Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021
Preface
You are a scientist. You have spent years educating yourself and improving your research skills. Years of perfecting new technologies and methodologies, years of data collection and organization, and years of adapting to new challenges. Every hour spent in the lab, at the library, or at home in front of your computer has broadened your knowledge and capacity in your field. With dedication, persistence, and occasional failure, you have discovered something new — something unknown to the world. You have pushed the boundaries of science just a little, but you can justifiably say that you are among the world’s experts in your niche field — possibly the sole expert. But what good is it to be the world’s sole expert? Alone, you are ill-equipped to shoulder the burden of scientific progress. So you uncap your pen (or pull out your keyboard) and start writing a letter (your paper) to other scientists.
Herein lies a problem. Writing — the task in front of you — is not research-based. You may feel intimidated. After all, you probably have not received specific training to face the many challenges of peer-to-peer communication through academic journals.
At this juncture, you have two options. The first path is the road most travelled: You do not consider you lack expertise in writing. After all, have you not already written hundreds of thousands of words over the course of your education? Have you not already published several theses at the bachelor, master, and Ph.D. level? And if you do lack expertise, do you not have an ocean of examples in front of you in hundreds of academic journals, papers that you can study and learn from or emulate? Or does it even matter whether you are a great writer? You chose to do science, not literature.
The second path is the road less traveled: You want to gain expertise in writing, become a better communicator to enhance your publication chances. It is the path that you, by picking up this book, are considering.
Would it surprise you if we told you that both paths lead to the same destination? One road winds back and forth, passing through metaphorical mists, moats, and brambles. It takes years to travel, and is littered with paper rejections and writing hardship. At its end, you may have mastered many aspects of writing, but at what personal cost? The other path is much shorter. It is a steep uphill climb for a few weeks, but from its summit, you can clearly see the brambles, the moats, and the mists… and walk right past them.1
This book is your roadmap to the top of the hill. Reading it and practicing the recommended techniques are the steep uphill climb. You will need to flex your intellectual muscles, not walk the talk, but walk the thought, put it in motion through our specially crafted exercises. You may even feel sore for a while. But that path is worth following.
You can choose to master many skills during your lifetime. Some will be helpful in highly specific situations (replacing a car tire), while others will find use in broader situations (swimming). But certain skills affect so many facets of your life that it would be almost negligent not to master them. Writing is one of them.
The book you are holding today is not the same roadmap we initially presented in the 2007 or 2011 editions. Today’s book is Scientific Writing 3.0 — the third chronicle of our constantly evolving research into the minds of readers and writers. It has been updated with new examples, new stories, and new discoveries. While the initial versions of the book focused on writing techniques, this new edition also discusses the writer’s attitude towards the audience, strategies for getting published, objective measures of readability, and the predominant scientific writing style, with its characteristics and pitfalls.
You’re on the right path — now take the first step.
1 This isn’t a hypothetical encouragement- we’ve heard this exact feedback from senior scientists who have expressed the regret of not having read this book earlier in their careers.