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The detailed, practical, step-by-step advice in this user-friendly guide will help students and researchers to communicate their work more effectively through the written word. Covering all aspects of the writing process, this concise, accessible resource is critically acclaimed, well-structured, comprehensive, and entertaining. Self-help exercises and abundant examples from actual typescripts draw on the authors' extensive experience working both as researchers and with them. Whilst retaining the user-friendly and pragmatic style of earlier editions, this third edition has been updated and broadened to incorporate such timely topics as guidelines for successful international publication, ethical and legal issues including plagiarism and falsified data, electronic publication, and text-based talks and poster presentations. With advice applicable to many writing contexts in the majority of scientific disciplines, this book is a powerful tool for improving individual skills and an eminently suitable text for classroom courses or seminars.
"Successful Scientific Writing is a user-friendly book providing detailed practical guidance to help students and researchers in the biological and medical sciences to communicate their work effectively through the published literature. This step-by-step guide covers all aspects of manuscript preparation from first to final draft, including word processor use and electronic database literature searches. Numerous examples, practical tips, and self-help exercises draw on the authors' extensive experience with actual manuscripts. Applicable to a variety of science writing contexts in the majority of scientific disciplines, Successful Scientific Writing is a powerful tool for improving individual skills, as well as an eminently suitable text for a classroom course or seminar on science writing."--Publisher description
"Having to communicate in English is necessary in today's world. English is the lingua franca of science, and of the speedy communications we depend on, namely the Internet, the World Wide Web, social media, crowdsourcing, and other information-sharing resources. The challenge to produce well-written papers is especially hard for non-native speakers of English, the majority of scientists around the world. Effective scientific writing requires both mastery of the English language and proficiency in the specific academic genre ... We have developed a strategy to tackle the problems faced by writers who are new to the scientific writing genre and style. This strategy can help both non-natives attempting to overcome the language barrier and native speakers of English ... This book is divided into two parts: the first part provides the theoretical foundations of scientific writing. The second part details the strategies, techniques, and tools that are at the heart of our approach"--Preface
Observations Plus Recipes It has been said that science is the orderly collection of facts about the natural world. Scientists, however, are wary of using the word ‘fact. ’ ‘Fact’ has the feeling of absoluteness and universality, whereas scientific observations are neither ab- lute nor universal. For example, ‘children have 20 deciduous [baby] teeth’ is an observation about the real world, but scientists would not call it a fact. Some children have fewer deciduous teeth, and some have more. Even those children who have exactly 20 deciduous teeth use the full set during only a part of their childhood. When they are babies and t- dlers, children have less than 20 visible teeth, and as they grow older, children begin to loose their deciduous teeth, which are then replaced by permanent teeth. ‘Children have 20 deciduous [baby] teeth’ is not even a complete scientific sta- ment. For one thing, the statement ‘children have 20 deciduous teeth’ does not tell us what we mean by ‘teeth. ’ When we say “teeth,” do we mean only those that can seen be with the unaided eye, or do we also include the hidden, unerupted teeth? An observation such as ‘children have 20 deciduous teeth’ is not a fact, and, by itself, it is not acceptable as a scientific statement until its terms are explained: scientifically, ‘children have 20 deciduous teeth’ must be accompanied by definitions and qualifiers.
This guide provides a framework, starting from simple statements, for writing papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals. It also describes how to address referees’ comments, approaches for composing other types of scientific communications, and key linguistic aspects of scientific writing.
This timely and hugely practical work provides a score of examples from contemporary and historical scientific presentations to show clearly what makes an oral presentation effective. It considers presentations made to persuade an audience to adopt some course of action (such as funding a proposal) as well as presentations made to communicate information, and it considers these from four perspectives: speech, structure, visual aids, and delivery. It also discusses computer-based projections and slide shows as well as overhead projections. In particular, it looks at ways of organizing graphics and text in projected images and of using layout and design to present the information efficiently and effectively.
