Scientific Writing:
Communicating Science

Why Writing Matters

Over the years I have been writing for science I have learned a lot, and now I can pass some of it on. The combination of (often excessive) self-critique of my own work and critique from others has helped me refine my writing's focus, well, slightly. I still have quite a long writing style for building up a narrative, but I do now understand scoping much better. Not just this, I learned a lot from the many papers I have read. It has helped me see when science is communicated well, or when it is impossible to understand what the authors want to say. Now, having read increasing amounts of students' and coworkers' writing, combined with my own learnings, I also have an appreciation for the importance of writing sections for such a narrative.

Writing is part of doing science. Strong results in a poor manuscript get rejected. Good ideas in an unfocused grant application do not get funded. Writing is not a secondary skill, it is the part that determines whether anyone else benefits from the work.

Scientific writing is rarely taught systematically. Most researchers pick it up from their supervisor, from reading papers, and from revision. The Bench Guide includes a scientific writing section because it seemed like a gap worth filling.

What the Guide Covers

The scientific writing section covers the structure of papers (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references, figures), and how those components adapt for theses, grants, posters, presentations, and reviewer responses.

Reviewer Responses

Responding to peer review is something most researchers figure out by trial and error. How to structure a response document, when to push back and when to concede, what level of detail the reviewers actually want. The guide covers this because it is a specific skill that affects whether a paper gets accepted, and it is rarely written about directly.

Part of BenchCalc

The writing guide is part of the Bench Guide in BenchCalc. It works offline and is written by a working scientist who has been through the process.