Quality of scientific writing considered in peer review?
Martin Fenner
Monday, 01 October 2007 05:53 UTC
I was wondering how much, if at all, the quality of the writing of a submitted paper is considered in the peer review process? I mean not the quality of the data or the arguments in the discussions but the writing style itself (language, grammar, etc.). In other words, will a nicely written paper with the same data be more likely be accepted?
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You do have a point, Steve, when you say that clear writing is what matters. Indeed, grammar mistakes do not necessarily render a text unreadable, particularly if thoughts/arguments are well organized. However, I really don’t share this idea that “clear writing” or the concept of clear writing is not associated with the language of the author. The English language itself has its own discourse patterns, which are extremely reader oriented. Among other factors, it means that it favors cohesion and coherence to the extent that a translation from German, for example, to English may have substantial problems if the translator is not aware of such features. And be sure that this is not linguistic mumbo jumbo, and several of the problems Chinese and Japanese authors have are also related to these language issues. These authors do not necessarily follow English discourse patterns when writing academic texts in their first language, which makes their job as scientific writers even more complicated… That’s why non-native English speaking (NNES) researchers (with sound results, of course)who are fully proficient in English may be at a considerable advantage over those who just follow rules of grammar and mechanics. We all know that internalizing good English takes time, and I think NNES themselves would benefit if they devoted some more time to writing. It would also help in the interaction between authors and language editors/ copyeditors/ translators…
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Steve writes “Jargon has its uses. You cannot write for Nature, or any other journal with space constraints, if you have to spell out the basic science behind everything you mention. Furthermore, many key concepts really are unknown to those outside the field, and rightly so. Science is vast.”
I vehemently disagree. The ‘space constraints’ argument is the oldest canard on the pond. In my experience, scientists (particularly in very competitive areas of molecular and cell biology) often use jargon as a device to exclude all readers but a select few from the business of what their paper is about. In my view such papers do not belong in Nature.
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To Senkei: There are free services for English improvement, also. From our “Author and Referee website, in which links are provided”http://www.nature.com/authors/author_services/how_write.html
“A useful set of articles providing general advice about writing and submitting scientific papers can be found in SciDev.Net’s “How do I?” section.
Inter-Biotec provides a free online writing course to help biomedical scientists whose first language is not English to write and publish their papers in English-language journals. The Human Frontier Science Program’s report “Websites and searching for collaborations” also contains useful writing guidelines for non-native-English speakers, as well as other helpful advice related to scientific publishing." -
Now, how come that link did not format, even though I checked on preview? Sorry, here it is again:Author and Referee website, in which links are provided to the writing services and guides.
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In response to Steve/Henry — I think the first paragraph (abstract) can and should be comprehensible across disciplines, as this gives any scientist, or reader with good scientific background, an idea of the context, the main result and how it adds to previous knowledge.
After that, I think there is a lot of variation between disciplines: some are more jargon-ridden than others, and I do think that it would be more than most people could manage, to understand every word in every paper published in Nature.
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Thank you all for posting on an interesting thread. We all seem to agree that writing is important, but I am afraid I personally think that much of the editorial work done by publishers is detrimental to the publications and not worthy. Editors might have the best intentions, but they are not the authors and should not be writing, rewriting or modifying manuscripts. Especially after acceptance. Revisions can take months. Sometimes with long arguments about the choice of a single word. It is not right for an editor to come in after the paper is finally accepted and alter the text. They are not the experts and they should not act as if they are. If an editor believes some changes could help, then I am sure all authors would be happy to read their comments and suggestions. But this is not what I have seen. Usually the editor’s changes are made right before the proofs and the authors are asked only to “sign in and approve” those proofs that no longer represent their writing. Surely some writing needs improvement, but a paper represents the work of the authors, not the publisher and not the editor. When I read a paper I want to read what the author(s) wrote, good or bad, true or false, not what some editor somewhere interpreted. I think it is wonderful that postings here are from current or former editors. Their comments are good evidence for two things: first, they care about the writing; second, they dismiss the work required to actually do the science. Henry’s post is a good example: “any fool can learn to press buttons or read an instruction manual, but good writing takes time to master, and is the most important skill you can learn”. Writing is important, maybe even fundamental. But there is A LOT more to science than pushing buttons or reading the instruction manual. Some of the journals where I have published seem to follow NPG’s system of heavy editorial hand. I have seen papers where whole paragraphs are rewritten, ideas changed and sections renamed. I had a section name changed from “Numerical details” to “Statistical analysis”, even when there was statistics. I have had data in tables changed (adding or removing significant digits) purportedly to justify the text and make it look nicer. The data was collected with a given precision, whether this looks best in the table should be irrelevant. My hope is that reason or financial pressure eventually forces journals to drop these editors out, or at least cut back on the time they can spend on each manuscript.
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Juan makes many points. Nature journals (subject of this forum) do not hold up manuscripts after acceptance for editing changes. At Nature, the journal where I work, once the subeditor starts to work on a manuscript, he or she sends the edited version to the author to check within a day. The author agrees final version, and the typesetter then takes a couple of days to turn around a proof and insert the final artwork. We receive consistently positive and appreciative comments from our authors about this service: take it from me, they would not be inhibited from complaining loudly if they felt the experience was similar to that described by Juan.
Nobody could disagree with some of the general statements Juan makes about writing in general, but I for one don’t recognise the process he describes as applying to Nature, nor does it accord with the feedback we and the other Nature journals receive from our/their own authors.
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Juan is taking a position in that seems to be based entitrely on ignorance and prejudice. If he ever has an opportunity to come to a journal as a short-term intern, he would find it an eye-opening experience, which would hopefully change his mind about editors and what they do.
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You are right. I should have made it clear that I did not mean anything I wrote to apply to Nature as I do not know the publishing process. My experience was based on other journals, and it should be clear. I apologize for that. But it was not based on ignorance or prejudice, but on my experience and on that of others I have talked with.
Perhaps I should make it more clear: I believe that editors can be extremely valuable, and most writers would benefit from asking people with editorial experience for their input. But in many journals, it would seem like the system encourages editors to make changes. I could understand some changes that improve on the writing, but most of the changes I see are trivial things. I would say that, in my experience, 80% of the changes are inconsequential, 10% are detrimental, and 10% are marginal improvements. I would rather read the texts as the authors wrote it. If editors have suggestions, that should happen before a text is accepted. After going through the process of writing and revising, often involving lengthy exchanges between authors and with the reviewers and scientific editors (the journal editors that comment on content, not the editors that edit the text, I think this is what Maxine called a subeditor), I don’t think there should be any more changes. Maybe most of the feedback you receive is positive. And I am glad for that. But the journals on which I have published do not even have an option to provide feedback. And if we learn something when trying to publish is that we definitely don’t want to alienate the editors!. So I wonder if there isn’t a substantial amount of authors who cannot really express their concerns about the editorial process. The fact that Nature has this forum suggests that the editorial staff there has a different approach to the work. But from the original post I thought the discussion was about scientific publishing in general, not only NPG. Thanks Maxine and Henry for your replies. -
Maxine,
you wrote:
“I agree with Edoardo that it is hard for those for whom English isn’t a first language. We do advise you to ask a native English speaker in your group or working in the same area to look through your paper for you before submitting”
“To help in a general sense, we provide information about our publishing process in eight languages here, which we hope makes our process as transparent as possible”.
“our writing guide links to various translation and advice sites, including the very good one at SciDev.net”.
First and foremost I’m not offended what so ever by the spelling mistake in my name, that you’ve acknowledged and proptly corrected. But, this gives and idea about the difficulties that anyone can meet when thinking in a specific language and translate in a different language. Even very simple things may get wrong. Clearly you had my name in front when writing my name at the beginning of your comment and then you followed the “phonetic memory” of it. I get called Eduardo very often indeed!
However, the problems met by a not native English speaker while writing a scientific paper are even greater. Lack or originality may be an issue (plagiarism of sentences, just in the attempt of sending clear messages to the reader). Sometime, during the revision of a paper by someone not familiar with the topic, the concepts may get altered. Translations services may be lenghty and expensive.
I would suggest to Nature to have, within the editorial team, people able to offer translation advice early in the revision process.
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