Tips for young science writers and maybe some more senior ones too.

This is my first blogging effort, though I have been posting on my facebook page for some time. As an scientific editor with nearly 20 years experience, there are some things I really want researchers of all ages to think about as they write up their research. Sure, I can correct the grammar and sentence structure and even help with some of the flow of the text, but if the underlying logical structure is missing or disorganized, there is only so much I can do. I want my clients to get published! So I am taking my facebook posts, reorganizing them somewhat, and presenting them as a blog. Here we go!

Let's begin with the basic organization.

Consider an outline to organize your thoughts. Scientific manuscripts have a prescribed general outline: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. However, figuring what to put in each section can sometimes be tough. Young authors tend to do what has come to be known as a "mind dump". Put everything you know about a subject or every piece of data produced in a manuscript and you will be good to go! That tactic, however, invariably leads to rejection by reviewers. They do not want to know everything you know or look at data that are not necessary. Readers and reviewers need a tight logical presentation to accept and understand the conclusions to be drawn from your research. That means you have to understand your own thought processes and how you developed your research and its outcome. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW YOU FOUND WHAT YOU FOUND, HOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ANYONE ELSE?

Outlines, not necessarily formal ones, can help you figure out what is pertinent and what is not. They can just be bullet points, if that works for you. The important thing is to write down all the points you think you want to make in whatever section you are writing. The order does not matter, because the next step is to look at each point and ask whether it is really necessary for the reader to know that point. The final step is to order the points logically, so that the reader can follow your thought process that underlies that section of the manuscript. When you can see the logical structure of the work, then it is very easy to put it into formal sentences and paragraphs.