Tag: writing

Here is a good guide for scientific writing in the academic and professional environments. This is the Webinar link presented by Dr. Matthias Reumann.

Survival Skills for Scientific Writing in the Academic and Professional Environments

Here is a basic outline for your scientific writing.

• Introduction
  • Problem statements
  • Rationale
• Background
  • Previous work done by others
  • Previous work done by you
• Materials and Methods
  • What you did
  • How you did
  • What you used
• Results
  • Typical raw data
  • Data obtained
• Discussion
  • What your results mean
  • Comparison with work of others
  • Significance of findings
• Conclusion

Take home messages are

• Know yourself and the enemy
• Outline first and stay focused
• Take a break (remember the 80:20 rule) & create inspiring environment
• Read, revise and your peers

This is from an article from Tomorrow’s Professor website.

USE PAST TENSE:

• To describe your methodology and report your results
• When referring to the work of previous researchers.
• To describe a fact, law or finding that is no longer considered valid and relevant.

USE PRESENT TENSE:

• To express findings that continue to be true.
• To refer to the article, thesis or dissertation itself.
• To discuss your findings and present your conclusions. Also use present tense to discuss your results and their implications.
  (e.g.) Weight increased as the nutritional value of feed increased. These results suggest that feeds
  higher in nutritional value contribute to greater weight gain in livestock. (Use past tense to indicate what you found [weight increased], but use present tense to suggest what the result
  implies.)