Writing a scientific paper

Like software engineering, or playing a game of the Dark Souls series, writing scientific papers is a challenging activity that blends multiple goals and pitfalls. As in software engineering, one way to learn the tricks of the trade is to look and comment upon harmful behaviors, known as anti-patterns.

Anti-patterns

We needed to do this

This one applies to both scientific writing and presentations.

Description: the solution to a problem is presented as necessary.

  • Oral: "And so, to do this, we needed to measure..."
  • Written: "To achieve this, one needs to update..."

Necessity has a precise meaning: a solution is necessary when there is no other way. While it is reassuring to think that your method emerged as "the" logical response to your problem, truth is, it bundles a natural chain of contingencies, and there are most likely other ways to solve the same problem. Doubt is a crucial practice in science. The mistake that appears in this anti-pattern is to shun it out.

Remedy: cut to the point.

  • Oral:" And so, to do this, we measured..."
  • Written: "To achieve this, we updated..."

Laundry list

This one applies to related work sections. It is discussed in the short presentation How to Write Papers So People Can Read Them by Derek Dreyer.

Description: the paper merely enumerates other works on the topic without comparing them to its own solution: "A et al. did this. B et al. did that. C et al. did that. etc."

Remedy: explain in detail how your work addresses your problem in a way that related work doesn't.

General writing advice

Flow

Keep in mind that reading, like watching a movie, is not a fully conscious process. To be receptive to the ideas conveyed by your writing, you want to keep your reader in a state of flow. Linear storytelling is a common strategy to realize this, using temporal or logical connectives to stitch paragraphs one after the other. This point is well explained in the short talk How to Write Papers So People Can Read Them by Derek Dreyer.

Active or passive voice

There is a bit of debate surrounding this question, as it certainly boils down to a personal choice of writing style. Some scientists argue that, the objective of scientific papers being the communication of facts and observations, scientists themselves should be grammatically excluded as subjects. Neither "we" as in "we developed...", nor "our" as in "our method...". This line of thought yields to an intensive use of the passive voice.

Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. (Henri Poincaré)

However, passive-voice sentences are a slippery path: they use more words, and have a tendency to produce more complex and vague sentence structures. Vagueness is the main matter of concern here, the nemesis of scientific writers. For this reason, unless there is a clear motivation to use the passive voice (to emphasize the action over its actor, to describe actions from anonymous actors, ...), try to use the active voice whenever possible.

Thesaurus and dictionary

Two advices especially targetted to non-native speakers like me:

  • Beware of false friends: whenever unsure, check the definition in a dictionary.
  • Use a thesaurus to avoid repetitions, and to improve your phrasing by selecting words that express best what you want to say.

To go further

Anti-patterns and useful techniques don't cover the whole topic of paper writing. The underlying challenge for you, as a writer, is to put yourself in the position of your readers. Some researchers have shared their experience on this in reports and talks that are definitely worth checking out:

Discussion

You can subscribe to this  Discussion's atom feed to stay tuned.

  • Avatar

    Jihong

    Posted on

    Hey Stéphane, thanks a lot for writing up a post on writing and I come back often to refresh my understanding. Great now you also allow posting comments.

    • Avatar

      Stéphane

      Posted on

      I'm glad if this could help somehow :-) Feel free to let me know if there are other points you have picked up in the course of your career that could be mentioned here.

Feel free to post a comment by e-mail using the form below. Your e-mail address will not be disclosed.

📝 You can use Markdown with $\LaTeX$ formulas in your comment.

By clicking the button below, you agree to the publication of your comment on this page.

Opens your e-mail client.