Hi Everyone,
I’m delighted to have the chance to share ideas about the current state of “the scientific paper”. From my perspective as a professor who teaches researchers how to write persuasive and clear manuscripts, I can tell you two things: 1) the papers published in most journals are unnecessarily confusing and 2) most scientists can learn how to write simply and clearly. In short, I think that’s it’s time for a paradigm shift in how research is communicated. Furthermore, I believe that scientists need to take courses on how to write about their research in a way that captures the enthusiasm they have for their research and that enables multi-disciplinary readers to read and ENJOY their articles. Although it’s much more difficult to write clearly and precisely about one’s research, the advantages of doing so are huge because clear writing leads to clear thinking – for both the researcher and the reader alike.
I think that most scientists would agree that the causes behind confused writing are complex. Some of these causes are deliberate (and include a desire to plump up small findings or a desire to keep others out of the field by using convoluted sentences and lots of specialized terminology). Some other factors that drive the confusion are simply rooted in a lack of training on how to write and edit a scientific manuscript or confusion on the part of writers about the story they’re trying to tell. Whatever the reasons behind the confusion, this style of writing does disproportionate damage to the whole scientific enterprise because as we all know, the best science is based on the work of others and perpetuates continued research in a field.
So I say it’s time for a change. Since the whole research process is only really over once the published article is read and understood, it would be great if the scientific community decides to take a second look at the quality of writing of scientific articles.
-
Time for a change by Linda Cooper
In this blog I suggest that there's a better way to write a scientific article. Currently, published articles are unnecessarily difficult to read and researchers need to be trained in how to write about their research so that others can understand their a
-
Time for a change
- Date:
- Wednesday, 28 Mar ch 2007 - 21:12 UTC
Last updated: Wednesday, 28 Mar 2007 - 21:12 UTC
-
Comments
-
I am really looking forward to your hearing your insights! I have had a similar suspicion regarding talks/lectures. Sometimes the aim of a talk seems to be to communicate the person’s superiority over his/her audience rather than his/her ideas or discoveries.
Normally young researchers learn the writing stile from their direct supervisors… and almost copy it if they are not native English speakers, as in my case. Some languages have a more narrative way. We are too descriptive, and when we start writing novels, we are always told: keep it short, so we start to force 5 lines in one. English is a very straight language; that´s what we are told. Then, there is a second level after our supervisors: the journal referees. That means: make it even shorter. I started with a 25 pages article; after my supervisors, it was 18, after the editorial board, 12… and is still too long.
Hi Linda, I applaud you in your efforts to improve scientists’ communication skills. As a science journalist who has to translate complex science into compelling stories for nonexperts, I know first hand how scientists need to communicate their work more clearly to “ordinary” people like me.
If scientists learn to write research papers better, do you think that’ll result in better communication all-round with the lay public or scientists outside of their field?
Bronwen,
Thanks for your comment. I’d really like to hear your views too on why talks and papers are so convoluted – and what can be done about it. Although writing and talking clearly about research is a challenge – it’s possible – and necessary!
Veronica,
I agree that many journals want short, compressed articles (the shorter the article, the more articles they can publish). Unfortunately, this leaves little room to explain complex concepts. However, there is a solution.. If scientists carefully edit their manuscripts, they eliminate a lot of clutter – which leaves more room for expanded explanations. Another way to manage the information that you include in an article is to focus on your single most important finding – and tell that story only. This is hard to do because researchers are frequently overwhelmed by their data.
Corie,
Absolutely. Scientists have an obligation to communicate their research more clearly because 1) they rely on taxpayers to fund their research and 2) because civil society needs to be well-informed about scientific advances so that policy makers can make even-handed and fair policies.
Linda,
The fact is that “clutter” is difficult to identify for the own researcher.
Besides there are different kinds of articles, being the most difficult to write according to my short experience, 1. reviews, because then you have to summarize ALL the available information, or 2. descriptive works, because then, that’s true, you are just describing and lose yourself in a lot of clutter.
In my university, we have a kind of research support center, which major aim is to give administrative support and communicate researcher’s activities to the rest of the university. In two occasions they have organized a seminar on “How to write scientific articles”, inviting foreign retired Professors to give them. I assisted to one. It was a one week workshop, and we had to submit an article the week before. When I received my article back it had a lot of comments of the kind: “I don’t understand this, explain more”. At the end I was wondering if it had a point to do these sort of general wide topic workshops. The professor giving it had to read almost 20 articles about completely different topics, starting on nanotechnology, passing trough banana biotechnology, software engineering and ending in coastal ecology. And I completely understood why he didn’t understand. At least it was o good experience to improve some grammatical expressions.
I’m not saying that it is pointless to have this kind of workshops, but I’m wondering what the right way is. I guess that the original idea was that you have to be able to communicate your findings in the article no matter what is the field of expertise of the reader… but, is this possible? Are not these two different types of literature?
Sorry for my english
Veronica describes our life on Nature pretty well, as we have to make sense of articles on all kinds of scientific topics. It seems to me as if she may not have had the best of advice, because what is needed is constructive criticism, not vague comments that don’t help the author to make their manuscripts more readable or accessible.
Linda, I am so pleased you have started this blog, and it is good to read so many responses already. As you know, we try to assist authors to write their papers for Nature journals by providing advice on the author&referee website (see how to write and how to publish)
In addition to our own advice, we provide links there to some good “writing advice” websites.
I look forward to reading how this discussion develops and how we at Nature can help authors (past, present and future) in this regard.
Veronica,
I agree that it can be very difficult for the researcher to distinguish between the real focus of a paper and clutter. However, it’s possible if you have the right tools to do so. For example in my courses and workshops, I work on 2 techniques to guide researchers to their important story (rather than the overwhelming sea of data). One strategy is to write a structured abstract that includes a purpose statement and hypothesis (in the Introduction) and a clear statement that identifies the important finding (in the Discussion). As well, information in the Methods and Results are strictly limited to information that establishes the researcher’s credentials. Since we know that the Abstract is just about THE most significant part of the scientific manuscript – because more people read the Abstract than any other part of the paper – it pays to work hard to get it right (from the reader’s perspective). Remember that the Abstract can act as a roadmap for the full paper – so you can see quickly if you have indeed found the right focus for your paper – or strayed into the range of “clutter”. Abstracts are so short that there’s no room for extra, unimportant details (no matter how much you love the technique you’ve developed or how many months you’ve spent pursuing a different line of enquiry – remember that readers only want to know about your important finding and what it means in the broader context). Usually students take several iterations (sometimes as many as 10 revisions to really figure out what story they want to tell – to nail down their most significant contribution).
The second technique is to ask researchers to explain simply and clearly what they have found. (This process usually takes place after they’ve written their first version of the Abstract). It’s amazing how researchers can tell you what they’ve found and what it means, but can’t do the same in writing. So this is where I encourage then to write as they speak – writing naturally and vividly about their research. So technique #2 is to write using the active voice, tell us a story about your research – in as natural and normal way as possible.
I’ll stop here for now but if you want more advice, I’ll be happy to continue this discussion.
Maxine,
Thank you for your warm welcome and for the web links. My concern is that authors simply imitate the style of published articles, and since many articles are difficult to read, these authors end up writing equally obscure papers. Do you agree?
Linda
Somewhat belatedly, yes! I agree, it is a self-perpetuating system. I can’t tell you how frequently and for how many years I and colleagues change passive to active voice, to take but one example of achieved clarity (which you yourself discuss). Nature has always (well, for the 23 years I’ve been here!) encouraged authors to use the active voice, and edited their mss accordingly. But to no avail in most cases, it seems. Every author is reminded of this and similar “tips” when their paper is at point of final revision.
So I very much look forward to reading your blog as it develops (am doing, in fact, as it has taken me so long to get back to this comment thread, apologies).