How to Write a Scientific Paper: An Academic Self-Help Guide for PhD Students

Book Synopsis: Writing a scientific paper can be tough, especially for Ph.D. students. There are countless choices to be made, from selecting the precise words to convey your ideas to capturing the true significance of your results. It is no wonder that writing a paper can feel overwhelming. But a systematic approach helps.

This book serves as your friendly guide to the writing process, making it more manageable by breaking it down into concrete, actionable steps. With its top-down, step-by-step approach, the book helps you identify the main focus of your paper and construct a cohesive storyline that supports it. Instead of overwhelming you with technicalities, the book provides practical and useful advice.

You'll learn how to craft the abstract, outline each section of the paper effectively, and transform the outline into a quick-and-dirty first draft and ultimately a polished manuscript. The book also offers guidance on overcoming writer's block and navigating critical reviews.

Here is what you get:

• A complete step-by-step plan for writing research papers, from choosing which results to include to wrapping up the paper in the Discussion section
• Concrete, actionable, and practical advice, from a paragraph-level template for the Introduction to guidance on preparing plots and figures
• Lots of writing tips, from placing signposts in your text to shortening and straightening your sentences

This book is tailored specifically for Ph.D. students who are aiming to write journal articles based on their research results. However, its insights and guidance can be highly beneficial and recommended to academics at all levels. The book includes:

PART I: STORY

1. How To Choose The Key Point Of Your Paper
2. How To Choose The Supporting Results
3. How To Write The Abstract
4. How To Choose The Title

PART II: OUTLINE

1. The Power Of Outlining
2. How To Write The Introduction, Part I: Structure
3. How To Write The Introduction, Part II: A Four-Paragraph Template
4. How To Write The Introduction, Part III: The Lede
5. How To Write The Materials And Methods
6. How To Write The Results, Part I: Figures
7. How To Write The Results, Part II: Text
8. How To Write The Discussion

PART III: WORDS

1. How Does Your Reader Read?
2. How To Write Your First Draft
3. How To Edit Your First Draft
4. Tips For Revising Content And Structure
5. Tips For Editing Sentences

PART IV: IT'S NOT OVER YET

1. How To Write The Cover Letter
2. How To Deal With Reviews

About the author

I am a professor of computational science and an experienced academic with around 100 published papers. My research is interdisciplinary, to say the least: I have studied the social fabric of smartphone users, the genetic structure of ant supercolonies, the connectome of the human brain, networks of public transport, and the molecular biology of the human immune system, to name a few. I am also interested in scientific writing as a craft. So one could say that I have a broad range of interests—or that I just can't choose, but that's exactly how I like it!  

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