Just-in-Time bridge by way of local background - Bridge the knowledge gap - The reading toolkit

Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

Just-in-Time bridge by way of local background
Bridge the knowledge gap
The reading toolkit

In the chapter on memory, we determined that there were two types of background: the global background found in the introductory parts of your paper, and the local background found wherever just-in-time information is needed. The local background includes the definition of highly specific keywords that only experts use. Problem is, you no longer realize that non-experts don’t know these keywords. To use a metaphor, imagine yourself standing next to your reader at the foot of a hot-air balloon. You are about to embark on your research. You climb inside the gondola. As research progresses, the landscape you see is different from the one seen by the reader on the ground. Your discoveries raise your knowledge level as you drop the sandbags of your ignorance. That ignorance now becomes your reader’s ignorance. Your balloon rises slowly (or rapidly, for one does not usually dictate the pace of discoveries). By the time you are ready to write, you have risen far above the reader, as in Image 1.

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Figure Image 1

Knowledge elevates the writer above the reader.

Your job as a writer is to bridge the gap created through months of research. You have to throw a figurative ladder to readers so that they can come on board your hot air balloon gondola. How far down should you throw the ladder? Down to ground zero. Often the ladder is too short. Ground zero is not properly identified — the background is for tall experts only. Or, it may be that ground zero is properly identified, but rungs on the ladder are missing. These rungs correspond to the local background. Readers remain suspended in mid-air, stuck in the middle of a section of your paper, frustrated, trying to get on board but unable to climb further — you skipped an essential logical step or piece of background information that prevents them from completely benefiting from your paper, or you used a new word they do not understand.

Asking a reader to be familiar with reference [X] before being able to understand the rest of your paper is equivalent to asking the reader to get off the ladder, go to the library, read the whole article [X], climb the ladder again, add the missing rung, and keep on climbing.

ImageIt would be more advisable, space allowing, to briefly summarize in your paper whatever reference [X] contains that is of interest to the reader.

The authors could have written this:

The dynamic behavior was expressed in the Unified Modeling Language (UML, Booch et al. (1999)). The notation used in Figure 3 is that of UML sequence diagrams.

Instead, they wrote this (note the footnote “*”)

The dynamic behavior was expressed in the Unified Modeling Language (UML, Booch et al. (1999)). The notation* used in Figure 3 is that of UML sequence diagrams.

(in footnote) For those not familiar with the notation: Objects line up the top of the diagram. An object’s messaging and lifeline boundary is shown by a vertical dashed line starting below the object. Object activity is shown by the activation bar, a vertical rectangle drawn along the lifeline. Horizontal arrows issued from a sender object and pointed to a receiver object represent the messages sent.

There is no need to build an elaborate rung on your ladder. Your goal is not to have the reader marvel at the exquisite design of a ladder rung, its elaborate anti-skidding grooves, its ornate structure… The role of the ladder is to take your reader inside the gondola of the air balloon where your contribution is revealed and understood. So here are the parting words at the end of this chapter. They come from biologist and writer, Thomas Henry Huxley.

“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.”

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Read your paper. Is your introduction too short? Is it motivating? Have you identified a ground zero that is reasonable to expect from your reader? Have you identified the background the keywords of your title make necessary? Have you identified the intermediate discoveries that removed the sandbags of your ignorance and elevated your knowledge above that of the reader? Should these constitute part of your background?

* The paper was presented by its author, Dr. Linda Wu, at the 2nd International Conference on Technological Advances of Thin Films and Surface Coatings (Thin Films 2004) in Singapore.

1 Lu J, Chow PS, Carpenter K. (2003). Phase transitions in lysozyme solutions characterized by differential scanning calorimetry. Progress in Crystal Growth and Characterization of Materials 46: 105—129.