Writing a Scientific Paper

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Writing a Scientific Paper
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What is a scientific paper?

• Generally a piece of peer reviewed scientific
  research
• Reviews
• Opinions
• PRESENTATION OF UNIQUE DATA

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Presenting data

• Includes novel results from
• Lab experiments
• Field surveys
• Theoretical models
• Meta-analysis

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What a scientific paper isnt

• A collection of graphs and raw data
• Must include
• Background information
• Previous studies
• References
• Conclusions

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Structure of a scientific paper

• Title
• (Authors, institution, contact info)
• Abstract
• Key Words
• Introduction
• Methods (NOT Methodology)
• Results
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• References
• (Rarely) Appendix

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Title

• Think about this - rarely use the title of the
  assignment
• Should be informative as to what paper is about
• Can - sometimes - use eye catching titles

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Titles - examples

• The effects of desiccation on kinesis behaviour
  in woodlice
• Ink is a conspecific alarm cue in the Caribbean
  reef squid, Sepioteuthis sepioidea
• Scraping a living a review of littorinid grazing

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Abstract

• Often the hardest part
• Often written last
• Includes background, methods, results and a
  conclusion in around 200 words

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Abstract

• The lunar cycle has been shown to affect the
  behaviour of a variety of marine animals.
  However, changes in the behaviour of seabirds and
  marine mammals and how they respond to the lunar
  cycle have been less well documented, principally
  because of the technical difficulties in
  long-term recording of their at-sea behaviour.
  Because seabirds generally rely on visual cues at
  small spatial scales, ambient light levels by
  moonlight may have a strong influence on their
  foraging and predator avoidance behaviours at sea
  at night. We used global location sensor loggers
  attached to wintering streaked shearwaters to
  examine whether the birds' at-sea behaviour
  varied with the lunar phase. The shearwaters
  migrated from Japan to the seas off northern New
  Guinea. Their activities at night changed
  synchronously with the lunar phase birds flew
  for longer periods and landed on water more
  frequently on nights with a full moon than when
  there was a new moon. Our results indicate that
  at-sea behaviour of pelagic seabirds is closely
  associated with the lunar cycle.

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Introduction

• In the same way as an essay
• Think Egg Timer
• Start broad
• Become more focused on topic
• End Introduction with narrow focus normally a
  paragraph with your aims or hypotheses included
• Apart from final paragraph should be heavily
  referenced

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Woodlice - revisited
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Woodlice - revisited

• What are purposes of adaptive behaviours?
• What is kinesis?
• Brief description of kinesis in woodlice
• Acclimatisation
• Effects of acclimatisation on kinesis
• The hypotheses

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Methods

• Purpose of methods is to allow replication of
  your work by a competent person
• Therefore no need for a huge description
• Methods may often only be a paragraph or two

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Woodlice Example

• Twenty woodlice were haphazardly selected from
  each of two treatments. The first treatment
  involved being kept for 24 h in a damp
  environment a plastic container with tissue
  paper soaked in water - prior to the experiment.
  The second treatment involved being kept for 24 h
  in a dry environment identical other than the
  tissue paper was dry. Woodlice were placed into
  the centre either a wet or dry arena (a circle
  of tissue paper of diameter 200 mm that was
  either saturated with water or dry) and the time
  taken to reach the edge of the arena was
  recorded. Ten woodlice from each treatment were
  used in each arena the order of the woodlice
  and arenas used determined randomly in advance.
  Each woodlouse was only used once. Differences in
  the mean time for each treatment and arena
  combination were analysed using a two factor
  ANOVA.

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Too much detail

• A 30 m tape measure was used as a transect and
  random numbers were generated using the random
  number generator in excel. Quadrats of 50 cm x 50
  cm were placed at the positions indicated by the
  random numbers until 25 replicate quadrats had
  been taken. The number of daises in each quadrat
  were counted and recorded using pen and paper and
  then transferred into Microsoft Excel

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The right detail

• Daisy abundance was estimated using 25 randomly
  located 0.25 m2 quadrats along a 30 m transect.

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Too much detail

• 58 g of sodium chloride (NaCl) was dissolved in a
  litre of distilled water by stirring with an
  automatic stirrer placed on a magnetic plate
  until all the solids had dissolved.

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Too much detail

• 58 g of sodium chloride (NaCl) was dissolved in a
  litre of distilled water by stirring with an
  automatic stirrer placed on a magnetic plate
  until all the solids had dissolved.
• A molar solution of sodium chloride was added

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Referencing in methods

• Generally there are no or few references in
  methods sections. However, if you are using
  non-typical methods which other people have
  published you might cite these rather than going
  into a huge amount of detail in your methods
• E.g. Chlorophyll a was extracted using the cold
  methanol technique (Nagakar and Williams, 1999).

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Results

• Normally the worst part of most peoples write
  ups
• It is NOT just a load of graphs and tables
• Raw data should never be included
• You should write at least a paragraph of text for
  results in which you refer to any tables or
  graphs you have included

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Tables and Graphs

• To be taught as part of BIO109 (Thursdays 1.15
  in Gloucester Suite keep going up from the SU
  bar)
• Please apply what you have learned to other
  modules incorrect tables and graphs will be
  heavily penalised after this year

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Tables and Graphs

• In general
• No 3D
• No Colour (unless really necessary)
• Label Axis (including units)
• No title but
• Figure legends describing what each figure is
  about without having to refer to the text

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Tables and Graphs

• Dont include the same information in tables and
  graphs we only want to see it once
• Please dont include RAW data. We are not
  interested in it and it just costs you more to
  print
• But do keep your raw data as an electronic file

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Example - Woodlice

• Both wet acclimatised and dry acclimatised
  woodlice spent longer in the wet arena than the
  dry arena (Table 1 Figure 1) indicating their
  preference for this environment. Dry acclimitsed
  woodlice spent less time in the dry arena than
  the wet acclimitised woodlice rejecting our
  hypothesis (Table 1). However, dry acclimitised
  woodlice spent more time in the wet arena than
  the wet acclimisited woodlice (Table 1 Figure
  1).
•  
• NOTE In this example Table 1 would be a table
  of a statistical test Figure 1 is likely to be
  a bar chart in this case, the information in
  the table and figure will not be repetitive).

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Referencing in results

• Normally there will be no references in results
  sections however, there may be an opportunity
  for one or two occasionally.

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Discussion

• Back to the Egg Timer
• Discussion is the second part of the egg timer
• Starts off narrow
• Puts the findings of the work in a broader
  context
• Discussion should be well referenced, not as much
  as intro, but still needs referencing
• Including references in the discussion IS hard,
  but it is what distinguishes good work from
  really good work

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Woodlice Example

• Results do not support hypothesis dry
  acclimatised spend less time in dry
• Perhaps did not adapt to dry environment - stress
  of dry environment meant woodlice needed to find
  water asap. (references to dehydration limits
  in woodlice if possible but also consider other
  similar animals such as insects. References to
  woodlice having gills).
• Remainder of results coherent with adaptive
  behaviour spending more time in favourable
  environments. Kinesis, therefore is adaptive
  behaviour.
• Stress (in this case desiccation) does alter
  kinesis behaviour but not as predicted by
  acclimatisation.
• How organisms respond to unfavourable
  environments is unpredictable acclimatise and
  reduce stress of new environment or just get
  more stressed because of harsh environment and
  previous expose to similar harsh environments
  (many examples of references could be used here).

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Acknowledgements

• Very brief and often unnecessary
• In real papers often indicate who funded the
  research, who did some of the basic lab work, who
  commented on drafts of the manuscript etc?

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References

• The same as for essays
• For revision

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Referencing examples

• For citations in the text
• Jones et al. (2002) demonstrated that the growth
  of onions was higher when nitrates were applied
  to the soil.
• When nitrates were applied to the soil, the
  growth of onions increased (Jones and Smith,
  2004)

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Journals

• Authors Surname, Initials. (Year) Full title of
  article, Full Title of Journal, volume, page
  numbers of whole article.
• e.g.
• Stafford, R., Santer, R.D. Rind, F.C. (2007)
  The role of behavioural ecology in the design of
  bio-inspired technology. Animal Behaviour. 74
  1813 1819.

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From University Guide (via learning centre
website)

• A (non-edited) book