Scientific writing Flashcards
Scientific vs academic writing
No sharp distinctions: Both include
- Plain, accurate and logical sentences
- An impersonal and dispassionate tone
- Target a critical and informed audience, but academic may have a broader audience while scientific target a specific scientific community
- Based on investigated knowledge
Every scientific writing is academic, but every academic writing is not scientific
Characteristics of academic style writing
- Style: Objective, formal (don’t leave room for interpretation or context-knowledge) and precise (include all relevant info)
- The goal is to present and evaluate research results, not present personal preferences or biases
- English language is most common
What are main steps in a writing process?
- Write down motivation, what attracted you to the topic?
- What are expected results/conclusions?
- Outline of project plan
- List of key words and contacts
- Selectively review literature
- Draft thesis
- Edit and proof read
Characteristics of literature review
- Defines project by establishing baseline info with understanding of and connection to previous work
- A synthesis of contributions of different authors with comments on their strength and relative contribution to the field
- Can be separate chapter, a part of introduction, spread over more chapters or distributed throughout
- Purpose is to demonstrate you have read widely in your field and understand main arguments
- A literature review can help you define your research topic
Characteristics of title and abstract
Most essential parts and should be understandable without the rest of the paper and highlight novel aspects
Title: Should reflect content in an informative way
Abstracts should include
- Rationale: Why the study was conducted
- Objective
- What was done
- Findings: Results
- Implications: Why it matters
Characteristics of introduction
Explain why the study was conducted and why it is important
Structure
- Context of problem - why study is conducted
- Description of problem and its importance within the scientific field and for society
- Brief statement of possible and previous approaches with their pros and cons
- Study objectives and outline of main ideas of proposed approach to the problem with limitations
- Road map over remaining sections
Include relevance for sustainable development
Characteristics of related work
Based on literature review and can be included in introduction or as a separate chapter after introduction
Reviews, organizes and compares previously published scientific works that deal with the same, similar, or a sub-problem
Characteristics of materials and methods
Detailed description of what and how it was done by providing sufficient information to allow others to repeat it
Preferred to
- First present a systems diagram or work-flow chart that describe general method and interactions between method components
- Subsequent parts then present details of individual components
Characteristics of experiments/empirical evidence
Description of relevant hardware and software used in experiments, definitions and descriptions of the evaluation criteria, and experiment design
Include in materials and methods if applicable
Characteristics of results
Describes findings from each stage in the same order the used procedures were presented in materials and methods
Figures and tables should be used with careful consideration when presenting results
Characteristics of discussion
Can be part of results or conclusion chapter (most common) and should highlight the novelty of the report
Should answer
- What the results mean and do they answer the objectives?
- How do they relate to other published results?
- What are the implications?
- What problems have occurred?
- What improvements could be made?
- What more needs to be done?
Characteristics of conclusions (and future work)
Should summarize objectives, findings and their major implications
Future work should state promising directions and ideas for approaches in those directions
Characteristics of references
List references in a uniformly formatted way according to chosen referencing style
Characteristics of appendix
Include parts that are too lengthy to include in the actual text, ex lengthy proofs, computer code of results that were not explained in detail in experiments/empirical evaluation sections
When to use what tenses?
Past tense - > Rationale, objectives and what was done
Present tense -> Findings, results that may only be applicable under certain conditions and result implication
Future tense -> Predictions
