1. Scientific Writing
RCS-001 Research Methodology
Dr. Anita Goel
Associate Professor (Computer Science)
Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi
goel.anita@gmail.com
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2. Writing and Publishing a Scientific Paper
1. Understanding Academia
⢠Why Publish?
⢠Know your community
⢠How Journals work
⢠Presentation of Scientific Journals
⢠Ethical Guidelines
2. Before Writing â
Delimit Paper
⢠Know your paper
⢠Literature review
⢠The Gap
⢠Research Design
3. Writing the Paper
⢠Purpose of writing
⢠Structure of paper
⢠Preliminary advice
4. After Writing -
Checklist
⢠Content mistakes
⢠Formatting mistakes
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3. Writing and Publishing a Scientific Paper
1. Understanding Academia
⢠Why Publish?
⢠Know your community
⢠How Journals work
⢠Presentation of Scientific Journals
⢠Ethical Guidelines
2. Before Writing â
Delimit Paper
⢠Know your paper
⢠Literature review
⢠The Gap
⢠Research Design
3. Writing the Paper
⢠Purpose of writing
⢠Structure of paper
⢠Preliminary advice
4. After Writing -
Checklist
⢠Content mistakes
⢠Formatting mistakes
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4. Why Publish?
⢠Research is to find something new. How will you know that?
⢠When you publish, other researchers can look at what you did in your lab
⢠When you do research you see what others have done from their publications
⢠Get credit for your work
⢠Conveying important new information.
⢠Advance Scientific age - Share your results. Results in lab, no progress.
⢠Feel stronger about your work - Criticism from reviewers who are experts
⢠Get familiar with other academics working on your topic
⢠Like currency - Evaluated to number of publication, and kind of journals.
⢠Contributes to determining salary, academic position, grant application6/28/2017 Scientific Writing 4
5. Know your community
⢠Make precise research
⢠Basic/applied; theoretical/experimental approach; qualitative/quantitative method.
⢠Discover researchers working in your topic.
⢠Search, Classify, Read papers into groups - essential papers and related papers.
⢠Position your research under the scientific context.
⢠Identify academic conferences and journals important for your research
⢠Identify influential researchers
⢠Make recent 10 year bibliography
⢠Build academic network - Meet authors in conference , Visit research center & labs
Continuous and iterative process. No one standard way. Learn as you go.
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6. How Journals work?
⢠Peer review system - aims at securing quality of articles
⢠Anonymity
⢠Double blinded
⢠Acceptance ratio
⢠5% to 70% of old submitted papers
⢠Time Scale - several months to years
⢠Researchers use preprint server to register their paper to allow for immediate
sharing of results. Common in Astronomy and high energy Physics
⢠Content accuracy
⢠Inaccurate knowledge harms credibility of society to the scientific community
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7. Presentation of Scientific Journals
⢠Important - Through paper submission your work can get published.
⢠Process
⢠Editor-in-chief (desk reject) or send for review to editor (corrections).
⢠Chosen editor asks peers to blind review the paper.
⢠When submitting paper to journal, Look for
⢠Editorial board, its composition, their research, areas of expertise
⢠Articles most referenced. Include references to commonly cited articles
⢠Tailor your article for a journal, hence one editor - minimize desk reject risk
⢠Key communication with editors â Abstract and Cover letter
⢠Cover letter â Focus of research, motivation, why journal is match for publication
⢠Abstract - sum up your research, first thing people read in article
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8. Ethical Guidelines
⢠You keep basic intellectual property, but give away copyright to editor
⢠What you write is owned by firm behind journal
⢠You cannot copy-paste text/image of another person/ journal
⢠Publishing (No legal right) is different from patent
⢠Every author should be put in the author names of the paper
⢠Misconducting
⢠Fake/altered data
⢠Submitting to different journals in the same time; equivalent findings in two
separate papers or journals, even if they use different languages.
⢠Plagiarism check, Citation is important
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9. Writing and Publishing a Scientific Paper
1. Understanding Academia
⢠Why Publish?
⢠Know your community
⢠How Journals work
⢠Presentation of Scientific Journals
⢠Ethical Guidelines
2. Before Writing â
Delimit Paper
⢠Know your paper
⢠Literature review
⢠The Gap
⢠Research Design
3. Writing the Paper
⢠Purpose of writing
⢠Structure of paper
⢠Preliminary advice
4. After Writing -
Checklist
⢠Content mistakes
⢠Formatting mistakes
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10. Know your paper
⢠Contribution of the paper
⢠Experiment you did
⢠Results you obtained
⢠Significance of the result you obtained
⢠The context in which the result has to be understood
⢠Position your paper so that researchers specialized in the
theme will accept it.
⢠Build your literature review, core elements in an academic paper.
⢠What kind of paper do you want to write
⢠Theoretical, empirical, methodological
⢠Design of the paper will be different
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11. Literature Review
⢠Learn what has already been done in your field
⢠Analogy by Isaac Newton. If I ascend further, it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants.
⢠We see further than the giants, and then increase the men of knowledge.
⢠Literature review - specify why and how your work is original
⢠Originality may be-
⢠New empirical work
⢠Interpreting known ideas in a new way
⢠Giving new data to old problems
⢠Translating results from one technique or context to another
⢠Reading trans-disciplinary research
⢠Producing original sentences
⢠Finding a new field of research
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12. The Gap
⢠Identify gap after literature review
⢠Present your gap
⢠Explain your objectives - how you want to fill this gap.
⢠Present your research question
⢠Don't hide it behind complex sentence or in middle of big paragraph.
⢠It should be the one sentence tracking out your paper.
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13. Research Design
⢠Research question â Main thread. Justifies the research process.
⢠Prepare skeleton of your paper
⢠Coherent Design
⢠Each part is coherent with one another
⢠All are coherent with the research question
⢠Ask questions
⢠Is problem coherent with literature strand?
⢠Is methodology compatible with problem?
⢠Do I bring answers only to research question?
⢠Do I enrich comprehension of literature with discussion of results?
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14. Writing and Publishing a Scientific Paper
1. Understanding Academia
⢠Why Publish?
⢠Know your community
⢠How Journals work
⢠Presentation of Scientific Journals
⢠Ethical Guidelines
2. Before Writing â
Delimit Paper
⢠Know your paper
⢠Literature review
⢠The Gap
⢠Research Design
3. Writing the Paper
⢠Purpose of writing
⢠Structure of paper
⢠Preliminary advice
4. After Writing -
Checklist
⢠Content mistakes
⢠Formatting mistakes
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15. Purpose of Technical Writing
⢠Inform
⢠About the data
⢠Persuade
⢠Discuss the data
⢠Do both in an efficient manner
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16. Types of Published Literature
⢠Books â novels - classic and new
⢠Aim is to keep audience engrossed, If it is mystery, specific details are hidden
till end, audience kept confused till end
⢠Newspapers âday to day, key details presented, conciseness
⢠Magazines â extended form of newspaper article, written in context
⢠Books, Magazines, Newspapers
⢠Do not follow a formal review process. Editor may get them reviewed
⢠Journal article
⢠Different style of writing
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17. Why is technical writing difficult?
⢠Not aware of what is required in technical writing paper
⢠Unconsciously we pick habits like book, articles, newspaper
⢠High expectation of first draft â we have finished work, why are we re-
writing, supervisor not happy. Students do not appreciate what is
being corrected in the paper
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18. Beginning of the Document
⢠Title
⢠Area of Research â What is New?
⢠Abstract
⢠Give away all important results of your work
⢠It is for those who have not seen your work before. So be careful with the
terms
⢠Introduction
⢠What is your work
⢠Why is it important â compare with other work
⢠What is required to understand your work
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19. Middle of the Document
⢠Presents greatest detail of the work
⢠Experimental Details
⢠Results
⢠Result is a factual statement of data
⢠There is no judgement
⢠Nobody can argue about the result
⢠Discussion
⢠Understand implication of the result
⢠Analyse the result
⢠It is an opinion
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20. End of Document
⢠Conclusion
⢠It is similar to abstract about what are your results
⢠You can assume that the reader has read your work
⢠It is similar to abstract but can have technical jargon
⢠You can also give future perspective
⢠References
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21. Abstract
⢠Shortened version of the paper
⢠Should contain all information necessary for the reader to
determine:
⢠(1) what is the objective;
⢠(2) how the study was done;
⢠(3) what results were obtained; and
⢠(4) significance of the results.
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22. Introduction
â˘Why is this study of scientific interest
â˘What is your objective?
â˘Discuss previously published studies, to help explain
why your study is needed
â˘Your specific contribution
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23. How to Cite Sources in Introduction Section
⢠Articles by one or two authors - cite using their last names.
⢠For more than two authors - the last name of 1st author followed by
abbreviation et al.
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24. Results
⢠Presents the results but do not interpret their meaning.
⢠Summarize the data with text, tables and/or figures..
⢠Number tables and figures separately beginning with 1.
⢠Refer in the text to each figure or table in your paper.
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25. Discussion
⢠Explain the results. Why they differ from what other works
⢠Interpret results
⢠Relate to objectives of the paper.
⢠Conclude based on your data
⢠Suggest future directions
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Nowadays there is one section of âResults and Discussionâ
26. Citation
⢠All papers must be cited
⢠For papers published in journals you must provide the date, title,
journal name, volume number, and page numbers.
⢠For books you need the publication date, title, publisher, and place of
publication.
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27. What effects efficiency of the document?
⢠Language
⢠In novels etc. there is less emphasis on writing simple straight things
⢠In technical paper keep it simple and straight
⢠Do not write long sentences (when you reach the end of sentence you
should not have forgotten the end of sentence
⢠Using phrases like it is obvious â improper way of conveying
How to Write a Scientific PaperCraft of Scientific Writing Michael
AlleyScientific Writing.pdf
⢠Illustration
⢠Select judiciously to convey the idea â chart, graph, figure, table etc.
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28. Writing and Publishing a Scientific Paper
1. Understanding Academia
⢠Why Publish?
⢠Know your community
⢠How Journals work
⢠Presentation of Scientific Journals
⢠Ethical Guidelines
2. Before Writing â
Delimit Paper
⢠Know your paper
⢠Literature review
⢠The Gap
⢠Research Design
3. Writing the Paper
⢠Purpose of writing
⢠Structure of paper
⢠Preliminary advice
4. After Writing -
Checklist
⢠Content mistakes
⢠Formatting mistakes
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29. Content mistakes
⢠Does the problematic remain the same throughout the paper?
⢠Is the title of the paper coherent?
⢠Are the keywords adequate?
⢠Is content coherent with aim and scope of the journal
⢠Is the so what of article clear? Is the reasoning understandable? Do
we need more data/calculations to say that? Is everything coherent?
⢠The writing is going to be evaluated by your peers.
⢠It is very important to get them interested, but how can you actually
do that?
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30. Formatting mistakes
⢠Improper language, spelling mistakes, typos all these are a no go.
⢠No long sentence. Write in an active voice and not a passive one.
⢠No complicated words. Be simple and straight to the point.
⢠Its hard to correct your own paper. So try and find proofreading buddies.
⢠Some common format oversights - pagination; improper bibliographical
styles; quoting styles. For that, download a template and comply to it.
⢠Adequate organization of the paper.
⢠Clear titles of sections, of figures and tables, of the paper itself.
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31. Sources
⢠âIntroduction to Researchâ, Technical Writing, NPTEL, Prof.
Prathap Haridoss, IIT Madras. Link
http://nptel.ac.in/courses/121106007/20
⢠âHow to Write and Publish a Scientific Paperâ 4 week course in
Coursera. Link https://www.coursera.org/learn/how-to-write-
a-scientific-paper/home/info
⢠The Craft of Scientific Writing â By Michael Alley, Springer
1996, ISBN 0387-94766-3
⢠How to Write a Scientific PaperCraft of Scientific Writing Michael
AlleyScientific Writing.pdf
⢠Writing good scientific papers, MPIP, Mainz, 04/2016
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32. Some other sources
⢠http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
⢠https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/cill/eap/
⢠https://bid4papers.com/blog/spelling-grammar-punctuation-
mistakes/
Aug-Dec 2012 Data Structure 32