How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Items to notice: 8 Cs
How to edit your own work
Other topics in scientific communication

Professional editors sometimes speak of checking for the “4 Cs”—which, depending on which editor you ask, can stand for “clarity, coherency, consistency, and correctness” (Einsohn and Schwartz 2019, p. 3) or variants such as “correctness, clarity, consistency, and conciseness.” When editing your own work, consider checking for “8 Cs”: compliance, completeness, composition, correctness, clarity, consistency, conciseness, and courtesy. Writing that achieves all eight Cs is likely to excel at communication, which is the C that is the overall goal.

Regarding compliance, ensure that the writing complies with all instructions, such as journals’ instructions to authors and funders’ directions for grant proposals. In addition, ensure that you have complied with relevant conventions in your field, such as those regarding terminology and document structure. If your research involves animals or human subjects, also confirm that you have documented compliance with requirements in that regard.

Check for completeness. Does the document contain all the necessary components? Does each component contain all the information that it should? Are necessary details included, for instance in the methods section?

Evaluate the composition of the piece. Is the overall structure appropriate? Is every section logically organized? Are paragraphs well structured, with strong topic sentences? Does one idea lead smoothly to the next? Are tables and figures well designed?

Check correctness of content and expression. Make sure that all information is correct, both in the body of the text and in the tables, figures, and references. See whether all the logic is valid. Also, ensure that the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word use are proper. If some aspects of such mechanics pose particular difficulty for you, devote special attention to them. For example, if you know that you struggle with verb tenses, perhaps review your draft an extra time, checking specifically for them.

Pay attention to clarity. If some words or phrases might be unclear to readers, make sure that they are defined. Likewise, ensure that abbreviations are defined on first use. See whether antecedents of words such as it are clear. Look for places where the wording could be made clearer or where relationships of ideas could be clarified by using transitional words (such as also, first, then, and however). Seek to improve passages where your reasoning might not be explicit enough for readers to follow. Identify sentences that are too long or too complex to understand easily, and divide or otherwise restructure them.

Look for consistency as well. Is all the information consistent—or, for example, do numbers differ between tables and text? Is the content of the abstract consistent with that of the body of the piece? Is the terminology consistent throughout? Is the formatting (for example, of subheadings) consistent? Do items appear in consistent order? Where appropriate, are tables and figures consistently formatted?

Both to save space and to aid readability, try to increase conciseness. In keeping with the examples in Appendix 2, replace long words with shorter equivalents and condense wordy phrases. Remove redundancies. Delete tangential or irrelevant content. In seeking conciseness, however, take care not to decrease clarity or diminish meaning.

(“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham. www.phdcomics.com)

Finally, keep courtesy in mind. Make sure that you have been courteous to those whose work you discuss, others you mention, and your readers. Replace language that is unintentionally derogatory (such as “Previous researchers have failed to explore”) with neutral language (such as “Previous researchers did not explore”). Revise any language that is not inclusive or that seems disrespectful of some population groups. To be courteous to readers, make sure you have attended to other Cs that help make writing easy to read—such as clarity, conciseness, and compliance with conventions, as already discussed. The effort that you invest in editing can save your readers effort and thus help ensure that your work will be read, understood, and appreciated.