Before You Write

1
Before You Write

• APS Professional Skills Course
• Writing and Reviewing for Scientific Journals

2
Benefits of Writing

• As important as doing the research
• Share your results with the greater scientific
  community
• Opportunity to think more clearly about the
  research
• Writing is a skill and improves with practice
• Critical for your success

3
Importance of Publications

• Critical to promotion
• Final product of the research project
• Help colleagues learn about your work AND you
• Yardstick of productivity
• Quality is as important as quantity
• Critical to funding
• Grant applications
• Grant progress reports
• Grant renewal applications

4
Competing to Publish

• Competition among scientists to be published in
  journals is intense
• Cost of publication is high
• Rejection rates vary among journals

5
What Makes a Good Paper?

• Tells a good story
• Sound and testable hypothesis
• Good experimental design
• Understandable results
• Advances understanding of science
• Suggests areas for future investigation

6
A Clear Hypothesis

• Does it make a specific prediction?
• What does it mean if you prove it?
• What does it mean if you disprove it?
• Is it testable?
• Does it have a clear rationale?
• Does it fit with what is already known?
• Does it expand or change the existing paradigm?
• Does it explain what happens in a simple way?

7
Good Hypotheses?

• 1 We hypothesized that changing the time the
  mice are exposed to a drug will change their
  breathing rate.
• 2 We hypothesized that the Na uptake into the
  cells resulted from a novel but unknown
  substance.

8
Better Hypotheses!

• We hypothesize that the enhancement of
  CCK-induced satiation by gastric distention
  involves 5-HT3 receptor activation.
• We hypothesized that 8 wk of stretch-shortening
  cycle exercise training would increase fiber
  cross-sectional area, peak Ca2-activated force,
  maximal shortening velocities, and power in slow
  and fast muscle fibers.

9
Writing in Stages

• Discuss with your collaborators
• Research Tasks
• Writing Tasks
• Authorship
• Write an outline for the paper
• Do a thorough literature search, including
  older literature
• Start writing as you finish the experiments
• Your methods
• Your results to identify missing data/needed
  experiments
• Seek input from colleagues
• Consider practical and political issues
• Patents, secrecy regulations
• No one way to write a paper

10
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Writing

• Have you written an outline?
• Have you agreed on who the authors will be?
• Have you agreed on who is writing each section of
  the manuscript?
• Have you selected a journal?
• Is your command of English grammar good enough?

11
Judgment Calls

• Knowing when to start and stop writing
• Knowing when youve done enough experiments
• Determining enough versus too much in your
  story
• Ask mentors for assistance

12
Summary

• Good writing does not make up for poor science
• Poor writing can mask good science
• Plan before you start the experiments!
• Rationale and hypothesis
• Experimental design
• Paper outline
• Early discussions with collaborators
• Watch your writing improve through
• Practice
• Accepting critical feedback