Guide to Scientific Writing
Our service strives to help researchers in developing scientific manuscripts and, together with the authors, prepare articles that can be published in international scientific journals. I am writing this 'Guide to Scientific Writing' to give authors some basic practical advice.
I present nine points that everyone can easily check and improve the possibilities to get their article published. These points are for your use if you want to improve your scientific article yourself and make it more reader-friendly.
In this guide, I have chosen to present some points that arise from my experience in reading articles I have got to edit. I try to write this simply – simply to check if you have followed these points. I try to keep the language simple to be easily understood by non-native English speakers. I avoid difficult terms that are used in many guides for scientific writing and make this guide more practical.
These are points that I believe many of the peer reviewers, editors and future readers can agree with, but still they are not absolute rules. All points may not be applicable to all manuscripts and all journals. Some of the points may be a question of opinion. These are my opinions. However, I believe that all journals, also high-quality scientific journals with high impact factor (IF) or high SJR/ SCI rank, appreciate these points.
You can order this free guide (13 pages) via email.
Short Practical Quide to Scientific Writing
Introduction
1.
Start with a short overview about
the wider context of the study.
What is the wider environmental problem or ecological issue
your study belongs to?
2.
The aims paragraph is
the heart of the article.
What was the research question you wanted to get the answer to?
Methods
3.
Present the study design precisely.
Where and how did the sampling happen
in detail?
4.
Tell the number of replicates (n )
for the treatments / groups.
Does a reader understand easily
how many samples you took?
Results
5.
Present the means, deviations and n
for the treatments / groups.
Does a reader easily understand
what the actual values of your results (observations, calculated results) were and how they varied?
Discussion and Conclusions
6.
Give answers to your research questions / hypotheses / aims.
What did you learn?
Finally
7.
Separate three paragraphs out of the article:
a) The first paragraph of the introduction,
b) the aims and
c) the conclusions.
Put them one after another.
Is there a story?
Make our work easier and check/correct two more things:
8.
Use the same words/ terms / abbreviations for the variables, treatments and for the treatment levels throughout the text, from the abstract to the final conclusion.
9.
Results: Check that the values you write in the text match with the values in the tables and figures.
In our scientific writing and editing service, we first want to understand these points in your study. We feel them necessary to understand when we help you to develop your article further.
Do you find an answer to the questions from your scientific manuscript? If not, we help you to develop your article.
In the 'Practical Guide to Scientific Writing' , I write more about the nine points above and give some detailed examples.
You can order this free guide (13 pages) via email.
You can avoid some common mistakes and improve your scientific manuscript yourself by
a) following the nine points presented above and by
b) checking that you find answers to the questions presented above.
These are very basic points in scientific writing, and you can read them from several scientific writing guides. They are easy to say, but they are not so easy to follow, and they are not so easy to notice when writing, reading, and rewriting one’s own manuscript time after time.
We are here to help you to find those points and correct them.
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If you have any questions or any comments, please contact us and ask.
This guide was written by Oili Kiikkilä. Published 9.9.2017. You can order the longer guide via email.