In preparing for the start of second year, I (Kali) spent part of my time in completing various MOOCs - free, online courses. This was both to increase knowledge and to get back into the habit of studying regularly before the semester actually starts.
Below are my notes from the Coursera online course How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, designed by Phd students from the French University, École Polytechnique. The course is presented in English and is split over four weeks, with approximately 2 hours work expected for each week. You can access the entire thing at any time, so you could do it in a day if you wanted to. There is a paid option, if you want to get a certificate of completion, but that's definitely not necessary. While MOOCs are useful for building up skills, they can vary so much in what it takes to earn a grade and the general quality that they don't indicate anything very useful when you put them on a CV. It's much more useful to learn as much as you can and then apply those skills to a project - like writing an excellent scientific paper - than to prove that you passed the course.
Academic publishing is important for both peer review and collaboration. It's also important for academic and career development.
- Is what I want to write about worth it? How does it contribute to my field? What will it change in terms of how academics view the field? What's new? Your literature review should cover this.
- Who do I need to talk to, to make sure I pass the 'so what?' test? I.e., that my work is relevant and presented in the correct terminology?
- What kind of paper am I writing? Theoretical, empirical, or methodological? A theoretical paper would appear more often in maths and physics, An empirical paper is the type we usually write, with data. Methodological papers appear in literature reviews, and review the methodology, including risks to human subjects, rather than the specific results used.
- Scientific papers should expand current knowledge but should not be too far from current knowledge; therefore, we must be working at the frontier between knowledge and non-knowledge. The literature review will tell us where this is.
Your work should be original in one of the following ways;
Once you have established the knowledge frontier (the gap between what is known and what is unknown in your field), you need to establish your research question, which aims to expand that frontier. When writing your paper, you first present your gap and then describe how you will attempt to fill it, and why this is important to the scientific community. The research question must be clearly presented and defined.
When beginning your research process, you must ensure that each part is coherent with each other, and they are all coherent with the initial research question. In other words, your data-gathering process should result in data which answers the research question and which makes sense. All of your research should be relevant to your research question; if not, reconsider the question you are answering! Your research design must be both transparent and coherent in your final paper.
The abstract is the most important section; for many readers, it is the only section. It should be accessible to someone not familiar with your field and should explain the "so what?" of your paper. The size of the abstract will vary between journals, but it is normally short - 100 to 200 words. The abstract serves as both a preface to and a plan for your paper. It should both define and answer your key research question. Use the MRCI framework, and consider writing your abstract first and editing it last. You can also consider the following;
Literature reviews can often be confusing or boring. While you should read as much as possible, you do not need to put everything in the literature review; only enough that your reader can see why your work is important and what it is building on. You are not just listing references; you are explaining what your paper is for, in the wider context of your field. This is why an outline is important, and, again, why you don't need to write the sections in order; you need to know where your paper is going. Bear in mind that a literature review may have a political aspect, in which papers you just to quote, particularly if there are controversial theories in your field. Try to avoid bias.
In the later sections, highlight what is original, surprising, unexpected, or counter-intuitive about your results, and how they bring new information to your field - in other words, how you have expanded the knowledge frontier.
Ensure that your paper is correctly formatted, with page numbers, and references in the correct format, and that your spelling and grammar are correct!
Below are my notes from the Coursera online course How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, designed by Phd students from the French University, École Polytechnique. The course is presented in English and is split over four weeks, with approximately 2 hours work expected for each week. You can access the entire thing at any time, so you could do it in a day if you wanted to. There is a paid option, if you want to get a certificate of completion, but that's definitely not necessary. While MOOCs are useful for building up skills, they can vary so much in what it takes to earn a grade and the general quality that they don't indicate anything very useful when you put them on a CV. It's much more useful to learn as much as you can and then apply those skills to a project - like writing an excellent scientific paper - than to prove that you passed the course.
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| From Phd comics |
How to Write and Publish an Academic Paper
Academic publishing is important for both peer review and collaboration. It's also important for academic and career development.
First: Know Your Paper
- Is what I want to write about worth it? How does it contribute to my field? What will it change in terms of how academics view the field? What's new? Your literature review should cover this.
- Who do I need to talk to, to make sure I pass the 'so what?' test? I.e., that my work is relevant and presented in the correct terminology?
- What kind of paper am I writing? Theoretical, empirical, or methodological? A theoretical paper would appear more often in maths and physics, An empirical paper is the type we usually write, with data. Methodological papers appear in literature reviews, and review the methodology, including risks to human subjects, rather than the specific results used.
- Scientific papers should expand current knowledge but should not be too far from current knowledge; therefore, we must be working at the frontier between knowledge and non-knowledge. The literature review will tell us where this is.
Your work should be original in one of the following ways;
- New empirical work
- Known ideas in a knew way
- New data for old problems
- New contextualisation
- Trans-disciplinary research
- Original synthesis
- New field of research
Then: Conduct a Literature Review
- Identify the knowledge frontier.
- Identify the context of your research and the question/research problem.
- Identify key words, variables linked to your research question, and their potential relationships.
- Establish the relationships between theoretical frames and empirical considerations.
Once you have established the knowledge frontier (the gap between what is known and what is unknown in your field), you need to establish your research question, which aims to expand that frontier. When writing your paper, you first present your gap and then describe how you will attempt to fill it, and why this is important to the scientific community. The research question must be clearly presented and defined.
When beginning your research process, you must ensure that each part is coherent with each other, and they are all coherent with the initial research question. In other words, your data-gathering process should result in data which answers the research question and which makes sense. All of your research should be relevant to your research question; if not, reconsider the question you are answering! Your research design must be both transparent and coherent in your final paper.
After That: Write Your Paper
- Title: simple, clear, short, displays all key concepts.
- Abstract: the main points of the paper. Exactly what the paper is and how it contributes (fills the knowledge gap).
- Introduction: identify the research question and outline the following sections.
- Literature Review: also known as 'background'. What is known in your field? How did other people get the knowledge frontier to where it is now? Show the limits of other work to justify how yours contributes to and expands your field. Do not link to everything you're read; this should be an comprehensive summary.
- Methodology: used in an empirical paper, which most biology will be. What was your experiment? This may also appear in an appendix in some cases. You must justify why you have chosen this specific methodology to answer your research question. You must prove that your measures are valid and reliable and that your methodology is rigorous and scientific. Here, you will also explain how you constructed your data analysis, i.e., how you decided what to do with the data and why.
- Results
- Discussion: how have your results answered your research question? How has this knowledge contributed to your field? Why is your work relevant?
- Conclusion: differs depending on the type of research and the journal.
- References
- Appendix: if needed; often includes raw data.
- Acknowledgements: here, you acknowledge people who have helped you but who have not actually written the paper with you, i.e., people who advised or helped with data analysis.
These sections do not need to be written in the order they are presented. It is very important that your conclusions answers the research question raised in the introduction! If submitted for publication, ensure, for example, that you use American English for American publications and British English for British journals.
Always follow your journal or tutors preferred referencing style. If not specified, Harvard or Vancouver are good defaults.
Use the MRCI framework while writing;
- What is the motivation for this paper? Why should anyone care?
- What is your research?
- How does your paper contribute to existing knowledge or ongoing research?
- What are the implications of your work for future research?
The abstract is the most important section; for many readers, it is the only section. It should be accessible to someone not familiar with your field and should explain the "so what?" of your paper. The size of the abstract will vary between journals, but it is normally short - 100 to 200 words. The abstract serves as both a preface to and a plan for your paper. It should both define and answer your key research question. Use the MRCI framework, and consider writing your abstract first and editing it last. You can also consider the following;
- Who are you writing for? The specificity of your abstract will vary based on your field and on the journal. A genetics paper submitted to a genetics journal would have a more in-depth abstract than the same paper sent to a general science journal, due to the expected background and understanding level of your audience.
- What did you do?
- Why did you do that?
- What happened when you did that?
- What do your results mean, in theory and in practice?
- What are the key benefits for your readers?
- What are the next questions? What remains unsolved?
Literature reviews can often be confusing or boring. While you should read as much as possible, you do not need to put everything in the literature review; only enough that your reader can see why your work is important and what it is building on. You are not just listing references; you are explaining what your paper is for, in the wider context of your field. This is why an outline is important, and, again, why you don't need to write the sections in order; you need to know where your paper is going. Bear in mind that a literature review may have a political aspect, in which papers you just to quote, particularly if there are controversial theories in your field. Try to avoid bias.
In the later sections, highlight what is original, surprising, unexpected, or counter-intuitive about your results, and how they bring new information to your field - in other words, how you have expanded the knowledge frontier.
Finally...
Ensure that your paper is correctly formatted, with page numbers, and references in the correct format, and that your spelling and grammar are correct!
Resources
- https://scholar.google.co.uk/ - for finding sources.
- http://endnote.com/ - Endnote online
- https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/learning-objects/fls/endnote/ - EndNote at the University of Manchester (you will likely need a UoM log-in).
- https://www.youtube.com/user/EndNoteTraining - a guide to using EndNote software for references. https://www.zotero.org/ - an free alternative to EndNote.
- http://libguides.mit.edu/zotero - how to use Zotero.
- Why We Reference - a guide to the purpose of referencing, in a way that will takes yours to the next level.
- The Importance of Storytelling in Academic Writing - tips on writing a paper that, while sombre and factual, is interesting to the reader.
- Clinical Chemistry Guide to Scientific Writing - very in depth and specific guide.
- 8 Reasons Why I Rejected Your Article
- Fussy Professor Starbuck's Cookbook of Handy-Dandy Prescriptions for Ambitious Academic Authors or Why I Hate Passive Verbs and Love My Word Processor Fussy Professor Starbuck's Cookbook of Handy-Dandy Prescriptions for Ambitious Academic Authors or Why I Hate Passive Verbs and Love My Word Processor
- FAQ about APA Style
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