writing

How to not write bad?

Practical tips for scientific writing from the "Molecular Podcasting" podcast by Darren Lipomi.

What is a paper?

A paper is an organized description of hypotheses, data and conclusion. It is intended to instruct the reader and to ultimately change his or her behavior. ~George M. Whitesides

Start with an outline:

Start by writing "everything" in bullet points for yourself, before organizing it. Write your first draft as if no one will ever read it (it shouldn't be "pretty", it's just for you).

Components of a paper:

A paper is a layered device for delivering information.

• Our goal when writing a paper:
PERSUASION- getting inside the mind of your reader, you want to teach someone your results. Moreover, getting you paper accepted and receiving funding.
• Hypothesis:
Making an explicit statement of your hypothesis. Having your hypothesis written down is a lot easier to direct your experiments in service of your hypothesis.
• Abstract:
The abstract comes first but it's the last thing written because we don't know what's in the paper yet. State the problem in one sentence, summary and key results- key values, be specific.

Write why someone should care about the results- in the 3^rd person body.

Write the abstract in the present tense- different from the rest of the paper which should be written in the past tense.

• Introduction:
Eye catching first sentence: What we did, why we did it. What's new? And who cares?

Make sure to answer to answer those questions as explicitly as possible.

• Background:
Allows you to make friends with other people in the field. Naming coworkers- saying that because of their work there are new questions that have come up that we are trying to answer. What are the holes in the literature of the field and why is filling there holes important.
• Experimental designs:
A justification of why you did what you did. If this part isn't mentioned explicitly then sometimes it's part of the background.
• Results and Discussion:
What were the results of the experiment and fabrication procedures? How do your results compare to the results or prediction of others?
• Conclusion:
The conclusions are your opportunity to say what we learned from an "airplane perspective" and what are the next steps. What do we need to do in order to develop this scientific field? And how are our results extendable to other systems? What are the shortcomings and what remains to be done?

Also, include a nice guide of how to write an abstract

Writing a paper

A good manuscript outline will contain the following elements:

• Abstract: sentence-level summary that concisely describes the narrative of the entire paper. You might find the annotated Nature summary paragraph example a useful place to start, although this is longer than most abstracts for chemistry or CS venues.
• Introduction: paragraph-level outline (i.e., list of paragraphs and what each will include). What is the 10-20 year problem being addressed? What is the more specific question this paper addresses? What has been done in the past? Why is this different/better? The final paragraph should always contain an enumerated list of this paper’s contributions. There should be 2-4 contributions contained in each paper. It’s okay for these to be thematically related; it’s hard to include more than one point per paper. Also include a sketch for the “Figure 1”, which is often a conceptual schematic.
• Results: list of the key figure and table elements, which collectively summarize the most important experiments. How will results be depicted? Think about this early on--there are few things less interesting than a long manuscript full of quantitative results tables.
• Discussion: any placeholder discussion sections of interesting analyses/conclusions that we already know can be included.
• SI: any placeholder SI sections that define the total set of experiments to be performed for the paper.

Tips for writing an abstract

Writing an abstract is usually the last thing we do in a paper. However, sometimes we are just required to write an abstract and nothing else, e.g., for a conference talk.

Here are the typical kinds of information found in most abstracts:

1. The context or background information for your research; the general topic under study; the specific topic of your research
2. The central research questions or statement of the problem your research addresses, and the objectives
3. What’s already known about this question, what previous research has done or shown
4. The main reason(s), the "Why?", the rationale, the goals for your research: Why is it important to address these questions? Are you, for example, examining a new topic? Why is that topic worth examining? Are you filling a gap in previous research? Applying new methods to take a fresh look at existing ideas or data? Resolving a dispute within the literature in your field? . . .
5. Your research and/or analytical methods
6. Your main findings, results, or arguments
7. The significance or implications of your findings or arguments (i.e., your "conclusions" in short)

(sources: wisc, scribbr)