While the guide was written by a group of ecologists and evolutionary biologists, the strategies and suggestions presented here are applicable across the biological sciences and other scientific disciplines.
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This guide was inspired by Joshua Schimel's Writing Science: How to Write Papers that Get Cited and Proposals that Get Funded-an excellent book about scientific writing for graduate students and professional scientists-but designed to address undergraduate students. While we recognize that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to scientific writing, and more experienced writers may choose to disregard our suggestions these guidelines will assist undergraduates in overcoming the initial challenges associated with writing scientific papers. Here, we present a succinct step-by-step guide that lays out strategies for effective scientific writing with the intention that the guide be disseminated to undergraduate students to increase the focus on the writing process in the college classroom. This general format is inherent in most scientific writing and facilitates the transfer of information from author to reader if a few guidelines are followed. However, effective writing can deepen understanding of the topic at hand by compelling the writer to present a coherent and logical story that is supported by previous research and new results.Ĭlear scientific writing generally follows a specific format with key sections: an introduction to a particular topic, hypotheses to be tested, a description of methods, key results, and finally, a discussion that ties these results to our broader knowledge of the topic (Day and Gastel 2012). This can make the scientific writing process appear overwhelming, especially when presented with new, complex content. It follows a different format and deviates in structure from how we were initially taught to write, or even how we currently write for English, history, or social science classes. Scientific writing is often a difficult and arduous task for many students. How many students can you recall who worked on a laboratory assignment or class project for weeks, only to throw together the written report the day before it was due?įor many, this pattern occurs because we focus almost exclusively on the scientific process, all but neglecting the scientific writing process. While writing is a critical part of the scientific process, it is often taught secondarily to scientific concepts and becomes an afterthought to students. By increasing undergraduate exposure to the scientific writing process, we hope to better prepare undergraduates for graduate school and productive careers in the biological sciences.
The guide breaks down the scientific writing process into easily digestible pieces, providing concrete examples that students can refer to when preparing a scientific manuscript or laboratory report. In order to increase the emphasis on effective writing in the classroom, we assembled a succinct step-by-Step guide to scientific writing that can be directly disseminated to undergraduates enrolled in biological science courses.
It is therefore important that undergraduate students receive a solid foundation in scientific writing early in their academic careers.
Graduate students are encouraged to publish early and often, and professional scientists are generally evaluated by the quantity of articles published and the number of citations those articles receive. However, the ability to effectively communicate research findings is crucial for success in the biological sciences. Scientific writing, while an indispensable step of the scientific process, is often overlooked in undergraduate courses in favor of maximizing class time devoted to scientific concepts.
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