specialists in the field, but the way you
present your findings can make your paper accessible to those in related fields or even
in quite different fields.
A paper that is understandable by a wider audience is going to be more attractive than
one only a handful of experts can comprehend.
Attracting a wider readership is something journals are concerned with.
And the more people who read your paper, the more citations it may receive.
Why are these considerations important and how do they make your paper better?
Let's look at an example.
Consider how Watson and Crick began their 1953 paper.
We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.).
This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.
The opening sentence articulates the core message of the paper.
The second sentence tells readers that the paper is not only of interest to specialists
studying molecular structure of nucleic acids, but to biologists in general.
Then the authors provide some background, describing previous attempts at discerning
the structure of DNA, which is useful information for people unfamiliar with these efforts.
For specialists familiar with the topic, the brief background acknowledged the efforts
of other workers while pointing out why those efforts failed to identify the true structure
of DNA.
Notice also that this opening passage is written in everyday, straightforward language that
anyone can understand.
In other words, an author's choice of content and wording can broaden the potential readership
while simultaneously offering a convincing argument in easily grasped language.
Going through such mental exercises will greatly improve your paper before you've even written
a word.
Exceptional writers use this what's your story going to be approach to ensure their papers
are seen to be valuable and worth publishing.
To do so requires you, the author, to first be clear about how the information will benefit
readers and what content and style of writing will be most effective at getting this value
across.
Otherwise, your paper's take-home message may be vague or weak, leaving the reader with
the impression that your work is just not that important.
Now, I realize that some of you are probably not keen on making such an effort and want
to just dive into the writing.
But taking time to mentally envision these points before trying to write will solidify
your paper's direction and make it easier to stay on track while writing the paper.
It's especially helpful if you suffer from writer's block.
In fact, envisioning your paper this way should have you chomping at the bit to get started
writing.
So, it's well worth doing.
There's another aspect to the elite writer's mindset.
And that is, elite scientific writers have high aspirations for their papers.
They want to do more than just convey research findings.
They want to create something of beauty and elegance that others will enjoy reading.
When they embark on a writing project, they strive to be accurate, unpretentious, comprehensible,
elegant, and effective in their writing.
Accuracy is a key ingredient for a scientific paper, and the elite writer will ensure that
the data presented are accurate and that the writing does not introduce any inaccuracies.
Pretentious, overly jargony language requires the reader to work harder to comprehend the
content.
An example.
Objective observations of ecological phenomena compel the conclusion that a plant's success
or failure in competitive interactions exhibits some tendency to be commensurate with its
innate capacity to acquire resources, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable
must invariably be taken into account.
Hard to understand, right?
The elite writer uses simple, straightforward language that is understandable by the intended
audience.
Here's the translation.
The outcome of plant competition is not always predictable.
The elite writer also ensures that their paper is comprehensible.
This means going through the paper, sentence by sentence, and ensuring that the meaning
is crystal clear.
For example.
The new method is less time-consuming than the previous one, which takes thirty minutes
to complete.
Which takes thirty minutes, the new method or the previous one?
The new method, which takes thirty minutes to complete, is less time-consuming than the
previous one.
That s clear which method is thirty minutes.
The elite writer also strives for elegance, crafting graceful passages that flow effortlessly
or generate vivid imagery.
Pause the video to read this opening paragraph of a paper on how hurricanes contribute to
coral reef building.
The first sentence creates a vivid image in the reader's mind of what one might see swimming
over a coral reef.
The second sentence introduces an assumption that the authors will challenge in this paper.
The remainder of the paragraph concisely summarizes how other work is based on the soon-to-be
challenged assumption by describing the various models of reef building in a chronological
sequence.
Although the authors might have used a more traditional narrative opening, this one grabs
the reader's attention and piques their curiosity
Finally, the elite writer ensures that the paper is effective, that is, it effectively
communicates the key information while excluding extraneous verbiage or convoluted wording.
To achieve these aspirations requires attention to detail and a willingness to revise until
each sentence sings.
If you are interested in taking your writing up a notch and eventually become an exceptional
writer, you'll want to adopt this mindset.
Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future videos that might
help you get your paper published.