Scientific writing is an iterative, often collaborative & back-and-forth, process–here's some advice

Описание: Scientific writing–be it an abstract, a paper manuscript, a poster, or a thesis–is hard. No getting around it. Just through it. But here are some things you can do to help make the journey smoother. Starting with realizing that it is (and remains even when you’re an established scientist) typically an iterative, often collaborative, process that can occur over days, weeks, months, or even years. And lots of red marks are a normal part of the process and not evidence you’re “bad” or a “failure.” Go into the process with an open mind and clear expectations. And know that – you can do it!

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Quick words of advice for scientific writing

The writing and reviewing process:
• Give yourself time – To write, then edit, then sleep on it and revisit with fresh eyes, then re-edit . . .
o I like to start by just getting my thoughts down, then work on organizing and polishing the parts
• Save dated versions of your work in case you change your mind, want to include something you cut out, etc. (or just want to see how far you’ve come)
• Read over whatever you write before you give it to someone else to read over (no matter how eager/excited you are to just “be done” with it)
• Read what you have written out loud to spot grammatical problems and/or tense inconsistencies
• Make use of available resources such as campus writing centers and friends willing to read it
• Give your reviewers/editors etc. time to review it
• Give your reviewers/editors etc. guidance as to what “level” feedback you want (do you want nitty-gritty copy editing (late drafts) or just “higher level” feedback on general direction, organization, flow, etc. of earlier drafts to see if you’re on the right track before you get to far astray)
• Expect lots of markup. That is completely normal!!!!!! It might feel devastating and discouraging at the time, but it’s totally a normal part of the process. Even big wig scientists typically must do lots of revisions of their work! (peer review!)
• Try not to take feedback personally (no matter how difficult this is to do!)
• Everybody has different preferences and expectations – learn your reviewers’ and preempt future “corrections” (even if you don’t always agree with them)
• Resign yourself to the fact that, like science, nothing you write will ever be “finished” and can always be “improved” and/or extended. But at the “end of the day” (sometimes years later) something must be considered “done.”

The writing itself:
• Identify your audience and write with them in mind
• Ensure that your writing has a logical flow, uses transitions between paragraphs and concepts, keeps the larger picture in mind throughout, and ties things together at the end
• Be concise: when possible, shorten your phrases and use “simpler” words when they do the trick (but use technical terms when their nuances are important to the work and/or field)
• Remove words and/or sentences that don’t serve a purpose (other than to make you sound “scientific” or “fancy”) – go through and remove one word or sentence at a time and see if you lose meaning
• Break up long sentences – try not to let any sentence run over more than 2 lines.
• Spend time early on learning scientific grammar conventions and practice using them correctly… English is complicated - even for native speakers!
• Be careful to differentiate between assumptions, things that are “known” and things that you theorize
• Avoid the word “proved” – in science, we only disprove the null hypothesis; but our evidence can “suggest” or “support” theories
• Even though a lot goes into your work, don’t try to fit in every single thing you did.
o Some things will have to be left out. But that does not mean that the work you did on them was a waste of time. You might not appreciate it (and really likely didn’t appreciate it at the time) but all the “failures” and mistakes and artifact-chasing made you a better, more independent scientist.
 
To make your life easier when it comes time to write:
• Spend time reading the literature. Like scientific writing, it’s an important, but hard and sometimes obscure, aspect of science that only gets easier if you practice.
• As you take notes on background, etc., make sure you make note on what source various facts, etc. came from so you don’t have to track them down when you want to use them
• Keep detailed notes on your research work:
• I keep both a physical lab book and a digital version so that I can search
• Date and number everything - makes cross-referencing much easier
• Make "paper-style" figure legends for figures that are just for your notes (and potentially lab meetings, etc.) - This has come in really handy when I need to put them into papers, etc.

I found the NCBI Style Guide really helpful

Also, Gastel, B., Day, R. A. (2022). How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper.

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