Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021
The scientific paper: an intellectual product
Strategic writing
The reading toolkit
Height, skill, agility — these are the necessary attributes of a good basketball player. But to be a great basketball player requires much more than skills and being a stellar physical specimen — it requires a mastery of the rules and plays of the game as well as an understanding of how the opposing team mobilizes. In other words, it requires strategy.
You may be a naturally talented writer. But publishing research is not simply a matter of writing well. You need to understand that your manuscript is a product and that this product must be attractive, marketable, and on the right shelves. You need to understand the needs and wants of your consumers/readers and how to fulfil them. You need to build trust so that your readers not only like your writing but also find your work credible. And you certainly need to consider the most demanding of your readers — the editors and reviewers.
The scientific paper: an intellectual product
Your scientific paper is a product. It took time and effort to produce, and it will be consumed by its readers through the act of reading. Whereas consumed food yields energy, consumed papers yield knowledge. But just as getting a new food product into the mouths of consumers is challenging, so is getting a new intellectual product into the minds of learners.
The table below tells two stories: one is about a food product, and the other about a scientific paper. If you wish to read the two stories sequentially, read from top-to-bottom in the left column first, then top-to-bottom in the right column. If you wish to read both stories in parallel, read from left to right.
Imagine you are the inventor of a new kind of breakfast cereal, which is different from the other types on the market. Instead of a flake or a loop, each piece is either a number between 1 and 9 or a mathematical symbol: +, −, ×, or /. Your hope is that this cereal will encourage children to practice simple mathematics with each scoop of the spoon into the bowl. |
Imagine you are the writer of a new scientific paper, which contains an innovative contribution to the existing scientific literature. |
While you enjoy eating your own cereal, you would much rather have it consumed by others as well. You realize that in order for this product to be sold, you need to get it on the shelves of stores. |
While you’re proud of the pdf sitting on your desktop, you would much rather have it read by other scientists. You recognize that in order for this paper to be downloaded, you absolutely need to get it into an upcoming issue of an academic journal. |
Which store will you choose? Will you try to get your product on the shelves of a major distributor like Carrefour or Whole Foods? Or should you aim to get your product carried by a smaller but more specialized store with a knowledgeable clientele who will appreciate the cleverness of your product? |
Which journal will you choose? Will you try to get your paper published in a major journal like Science or Nature? Or should you aim to be published in a smaller but more specialized journal whose readers you know will be directly interested in your findings? |
How can you convince a store to pick up and stock your product on their shelves? You have to convince them that it will benefit them and their customers (valued and purchased by their customers, and therefore profitable for them). |
How can you convince a journal to publish your paper? You have to convince its editors that it will benefit them and their readers (valued and cited by their readers, and therefore increasing the journal’s impact factor — and indirectly profits). |
What form does this convincing take? You have to meet up with the store owner to show them your product and argue your case for why you believe it is valuable and their customer base would buy it. |
What form does this convincing take? You have to submit your manuscript to the editor, and argue in a cover letter why you believe the readers of this journal would be interested by your discovery. |
But you’re not just going to take a handful of cereal out of your pocket to show the owner, are you? You’re going to present a package- a nicely designed cardboard box. On one side of the box is the title of your product, and on the back is some writing that succinctly describes the value and uniqueness of the mathematical cereal inside. |
But you’re not going to submit just the manuscript itself for review, are you? You have to present it with a title and abstract that quickly and accurately encapsulates the value and uniqueness of the results inside. |
Once the store owner has your welldesigned package in their hands, will they rush to put it on their shelves? Not yet! While they may know enough to see the value from the package, they don’t have the expertise to determine if the product is safe for consumption. Before they make any kind of shelf stocking decision, they need to send the product for quality control and for taste testing. |
Once the editor has your title, abstract, and paper in their hands, will they rush to publish it in their journals? Not yet! While they may know enough to see the value from the cover letter, title, and abstract, they don’t always have the expertise to determine if the methodology is sound or the discussion robust. Before they make any kind of publishing decision, they need to send the paper for peer review. |
If the experts deem the cereal worthy, the store owner may finally decide whether or not to stock it on their shelves. |
If the reviewers deem the paper worthy, the editor will finally consider whether or not to publish it. |
Will the store advertise your product for you? Yes, for a short while. They may add stickers or displays that otherwise emphasize that the product is new, but these will disappear after a few weeks. Once this period is over, your cereals will no longer be actively promoted. |
Will the journal advertise your paper for you? Yes, for a short while. They may give free access to your paper for a limited time to a limited number of people of your choice, or they may feature it in an editorial (it picks up traction and affects their impact factor1). Once this period is over, your paper is no longer actively promoted. |
When on the shelves, does your product get preferential treatment? No, it simply joins the rest in a wall of cereals that the consumer walks past when browsing for something to buy. It is therefore very important that the packaging makes the product stand out and catches the shopper’s attention. The shopper doesn’t need to pay to read the packaging, just to eat the product. |
Once published, does your paper get preferential treatment? No, it simply joins the list of other paper titles that are drawn up when a user queries a search engine like google scholar on a keyword related to your work. It is therefore very important that the title and abstract stand out and catch the reader’s attention. The reader doesn’t have to pay the journal to read the title and abstract, just to download the full paper. |
As we have demonstrated, many parallels exist between physical and intellectual products. To be a successful author, it is essential that you grow to understand not just the process of writing a paper, but the entire ecosystem within which that writing is promoted and consumed. But it isn’t enough just to understand—you must also know how to use this understanding to your advantage, as we will illustrate throughout the rest of this chapter.
Product expiration date
If you wish to avoid intestinal trauma, checking the expiration dates on food products is always a good idea. But since intellectual products are consumed by the mind and not the gut, is it possible for intellectual products to expire? Can you experience a case of mental trauma?
Intellectual products expire much in the same way that paracetamol expires. Not immediately dangerous, but less and less effective, to the point where it no longer helps. When first published, your scientific contribution will be truly novel, and open the mind of your readers to new possibilities. As time passes, the novelty wears off as it is incorporated into practice or future research, to the point where there is no longer much of a need to refer to the original paper anymore. So perhaps we shouldn’t say that the paper has an expiration date, but a best before date. How long is this period for a scientific paper? It depends on how quickly the field moves forward2, but generally a few years3.
Journals are interested in promoting your papers, but they treat the best before date as a deadline. In the first three years, any journal promotion helps you, but also helps them with their impact factor. After that, the promotion is over. But should a paper no longer be promoted simply because it no longer helps the journal? After all, papers are written for readers, not journals, and it would be ridiculous to assume that a paper loses its value to all readers after three years. This is what a citation growth chart might look like for an article from a particular writer:
As you can see, there is an initial bump from the novelty effect and journal promotion. Afterwards, the number of new citations decreases slowly in what is called the long tail. Gradually accumulating citations here-and-there for your older papers isn’t as exciting as getting cited on your recent work, but these citations are no less valuable. You, personally, do not have a 3-year impact factor window to consider. Every citation, new or old, is a currency that paves your way to grants and tenure. And think of the readers who stumble upon your older work for the first time, and see real value in it. To them, it isn’t an old paper — it is a new paper, new knowledge that allows them to validate their ideas or justify their approach. How can you encourage these readers? Are you limited to hoping that they will stumble upon your paper through a keyword search a few years down the line?
As the producer of your intellectual product, you have to also take responsibility for its dissemination. Leaving it in the hands of the journals is all fine and well, but they do not ultimately care about your research. No one will ever be as passionate or as effective an advocate of your science as you. You may not have the reach or the readership of the journals, but you have many more directly relevant connections with people in your field, including people whose work you’ve referenced or whose papers you’ve read. Do not waste your social reach.
If you cite a paper, chances are, the writers of that paper will look at your paper (I do). If they find things that they can use in their future papers, your work could then be cited. This is the most direct path to future citations, therefore be highly selective in the papers you cite — in other words, who you want to be cited by. A citation is a reward, and rewards don’t go unnoticed.
Promoting with social media?
While traveling in Australia, I picked up an interesting anecdote about the power that scientists could wield if they used social media effectively to publicize their work. A researcher at the Australian National University was curious enough to measure how effective tweeting about her paper would be in terms of garnering citations. It was an older paper outside the 3-year impact factor window. If you were to place it on the chart above, it would be on the declining curve after the peak. She tweeted about it, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the number of citations increased significantly — back to the previous peak. That is the power of one tweet for one paper — a substantial increase of its citation count.
Now of course, if you take to your long-inactive twitter account and start tweeting about old papers, you cannot expect a similar result. Her tweet was impactful because she had invested time and energy into building up a network of peers and potentially interested readers in her social media following. But considering that such a network yields repeat returns for every subsequent paper published, I would argue that it is well worth the effort.
Other social media options exist if twitter isn’t your cup of tea (although if your goal is citation maximization, you should be on all major platforms). Researchgate4 is the social media of science. You can publicize your papers there, connect with other scientists, join discussions with the authors of papers you’ve read, and even get statistics on who’s reading or requesting to read your work. It takes very little time to create or maintain an account, and the 21st century scientist has no good reason not to be there. And while you are at it, create a profile on Academia5. I find it as useful as Researchgate, and upload my papers to both platforms.
Depending on your topic and its potential popular interest, you may also be interested in being active on reddit communities such as /r/science. Do note it is a much more casual network than Researchgate, so your writing style must adapt to the medium. Reddit is where scientists and science enthusiasts go to hang out and share their stories — not just talk business! Leave your academic English at the door as much as possible, and do not consider yourself a writer as much as a conversationalist. If you’re excited about a recent discovery you’ve made and you think people might be curious as to its applications or want details, feel free to take it to the next step and hold your own AMA (Ask Me Anything).
Build a network and use it. You are the best advocate of your science, and taking an active role in its promotion will benefit you personally, but also science as a whole.
Promoting by archiving your paper on preprint servers/repositories
You could also archive a version of your paper to a preprint server prior to peer-review or publication.6 It sets up anteriority, and reduces the chances to be scooped by others, especially when peer-review stretches over a long period which could exceed a year. It also makes your paper visible enough to gather early feedback. The practice is usual in the physical sciences (ArXiv) and spreading to new domains (BioRxiv, Chemxriv, PsyArXiv).