NCAC-SOT Career Enhancement Day
“Writing in the Sciences”
November 3, 2004
Lister Hill Auditorium
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD
On November 3, 2004,
graduate students and post-docs from the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech,
Howard University, Georgetown University, George Washington University and the
USFDA met at the National Library of Medicine to attend the third annual NCAC
Career Enhancement Day. Organized
entirely by Melinda Pomeroy-Black (Virginia Tech) and Mashael Al-Namaeh (Howard
University), with support from the NCAC Executive Board, the day was entitled
“Writing in the Sciences.” Attendees
were treated to a day of talks and Q&A on the skills necessary for writing
grants, theses, and publications.
Feedback on the day was once again extremely positive, and a fourth
Career Day is in planned for Fall 2005.
Abstracts of some of the speakers are below.
8:30 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:50 a.m. Welcome
David Jacobson-Kram, PhD
President, NCAC-SOT
Melinda J. Pomeroy-Black, MS, Virginia Tech
Student Representative, NCAC-SOT
9:00 a.m. Advice on Writing a Scientific Paper
Kenneth
J Kellar, PhD
Professor,
Dept. of Pharmacology, Georgetown University
9:45 a.m. Grammar, Syntax, and Sentence
Construction
Anthony Scialli, PhD
Principal Investigator, Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction; Former Editor, Reproductive Toxicology
10:30 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. Writing Abstracts: What is important to
include and what isn’t
Susan Makris, PhD
Office of Pesticide
Programs, EPA
11:30 a.m. Lunch
12:50 p.m. Welcome Back!
Mashael Al-Namaeh, MS, Howard University
Student Vice-Representative, NCAC-SOT
1:00 p.m. The Mechanics of Writing a Competitive
Grant
Martha
Dávila-García, PhD
Asst. Professor, Dept. of Pharmacology, Howard
University
1:45 p.m. Behind-the-scenes
factors in writing a competitive grant
Toshio Narahashi, PhD
Professor,
Dept. of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry, Northwestern
University Feinberg School of Medicine
2:30 p.m. Break
2:45 p.m. Selecting the appropriate journal for
your manuscript
Chris
Geddes, PhD
Assoc.
Professor, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute; Editor, Journal of
Fluorescence
3:30 p.m. Reviewing Manuscripts: Making Effective
Comments
Carole
Kimmel, PhD
National Center for Environmental Assessment, Office of
Research and Development, EPA
4:15 p.m. A Student/Post-Doc perspective: Applying for a
fellowship
Kimberly Miller, PhD
Post-Doctoral Associate, University of Maryland
School of Medicine
4:30
p.m. Reception
SPEAKER
ABSTRACTS
Advice on
Writing a Scientific Paper
Ken Kellar, Ph.D.
It’s easier to write clearly
than to speak clearly because you get a chance to edit what you write if you
don’t like how it comes out the first time (remember: three things don’t come
back and one of them is the spoken word).
Therefore, the most important advice I can offer is Rule 1: Read and
Edit, Read and Edit, and then repeat.
(Thomas Jefferson did 23 drafts of the Declaration of Independence
before it was edited some more by Ben Franklin and John Adams.) Know what the main point of your study is
and what you want to say, at least in a general sense, even before you begin
writing the paper. It will usually help
you to begin by laying out the order of figures and tables. Does the order of data presented flow
logically to aid understanding of the ideas and/or the hypotheses being
tested? Sometimes the best order of
presentation does not follow the order in which the experiments were done. Write the legends to the figures so that
someone can look at each figure and its legend and get a pretty good idea of
what was done and what the main points of the data are (but that doesn’t mean
you have to re-write the methods in the figure legend). Once the Results section is laid out, your
approach to writing the Introduction and Discussion should become clearer. Many journals limit Introductions to 500 -750
words, so be concise (you’re usually not writing a review and your Introduction
should not sound like one). An
Introduction often begins with a few sentences that give a fairly broad view of
the question being addressed and then narrows down to a few sentences focused
on the specific aspect of the question(s) that your data addresses. The Methods sections should provide enough
information to allow the reader to understand where you got the materials used
in the study and what methods/techniques you used; but seldom does a Methods
section of a research paper need to provide a cookbook list of steps (a useful
rule to follow is to provide enough methodological details to allow an
experienced worker in the field to repeat the experiments). The Results section is not an exercise in
creative writing, but it helps the reader if you provide a clear rationale for
each study presented in the form of transitional sentences. If you follow the advice about laying out the
figure and tables for the Results, writing this section should be quite
straight-forward and maybe even easy.
Finally, the Discussion (usually limited to about 1,500 words) should
give the reader a brief overview of the question(s) your study addressed and
the results (in other words, summarize in a few sentences what you just told
them in the Results). Then, put your
results into a context of what is known or been reported about the subject
matter of your study. What information
does your study build on? How does your
study extend or challenge the already published information? You’re usually allowed some latitude for a
limited degree of speculation about what your results might mean in a larger
context, and you can exercise your creative thinking. This speculation, however, is most useful and
rewarding when you have confidence in your methods and results and believe that
they can be repeated by others. Finally,
see Rule 1.
Grammer and Syntax
Tony Scialli, Ph.D.
The purpose of language is
to communicate, and most of us can manage to communicate reasonably well.
Sometimes, however, our writing is not reader-friendly, either because of
errors of grammar, problems in sentence construction, or excessive wordiness.
Writing well makes editors and readers happy and increases the effectiveness of
the communication. This session will explain some of the most commonly
misunderstood rules of grammar and principles of sentence construction.
Susan Makris, M.S.
The abstract, defined as a
concise summary of a paper, poster, or presentation, is an important
communication tool for research. Writing
a clear, concise abstract can have a powerful impact on the way in which
research (or other information) is accessed and/or utilized. A well-written abstract should allow the
reader to identify the basic content of a document quickly and accurately, to
determine whether the content is relevant to their interests, and to decide
whether to examine it in its entirety.
Some consideration should be given to the timing and purpose of the
abstract and to the anticipated audience.
Although these factors may have some influence on the content, most
abstracts will generally follow a standard formula. The abstract should concisely state the main
objectives and scope of the investigation, briefly characterize the methods
used, and concisely summarize the results and principle findings and/or
conclusion. Excessive, unnecessary
detail should be avoided. The author
should take care to conform to any specified format and length requirements (e.g.,
font, number of words or characters).
Tables, figures and literature references should not be included in an
abstract; and the use of acronyms or abbreviations should be minimized. The final abstract, in combination with the
title, should provide a useful, stand-alone summary of the document or
presentation.
Behind-the-scene
factors in writing a competitive grant
Toshi Narahashi, Ph.D.
Research grants in
biomedical sciences are becoming extremely competitive. Many research-oriented universities
especially medical schools require tenured and tenure-track faculty members to
generate a large fraction of their salaries from external grants, not to
mention the entire salaries of all members of a laboratory. Whereas NIH publishes the detailed
instruction of grant proposal preparation, it is absolutely essential to
understand hidden “grantsmanship” to become successful. This presentation emphasizes the importance
of the behind-the-scene factors including, but not limited to, the psychology
of reviewers, reviewer-friendly writing, exercising/not exercising your ego,
yes-man attitude for revising the proposal, proper understanding of the
publish-or-perish anecdote. Although the
sound scientific merit of a proposal is a must, it is not sufficient to win the
highly competitive game.
Reviewing
Manuscripts: Making Effective Comments
Carole
Kimmel, Ph.D.
Reviewing manuscripts is
something all scientists are called on to do as part of their professional
responsibilities. Giving a good review
and ensuring that strong papers are published in the literature is beneficial
for everyone. There are several things
to consider in reviewing manuscripts that will ensure a good review and provide
adequate information for the author to make appropriate revisions. Do not review manuscript for which you are
not qualified; rather, suggest to the editor others who may be better suited
than yourself. If you agree to review a
manuscript, the following pointers are offered.
First, read the manuscript through completely before making
comments. You may want to make notes in
the margin as you go, but don’t try to write the review until you’ve read the
paper through at least once. Second, go
through the paper in detail and develop comments about points that you think
the author should reconsider or address.
For reviews of original
research publications:
- Restate the objective of the study.
- Determine what the hypothesis is, and whether
you think the study design has addressed the hypothesis directly.
- Indicate your overall evaluation of the paper.
- Provide major comments first so the author knows
what your primary concerns/criticisms are.
- If you think the paper is publishable, suggest
ways in which the author might address your comments. Think about what might be helpful to you
as an author.
- List detailed comments by page and line or
paragraph number.
- Determine whether you think the paper should be
accepted with major, minor, or no revisions, or whether it should be
rejected. Sometimes justifying a
rejection is more time-consuming than reviewing a well thought-out study
and a good manuscript.
- Papers authored by investigators for whom
English is not the primary language may need additional attention to
grammer and language usage. Check
with the editor to see if he/she wants suggestions for improvement.
For other types of
publications (reviews, letters to the editor), the same principles apply,
except that the objective of the manuscript should be stated and your review
should consider how well the paper has achieved its goals. For example, has the literature for a review
been adequately searched? Is the paper
well-organized to provide enough information for an overall conclusion? Have the authors justified their
interpretations and conclusions?
Many publishers now provide
online review sites that greatly facilitate the review process.