Will likely be turning this into a YouTube talk at some point, but gives resources, breakdowns of parts of a scientific paper, and tips to avoid plagiarism.

1. Technical Writing, An
Introduction to
Academic Writing
Colleen M. Farrelly

2. Meet Your Instructor
• Data scientist with multiple publications during graduate school and as
an industry researcher
– Peer-reviewed publications in statistics, psychology, medicine, and computing
– Many college term papers in the humanities
• Course geared towards
– College students who need help writing a scientific paper
– Graduate students who are writing for peer-review the first time
– Researchers in industry who are hoping to publish in a conference journal

3. Course Overview
• Finding a journal
• Plagiarism and writing resources
• Introduction section
• Methods section
• Results section
• Conclusions section
• References section
• Resources

4. Finding a Journal, Part 1
• Important considerations
– Subject matter (organic chemistry vs. physical chemistry)
– Journal scope (only immigrant population health, only experimental papers…)
– Impact factor (high, low, somewhere in between)
– Time-to-decision (1-week turn-around vs. 3-month turn-around)
– Time-to-publication (important when competitors exist)
– Pre-print regulations (arXiv as publication?)

5. Finding a Journal, Part 2
• How to find journals
– Elsevier journal insights/journal finder tools (https://journalfinder.elsevier.com/)
– Field experts (collaborators, mentors…)

6. Finding a Journal, Part 3
• Pre-prints (arXiv and related websites)
– Feedback
– Credit for work

7. Plagiarism
• Global (passing off someone else’s whole paper as yours)
• Paraphrasing (using idea without citation)
• Verbatim (copying lines of text without citation)
• Mosaic (combining sources without citations)
• Self (re-using your own work in another work)
• Incorrect (misapplying someone else’s work/conclusions)
• More here: https://www.scribbr.com/plagiarism/types-of-plagiarism/

8. Writing Resources
• Many resources for students and university researchers whose native
language is not English
– University writing centers
– Freelance writers to help with grammar/spelling/structure
– Prior papers in a journal as a style guide
– Online citation services and tutorials

9. Anatomy of a Scientific Paper
• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Conclusions
• References

10. Title and Abstract
• Descriptive title
• Abstract
– Summary of your paper
– Limits on number of words
– Varies in structure by journal

11. Introduction
• Overview of problem
– Relevant prior research
– Gaps that exist in knowledge/populations…
– Positioning paper within that gap
– Relevant hypotheses/proof structure
• Should be complete but as short as possible (not a full field literature
review)

12. Methods
• Data collection
• Data description
• Techniques to analyze data/critically examine the
problem/mathematical proofs…
• Include relevant software with proper citation

13. Results
• Usually separate from methods but may be combined in some journals
• Includes:
– Results of methods
– Graphs
– Tables
– Statistical details
– Other visualizations or metrics

14. Conclusions
• Short section noting:
– Relevance of results
– Limitations of the study
– Future directions given results

15. References
• List of all previous research
• Conforms to journal’s required citation style
– APA
– MLA
• Tools to help with citation style
– Google Scholar
– Endnote
– BibTeX
– RefWorks

16. Additional Resources
• https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/index.htm
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• https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/planresearchpaper/
• https://www.elsevier.com/connect/11-steps-to-structuring-a-science-
paper-editors-will-take-seriously
• https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02404-4