In our research work we need not only read high amount of papers, but also write many papers. As a young scientist, I don't have much experience in writing of the scientific/engineering papers as a result, the writing of an article containing a few pages can take several months (at best).
What useful tips can you give to make scientific paper writing process more effective?
There are many short papers and books written on this topic. Just search on google and you will see many hits. But most importantly, start writing and carefully read papers from top ranked journals in your field. Learn how do they build different sections and how do they structure sentences.
I found these guidelines very useful and effective when writing scientific papers. Hope you benefit from them too.
http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~ivan/write%20Feb10.pdf
http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~ivan/how-to-write.pdf
My advise is to read a good book on the subject of writing and publishing scientific papers. In my field of mathematics there is a very nice book, written by a senior mathematician - and also an editor of a fine journal - namely Nicholas Higham. His book "Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences", published by SIAM (in a second edition), explains the process of writing, includes many good suggestions on how to write - and how one perhaps should NOT write, and also about the whole process of publishing papers. The book is amusing, too, with anecdotes here and there. I advise all my PhD students to read it, and they do not complain. :-) The book does not concern mathematics as such, but explains more the process of writing, and in the case of the mathematics itself, how to "typeset" mathematics well - that is, how to form equations, series of equations, tables, and so on, so that the articles is informative and as easy to understand as it is possible. This part is very important - too many scientists do not care enough HOW they should/could write a good paper. One needs to understand that it is not just the result that is important - it should also be explained well. I think you will like the book.
Dear Vladimir - This resource from Duke is very helpful.
https://cgi.duke.edu/web/sciwriting/
Best wishes!
I go with Avan Suinesiaputra.. Just start writing, it will take time to write good papers. All d very best.
Read this virtual issue from ACS on "art of publishing"....
http://pubs.acs.org/page/vi/art_of_scientific_publication.html
You may see this articule.
http://rbt.biologia.ucr.ac.cr/pages/en/publish.html published in the International Journal of Tropical Biology, It has a good prestige.
Being a beginner, I think the first thing you can do is finding a good paper and copying its structure. Some good papers always give you a well-organized structure which you can follow and just fill you data in each section. Then, the next step will be trying to do some modifications to that structure; and finally, creating your own style. Hope this helps you.
writing a paper is "ART on work".........Major steps are
1. Write a paper name
2. Write a clear and effective abstract
3. write a introduction of the paper
4.Related work(plz cite the necessary papers)
5. existing and proposed/modifications of the design
6. Analysis of the system(compare with previous work)
7. conclusion
8.Refernces
In addition to what has been pointed out. Once, u will start writing ur papers u will note that, the style of writing of the same paper can differ "a lot" depending on the page limitation that u have. For example, writing for a 6 page conference would require a totally different writing style than the one used in a journal. As Mr Lai suggested, read good papers from ur field and I would say read good papers from the conference/journal that u are targeting to get a better idea about the content-page management.
Hi Vladimir,
After choosing in which journal you want to publish your work, I suggest that you begin writing your next article by creating the figures you want it to include. This will allow you to focus on the main results you would like to present in your paper. Then, describe the results and conclusions and come up with the title. Eventually write the introduction, that should contain reference to prior work in your field. For the abstract you can use this template:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1121
Just kidding (-:
Assaf
In addition to all the above mentioned points it also help by reading a scientific writing booklet. It has interesting guideline of words to choose from and the meaning. The most interesting fact is that your paper should follow as a specific storyline and flow nice. Goodluck and dont forget that imitative learning is the best form of learning. So start writing and read from similar thesis and journal as your topic
I recommend following a free archived course on Effective Writing of a Scientific Paper, step-by-step-guide, available at: https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Medicine/Sci-Write/Fall2014/info. You can watch and download video. I think it will give you a good start. I personally enrolled in the course, and it has helped me much.
There are innumerable sources in the literature on how to write a scientific paper. I believe the best education one can have on this topic is to read seminal papers by scientists like Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, PAM Dirac, Max Born, CV Raman, James Watson, Francis Crick, Richard Feynman, etc. The current scientific writing differs greatly from those of these wise men of science, because the objectives have changed enormously. The current objectives of many authors are to manufacture papers by increasing the number of authors and their affiliations, by plagiarism (self- and otherwise), and even dishonest manipulation of both theoretical and experimental data. Another trend is corruption in reference citation because of citation networks; the network members cite each other's papers to increase the number of citations, impact factor, and performance indices such as the h-index, while credit is not given to the genuine authors. Papers with increasingly larger number of authors is mushrooming because many authors are added simply because of their position (e.g. director/head of the laboratory/group/institute) and/or compensated for non-scientific services rendered. All these developments are seriously degrading current science.
Even a young author should aim at making a long-term impact in the field of his work, and resist the prevailing temptations (such as increasing the number of papers, citations, h-index, etc., by unethical means). The paper text should be written only after there are new and original results and the data have been incorporated into figures and tables, and an honest survey has been made of the current literature on the topic of the paper. In reference citation, credit has to be given to the genuine authors. The title of the paper should be honestly chosen to reflect the main content of the paper and should not overstate the contribution of the paper. There should be no more than two authors; this number may be exceeded only if there is strong logic behind it.
We need collective action by authors, reviewers, and journal editors to reverse the current evil trends.
I wish that there was an easy answer to this question! ... it's a bit like asking 'have you got any tips for leading a good life?' i.e. there probably are some simple, useful guidelines (think before you speak, treat other people as you'd wish to be treated etc.), but ultimately, it's a complex problem and everyone has to find their own way (I think). Having said that, there a few points that I find useful (but other people may not).
(i) Plan the paper carefully - first, write down your section headings - next, think through what you need to say in each section, and write down paragraph headings (obviously, these don't appear in the paper - they're just for your use) and get the figures (graphs or whatever) and their captions together, finally write brief notes on the contents of each paragraph - only when you have done this should you start writing properly.I use Latex, and I put the paragraph headings and notes into the .tex document as comments.
(ii) Once you've planned the structure of the paper, don't be afraid to change it - putting the paper into sections can really help you if you find you need to change the order in which you present the ideas and results.
(iii) If, whilst going through phase (i), (ii) you feel uncertain about anything in the science, or the data, sort it out before you start writing - I find it really difficult to write a paper if there are "grey areas" I'm uncomfortable with. This doesn't mean you necessarily need to solve all the problems, but it does mean that you should clarify and quantify the issues i.e. if you've used approximations, make sure they're understood, make sure you understand what your results are telling you, and that you can quantify any errors.
(iv) Finally, if you seem to be making no progress (as happens to me sometimes), go for a walk!
Good luck!
Dear Vladimir, you've got a lot of good advice; but no matter what, your style will keep developing as you go; the more you wright the better it gets -- there is no escape from the process of accumulating your experience. A lot depends on the language you use for your writing (and thinking:-) -- from what I see, three languages are perhaps competing in your mind -- Russian, Hebrew, and English. But you write in English (you are doing fine, as long as I can see from your conference papers), so read more (and not only research papers) English texts. And don't try to conform to any "common" style -- what is wrong in developing your own style? The major thing is how good and original are your results; you colleagues will judge you by them, not by the niceties of your style. And try to write in a concise way (look at the papers in a journal like Phys. Rev. Lett. -- it has a brutal rule about the length of the paper...) -- it may most likely happen that from your future experience you'll come to understanding that the shorter the better...
Some tips for authors below, but the most important tip is just start writing :)
http://www.academia.edu/3030574/Writing_an_academic_paper_for_publication
http://www.fapesp.br/eventos/2012/03/howtowrite/daniel.pdf
http://taiwan.elsevier.com/htmlmailings/Event/AuthorWorkshop/Author_Pack_En.pdf
I regularly recommend this link to my research students:
http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWtoc.html
Dear Vladimir,
apart from many good advices you have been already given here, I'd like to suggest you to accomplish an online course name of "Writing in the Sciences" at Stanford University. It is free of charge.
Good luck.
Dear Vladimir,
The best to write a scientific paper includes good knowledge in the field of your research and the literature survey which is done earlier.
Also there is an online course in COURSERA - https://www.coursera.org/course/sciwrite
Good academic papers review on the subject and analysis the data, dividing to several parts of your research and systematically follow in writing these parts in your scientific papers.
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