Writing a (good) scientific paper

1. First of all, review your data and identify what is unique and special about your paper. This will now be your focus. Stick to this main focus/finding!
2. Think through the structure of the paper before you start writing. Only use material that will really contribute to the story.
3. Structure your paper with lots of subheadings, don’t be shy!
4. Have you gone through every single sentence in the paper to make sure it is as short as possible (a sentence should be no more than 1–1.5 lines in A4 12 point)? Organise carefully to avoid repetition.
5. Have you taken every step to make sure the paper is as short as possible (to maintain the focus)? Fewer words are ALWAYS better than more!
6. Avoid complex phrases and keep to simple words.
7. Avoid using personal terms such as ‘our’ or ‘we’. Science is supposed to be impersonal and objective.
8. Use acronyms sparingly and ensure they are properly explained at first use.
9. Make figure legends full and complete and explain as much as possible (date samples taken, replication, etc.).
10. Do not make the figure the subject of the sentence!
11. Discuss your results and end the sentence with the figure/table in brackets. For example ‘the highest concentrations of Zn were in the Yellow river (Fig. 6)’, rather than ‘Figure 6 shows . . .’
12. Do not repeat in the text long lists of data which you have already presented in the figures and tables. Results and discussion should be a limited summary of the main findings. The data in the figures/tables do not need to be repeated in the text.
13. Do not use several significant figures without good reason! A value of 7.6 is better than 7.5894! This is particularly true when model estimations are given, because here there will be large uncertainty.
14. Ensure that the amount of discussion is proportional to the importance of the topic. Do not distract the reader with long discussions on aspects that are trivial compared to the main focus of the paper.
15. Maintain that narrative thread! You must keep the readers’ attention so that they can follow your story. Don’t run several different stories or mess things up with information that distracts from your storyline. If you try to put too much stuff into a bag, it will break!
16. Use emphasis carefully. Don’t say ‘this clearly shows’ as that implies certainty and hints at arrogance. Try instead to use ‘this strongly suggests’ or ‘this indicates’ which, whilst revealing your conviction, still leaves a space for uncertainty.
17. Work hard to squeeze out any ambiguity. Try to make each sentence stand alone and not require the preceding sentence to make sense. Put the paper down and re-read after a week. Does it still make sense?
18. The conclusions section should be as brief as possible, a paragraph of no more than 1/3 of a page. Don’t re-open the discussion. If permitted, bullet points are very useful.