Scientific Writing Quick and Easy E-Book

Thomas Lettner

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 120

Beschreibung

This book shows students and young scientists how to write and what to write. Especially inexperienced non-native English speakers will find useful advice on how to transform their research results into a proper manuscript and how to submit it successfully to a scientific journal for publication. Starting with an example paper, readers are introduced to the foundations of scientific writing. Based on these lessons, readers will get familiar with the tools and concepts of good writing, and they will develop their own writing skills in a step-by-step approach.

Leseprobe

Thomas Lettner

Scientific Writing Quick and Easy

The fastest way to write a paper

Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Contents in Brief

Who can use this book?

How to use this book

When should you start writing?

A short example paper

Writing the Introduction

Quick reference: writing the introduction

Writing the Results

Quick reference: writing the results

Writing the Discussion

Quick reference: writing the discussion

Writing the Methods

Quick reference: writing the methods

Writing the Title

Writing the Abstract

Figures and Tables

Writing the References

Writing supplemental material

How to find your story

Proofreading

How to choose a journal for publication

About authorship

Pre-Submission Requirements

Paper submission

Manuscript revision and rejection

Epilogue and acknowledgments

Impressum neobooks

Contents in Brief

Scientific Writing

Quick and Easy

The fastest way to write a paper

Dr. Thomas Lettner

All rights reserved

The copyright for the text and images lies with the author. It is forbidden to copy or distribute the text or parts of the text without explicit prior permission by the author.

Revised edition

This book was first published in 2017 under the title:

“Let’s write a scientific paper”

Proofreading: www.grammarly.com

Although this book was copy-edited using online software tools, it still could contain spelling and grammar errors that were overlooked. If you find errors and wish to notify me, or if you have any questions concerning writing skills, you can contact me under the following email address:

[email protected]

Independently published via neobooks.com

©2024

Who can use this book?

Any science student! Whether you are an undergraduate or PhD student or already a postdoc, in any field of science, at some point in your career you will have to write your first paper. Usually, a mentor, a university teacher or a supervisor will assist you in achieving this task. But what if you are completely on your own? Then this little book will help you.

Of course, a short guide, like the one you are reading right now, will not be sufficient to turn you into a master of the writing arts. But, when you follow the advice given in this book, you will be able to write a proper manuscript in a short amount of time and successfully submit it to a scientific journal. This is the promise that I can give you.

Many examples in this book are taken from the life sciences. But, that does not mean that a physicist, a chemist, an astronomer or a computer scientist could not profit from it as well. Since I am working in the field of life sciences, these examples came in handy for me. But, since this book is primarily about writing skills and manuscript submission in general, the examples should not be an issue. Moreover, the example paper at the beginning of this book covers a completely neutral topic that is not specific to a certain field of science.

This book is written in plain and simple English – and that for a simple reason. I am not an English native speaker, but that holds also true for most of the scientists on planet Earth. German, Russian, Chinese, Italian and French scientists have to publish in English as well. Therefore, this book will also be helpful for non-native speakers of English because it is easy to read and understand.

How to use this book

This book has two sections, and although you can look into any chapter separately, you should actually start with part I because you will profit from it the most. At first, you will read a short example paper. Then we will analyze the paper chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph and sentence by sentence. Doing so, you will automatically learn and understand how a paper is structured, and how its information should be presented in a proper writing style, even if you don’t read the rest of this book.

In part II, we will go through the entire paper submission process. I will show you how to choose the right journal for publication, how to format the manuscript, how to decide who should be first author, last author, corresponding author, how to write a cover letter and many other aspects that have to be taken care of, before the manuscript can be submitted. There are a number of things to consider and questions to answer in advance, such as financial disclosure and patent rights, or how to choose and reject reviewers. This section will also inform you about the communication process with the journal editor and how to deal with minor or major revisions and with manuscript rejection.

When should you start writing?

Well, there is no perfect answer to this question. Maybe you have worked for three or more years, and now you have enough results to publish. In this case, a good start would be to decide which journal you want to submit your manuscript to and what content type it should be: a full article, a letter or a short communication etc. This can be relevant because different journals and different content types require different manuscript structures, different word counts and different figure formats. You will find advice on that subject matter in the second part of this writing guide. When this decision is made, you can start writing the manuscript, which is explained in the first part of this book.

Anyhow, you can always start writing right away and format the manuscript later. You can even start writing some parts of your paper long before your research is finished, for instance the introduction and the methods. My personal advice is to start writing as soon as possible and to take care of formatting issues later. You will definitely re-write, proofread and edit your manuscript several times, and not write it at once in one perfect piece. But no matter when you start writing, I am sure you will find the advice you need in this book.

A note on gender pronouns:

I know, and I deeply respect that there are not only male and female, but also transgender and other gender identities. I have tried to write this book in a gender-neutral way but addressing all gender identities is an impossible task. When I speak of “the writer” or “the reader” then this is gender-neutral. Whenever possible, I used expressions such as “one can try this” or “they can choose to”. In most other cases, I use s/he and “him or her”.

A short example paper

In the following sections, you will first read a short example paper. Then we will analyze the text chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph and sentence by sentence. Doing so, you will understand how a paper should be written and structured.

You may find the topic of the paper a bit funny. It's about an umbrella. Yes, you've heard right. If you have ever used an umbrella during a windy rainstorm, you may have experienced that it turns inside-out when the wind blows into the canopy, a so-called ‘eversion’. Isn't that annoying? Therefore, I wrote a paper about a new invention, an umbrella with a water protective shield that is produced by a water-repelling electromagnetic field, and therefore remains unaffected by wind. Of course, this is a fake paper! All presented data on the following pages, the text, the figures and the references are mere creations of my humble fantasy (except for reference 8) and are not meant to be taken seriously. The entire paper just serves the purpose of explaining how a paper should be written.

Weird? Not at all. One can write a paper about almost anything, for instance, how to make coffee, bake bread or travel through a black hole. And since this writing guide should be helpful for any young scientist, regardless of the area of research, I chose a neutral topic because I can assume that anyone on this planet knows what an umbrella is. There is of course another reason: copyright infringement. For legal reasons, I am simply not allowed to use a real paper (not even one of my own papers!).

Note: The figures in this example paper are very simplistic. Some of them were hand drawn by myself, but they will serve the purpose of delivering the information.

Application of an Electromagnetic Field Shield solves the Wind-Related Umbrella-Eversion-Problem

Abstract

Umbrella-eversion, the turning-inside-out of an umbrella canopy at strong wind speeds in a rain storm, is an annoying event for any pedestrian, who then inevitably becomes wet, and the umbrella might be destroyed irreparably. This problem can be resolved by replacing the nylon-fabric umbrella canopy by an electromagnetic field shield that is not influenced by wind. In this study, we present the prototype of a next generation umbrella. Its electromagnetic shield withstands wind speeds comparable to a class F5 tornado. We show that the water protecting function of this prototype exceeds that of any standard umbrella and is solely restricted to battery lifetime.

Introduction

Water protection for pedestrians in a rainstorm is either provided by wearing waterproofed clothes or by using an umbrella. Waterproofed clothes are commonly used as a standard weather protection for many outdoor activities, such as hiking, sailing or mountain climbing [1]. Nevertheless, this kind of water protection was shown to be not feasible for a manifold of occasions in everyday life, especially for well-dressed businessmen and -women who depend on and profit from their professional outfit [2]. Therefore, umbrellas have become a very popular alternative to waterproofed clothes and are widely used by pedestrians outside of sportive outdoor activities [reviewed in 3].

Umbrellas show a great tendency to turn inside-out under the influence of wind, the so-called eversion-problem. Umbrella-eversion is not just annoying as it happens without warning. It automatically renders the water-protection function of an umbrella useless. As a consequence, the umbrella-owner is exposed to rain and becomes wet [4].

Currently, no technical solution for the eversion problem is available, which is basically due to the design and construction of the movable parts of a standard umbrella, as well as the indispensable water-protecting canopy (Fig. 1). Efforts to increase the stability and strength of the ribs and stretchers have shown some improvement [5]. But if wind-speeds reach more than 7 m/s (25 km/h; 15 mph; 13 knots), the force applied to the canopy exceeds the withholding ability, and consequently, the canopy flips inside-out.

We hypothesize that replacing the nylon-fabric-based canopy with a water-repellent electromagnetic field renders the wind-related eversion problem irrelevant. This electromagnetic field shield umbrella (EFSU) should remain unaffected by any wind speed, while still providing the same water-protecting function as a commercially available nylon-fabric standard umbrella.

In this study, we developed an electromagnetic field-based prototype that fulfills all requirements of a fully functional umbrella while remaining unaffected by wind-related eversion. We tested the prototype in regard to its water-repellent function and its vulnerability to high wind speeds, and we provide evidence that EFSU technology outperforms any currently available standard umbrella.

Figure 1: The parts of a standard umbrella

The figure shows a simplified overview of the different parts of a standard umbrella. The water-protecting function is provided by the canopy. The canopy can be deployed by moving the stretchers upward on the shaft. The stretchers extend the ribs and unfold the nylon fabric of the canopy. The umbrella is carried with the handle.

Results

EFSUs are easy to produce

In order to replace the nylon-fabric-based canopy of an umbrella with an electromagnetic field shield, an electromagnetic generator had to be established that not only produces a water-protecting field but is also small enough to be embedded in the pole-tip of an umbrella. Furthermore, the generator should not be too heavy, so pedestrians are able to carry the umbrella effortlessly.

Studying the literature in search for a suitable generator, we noticed the device recently tested and discussed by Wizard & Lightning [6]. This button-sized generator was originally designed as a next generation cardiac pacemaker, but, as a side-effect, it showed a water-repellent property [7]. Since two thirds of the human body consist of water, the device is not suitable for implantation into patients, due to a water-draining effect in muscle-tissue at the implantation site. A medical application of the generator was therefore not approved by the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Still, the water-repellent attribute of the device appeared suitable for our purposes of constructing the EFSU. We purchased two items and fixed them on the empty pole-tips of two dismantled standard umbrellas, as described in the methods section.

EFSU water protection capacity maintains constant at 100% for 7.5 hours

In a water-repellent assay, we compared the water-protecting abilities of the EFSU with that of a standard umbrella. We started the experiment with a water flux of 0.5 +/- 0.17 liters per minute and measured the time required until either the nylon-fabric canopy or the EFSU became water permeable. The water protecting function of the nylon canopy failed after 2.5 hours at a water flux of only 2.1 +/- 0.81 liters per minute, whereas for the EFSU, the water flux could be increased to the technically achievable maximum of 15.4 +/- 0.28 liters per minute. The EFSU endured this maximum water flux until the batteries failed after 7 hours and 35 minutes (Fig. 2A).

In a further experiment, we supplied the generators with fresh batteries and tested the two EFSUs either with or without water exposure, applying maximum water flux from the beginning. No statistically significant differences in battery lifetime could be detected, regardless whether the electromagnetic field shield was exposed to water or left in a dry environment (Fig. 2B).

The water-protecting EFSU function extends to 1.8 meters in diameter

As described in more detail in the methods section, in the water-repellent assay, we applied color-changing blotting paper on the ground underneath the standard umbrella as well as underneath the EFSU to detect waterdrops passing through the protective shield. In contact with water, the white paper instantly changes its color to blue. At the beginning of the experiment, the blotting paper was laid out in a diameter of 1.2 meters since this is the diameter of the standard umbrellas used in our study. But, we soon realized that the water-protecting function of the EFSU extends much further. After applying more blotting paper, we repeated the experiment and observed that the water-protecting function of the EFSU covers an area of almost 1.8 meters in diameter.

EFSU functions without noise