23 Writing papers has been one of the oldest traditions in science. Indeed, digging up old journal articles written on paper made of swamp grass in long dead languages is still occurring. Though time, the evolution of writing papers has evolved to a rather complicated design so that we may root out nonsense experiments which draw foolish conclusions. I.E. peer review. There exists two fundamental necessities when writing papers.
One – perhaps the most important – is the ability to write an article according to accepted and standard methods. That subject has been adequately covered. Equally important rules follow:
- References. References should contain at least two review articles from big names in the field. You wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to suck up to a potential reviewer. If you were to write an article on some synthesis of an epothilone, you may want to consider putting a reference in for Rich Taylor or KC Nicolaou. If you were to write a paper on protein folding, a good review by Ken Dill and Alan Fersht wouldn’t hurt your chances. And if you are doing something involving some new rotaxane – perhaps a nod to Stoddart and David Leigh is in order.
- Pretty pictures. A well laid out picture will never hurt your chances. When I read an article, I look for two things: charts and pictures. Placing a pretty picture at the top of the first page is an excellent way to get your reader (or reviewer) to immediately appreciate what you are trying to do. People fall in love with crystal structures.
- Breaking some of Whiteside’s rules. People who don’t speak English as a native language would certainly be better off if every paper were written with small words, in a similar style and as prosaically as possible. Honestly, that’s something to keep in mind, but Beethoven didn’t become famous because he followed all the rules, it’s because he broke them, if only on a few occasions, to set himself apart. We can’t all be Beethovens, a pleasing writing style isn’t something everyone is born with – but everyone certainly should have a unique style, since (at least in theory) everyone is a snowflake. Distinguishing yourself by referring to things as svelte, for instance (or being bold enough to give some process you just invented a cute name) is certainly a good idea. But we must always keep in mind that there is a fine line between cute and obnoxious and you don’t want to step over it.
- Easter Eggs. One of the most fun things about reading a good journal article is when you come across some little fact, even tangentially related to the paper, that makes you go ‘hmmm, cool.’ Tossing in such factoids is impressive and fun and even helps illustrate your point with something everyone can relate to. Such as the preceding post points out, the pKa of phenolic proton can indeed be higher than the proton of a para substituted benzoic acid. Not something you might want to spring on people at the significant other’s office party – but certainly something colleagues would appreciate.
I say all this because it helps ME read an article… So, it isn’t devoid of selfishness. Just keep in mind that reviewers and readers are people – typically very bright people – that are easily bored with research that is… you know… not going to change the world overnight and no one is interested in reading some boring article that will just blend in with all the other boring articles they read through the day.
UPDATE: Check out further suggestions if you’re interested in submitting to Nature.
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One of my classmates once asked me why I refer to the ubiquitous carbene ligands as “Arduengo Carbenes” instead of NHC’s. My response was as follows:
1) That’s the way I learned it.
2) “N-Heterocyclic Carbenes” always sounded stupid to me.
3) The ligands in question are almost identical to the electronically stabilized carbenes originally published by Arduengo.
After making my third point, I pulled a copy of JACS 1992, 5530 out of my files, but for the first time, my eyes fell upon footnote 2, which refers to JACS 1956, 4947, footnote 9. The latter is an Easter Egg that’s well worth the read.
That’s *sir* Alan Fersht to you.
The worst is when you get pompous reviewers who think they know the English language just because they are from an English speaking country. When they see that all the names are foreign, they immediately look for any small grammatical mistakes and say that “the grammar is all bad and should be fixed” as a general blanket statement. That happened to some people I know. What the idiot reviewers didn’t realize, was that those people gave the paper to a chemist who also had an English Honors degree to proof-read. I saw that paper too. There are no grammatical mistakes in it even though some of the sentence structure is convoluted to fit as much information in as possible: which might cause some simple folk to mistake it for language incompetence.
This is one of those times that I regret that the review process is anonymous. Otherwise, that reviewer (who surely must be some grad student) would get it over the head with the Oxford dictionary in some dark alley at the next ACS meeting.
As far as I’m concerned, making statements, which have convoluted structure, and therefore, hard to parse, read, and understand, especially if commas are overused; semicolons are misused; and the subject which the author desires to communicate is not concise, it’s language incompetence, no matter how many honors students read over it and give it the thumbs up.
You haven’t seen the paper: It’s easy to read and understand, articles are not misused and abused.
That previous sentence is what the reviewer would have had a problem with. What you wrote on the other hand, is an atrocity that no English student would let slide.
Actually, I would have had a problem with that sentence too. I’ll try to find the original, although it was three years ago, and give you a good example.
The subject was concise, it was well presented and easily understood. The reviewer was just an asshole who wanted to make a point about ‘furriners’.
I agree these rules as facts that are already present but I am just tired of some of them.
Illusion for instance: referring one or two pioneering Nature or Science articles of the field, or a review on ACIE will make the paper more possibly published on JACS than just puting a mini-review from Polym. Int. as the No.1 reference.
Also illusion is those schemes – I mean the colourful, conceptual one in the paper that claims what the author have done. Pictures like this always appear on the graphical abstract of Langmuir, Macromolecules, or more hilariously ACIE and JACS. But they are illustion because what they depict are just too perfect. What the work has achieved, although significant enough to be on JACS, may not be so perfect as its scheme shows.
But I like odd language and easter eggs very much!
How about when you get reviewers who challenge your definition of dipole moment, and ask whether it should be instead defined going from positive to negative?
You could ask that the reviewer be shot, perhaps.
I can name some not-so-hot journals where lining up the referees against the wall would only improve the journal quality. I suppose some people become embittered by the lackluster career of their own and they try to compensate on others and the anonymous reviewing provides a perfect cover.
My favourite easter eggs are the ones that come up in classes. It’s the only way to keep me awake sometimes.
Canuckistani technical publications have their abstracts written in White and Frog. One looks forward to that bright, bright social activist day when all US technical publications have their abstracts written in gutter Spanish, Ebonics, and Wymynch.
Equality means cutting everybody down to size.
Christ, you’re an asshole.
Man…now I wish I had worked on the epothilones when I was there…
Nice pictures might also make the front cover, then you can have them framed and put on your wall, around the dept…
Steve Pavlina is a liar. The man claims to have earned two degrees in three semesters. The list of his tall tales is as long as his arm.