Margaret Cargill

Writing Scientific Research Articles is targeted to researchers who want to improve their success rate of publishing in international journals. This audience might include graduate students and postdocs at the beginning of their scientific careers, or more experienced researchers who nevertheless have not extensively published in higher impact journals for whatever reasons.

The co-authors, Margaret Cargill and Patrick O’Connor, wrote the book as a workbook to accompany a short course on scientific publishing, with exercises and discussion questions, although it can also be used for individual study.

The book begins with a discussion of conventional research article structures and what criteria reviewers use to evaluate manuscripts. Over a few chapters, the next section goes through the design of figures, writing an effective and motivating introduction, discussing the presented results, and developing an effective title and abstract.

The book devotes an entire section to submitting the manuscript and getting it published, which I anticipate to be particularly helpful. Choosing a journal, preparing the manuscript for consideration, writing an effective cover letter—an oft-neglected tool for authors, and responding to reviewer criticisms and editorial decisions are all discussed in depth.

The book closes with a chapter on scientific writing skill development (journal clubs and writing clubs) and a chapter on English skills. I was not convinced by the latter chapter. First, even as an editor interested in language, I found some of the discussion and diagrams of when to use what article dense and skimmed this part. (As one of the co-authors, Margaret Cargill, is an applied linguist, I assume this lies within her expertise and interests.)

Second, I was unconvinced (and a bit concerned) on their recommendations for English as a second language writers. The authors argue that in the physical sciences the content and data is most important, in contrast to the social sciences, where the argument is most important. Building on this, the authors recommend identifying sentences that the researcher likes, and then replacing the noun phrases in the original with noun phrases relevant to their own work. For example, if a researcher liked the sentence

The objectives of this study were to synthesize and characterize ZnO nanowires. Therefore, we determined what increased yield, analyzed the nanowires using SEM and TEM, and established whether catalyst composition affected photocatalytic activity.
The author would then replace the underlined noun phrases with their own:

The objectives of this study were to develop a new sensitizer for solar cells. Therefore, we determined a new structure, analyzed the synthesized product using NMR, and established whether substitution with ethyl groups improved the efficiency.
I object to the authors’ argument that scientific communication can be treated like Mad Libs. This might be true for routine studies in archival journals, but not for journals like Advanced Functional Materials. (In fact, we have received papers written like this—the manuscripts are identical, but the compounds are different and the numbers in the tables and figures are different.)

In summary, I’d give the book my qualified recommendation. The notes on developing and writing a manuscript are helpful, and the section on submission and responding to reviewers and editors is good. I would avoid the authors’ ideas on writing cookie-cutter manuscripts—good, impactful science requires original argumentation, which in turn requires original writing.… (más)