The Science of Writing

If you?re looking to welcome postdocs into a company or lab, a copy of the sixth edition of How to Write And Publish A Scientific Paper (Greewood Press, 2006) is a good place to start. It acknowledges two ongoing and mutually supporting trends in science -broadening internationalism and digitizing of publishing - while delivering the basics to give a leg up for getting a paper published. It may even help new recruits become better scientists.

"Writing is not really separate from the process of science," says Barbara Gastel, coauthor of the book along with Robert Day, and an associate professor and writing instructor at Texas A&M University in College Station. Gastel spent several years at Peking University Health Science Center teaching faculty English-language scientific writing, and she continues to coordinate a similar program for scientists in Asia. "Science has become much more international, people [should be] writing for non-native speakers," she says. When writing a paper, aim your language and style to someone who may know the science well but have difficulty with the language. "Think about the person in China who maybe taught himself English, do you really need a sentence to go on for 19 lines?" she says. She also suggests that managers help researchers build time into their schedule to use exclusively for writing, and to work with them to create deadlines to move the writing along.