As a researcher, publishing research papers in international academic journals is the only way to communicate with peers and gain international influence. Some domestic scientists have done beautiful experiments, but they are often troubled by their inability to write papers, which has become a major obstacle to international communication. Based on the personal experience of bloggers, this paper provides reference for doctoral students, postdoctoral students and young PI. Finally, the article makes a brief summary.
Everyone in college knows that my English was not good at that time (only "good" in CET-4) and my writing was particularly poor. When I first arrived in America, I didn't adapt to the English environment. I spent five or six hours reading a JBC article. I often don't understand the meaning of some key words, so I am under great pressure.
Fortunately, when I was studying for my doctorate at Johns Hopkins University, I met my senior and first teacher, John Desjares, in April 199 1. After listening to my distress, John told me, "If you spend 45 minutes reading Washington post every day, your written English will be crushed in two years" (if you spend 45 minutes reading Washington post every day, your writing ability will be handy in two years). This suggestion is just what I want-I'm already interested in news! So, after arranging the first batch of experiments every morning, I will spend an hour watching Washington post around 10, mainly watching version A (news version). At first, I could only read two or three short messages or a long report an hour, and I often had to look up new words in the dictionary. But unconsciously, my reading ability has improved obviously. 1992, Bush Sr. and Clinton ran for president. I follow the news, often reading several pages of news or four or five long reports an hour, and sometimes telling the news I just saw vividly to my brothers and sisters.
Reading has directly improved my English writing ability. After reading some news, I often have the urge to write about my feelings. At the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, the China swimming team won four gold medals and five silver medals. The major media in the United States accused China athletes of taking illegal drugs, but there was no test evidence, which was entirely based on the feelings of American athletes. This incident makes me very angry. For the first time in my life, I wrote a letter to Washington post and The Baltimore Sun, commenting on the unfairness of the report. Unexpectedly, two days later, the Baltimore Sun published my letter intact in the column of "Letters from Readers", and my colleagues congratulated me one after another. I was also very proud. Encouraged by this incident, I often wrote letters in the next three years, and some articles were published in newspapers and magazines (most of the contributions fell into the sea). I also wrote letters to the school on behalf of China students to fight for the interests of China students. Sometimes there are unexpected surprises. /kloc-one day in 0/995, a friend called me and told me that there was my review article in the Baltimore Sun published today! I rushed to the street and bought five newspapers. Sure enough, on the penultimate page of version A, an article I sent to the newspaper more than a week ago that I thought would not be published attacked Wu Hongda was published in 15x 15cm.
The above is a brief introduction of my personal English writing improvement process. However, unlike letters from readers, scientific research papers have their own professional characteristics and even a fixed format. 1994, it's the first time to write a scientific research paper completely, and I feel very bad. I don't even want to read my last article. After a reluctant revision, it was handed over to the boss Jeremy Berg. He hasn't read my article for three weeks, and I can't help it. At 9 o'clock in the morning, Jeremy told me: Look at today! 1 1 o'clock, I went to his office to urge him, but the secretary stopped me and said that Jeremy was dealing with important business, so don't disturb him before two o'clock. I'm worried about what Jeremy is doing. At half past one in the afternoon, Jeremy came to me in a hurry and took a stack of paper. "This is a draft. Please let me know what you think. We can aim at a scientific report. " This is the first draft, please see, we can try science. ) I looked at it carefully. Oh, my God! 7 pages, more than 4 hours, Jeremy wrote the whole article, but he lacked methods and reference materials. To my dismay, he didn't use my first draft at all.
In fact, writing an article in one go is expensive. I also imitated Jeremy's style. From June 5438 to October 2006 10, two topics were in danger of being reported exclusively in the fierce competition where we were at a disadvantage. I used to catch an article twice and overnight. 10 On June 55438+05, I started writing around 8 pm and stayed up late. The next morning 10 completed a paper in the format of Cell magazine, including abstract, introduction, results and discussion. After reading it carefully, I finished the online submission at 4: 30 in the afternoon. This article was finally published in the journal Structure and Molecular Biology of Nature in June and February of 5438 (the electronic version was published in June of 5438 +065438+ 10/0). Another article, 65438+ 10/8, started writing at 6 pm and stayed up all night. Completed at 8 am the next day and submitted at 9: 30 am. Finally, it was published on Cell in 65438+February 15. Of course, there is an important premise for finishing an article overnight, that is, you are very familiar with the research field, you have carefully thought about the overall idea of the article, and all the drawings have been made in advance. Even if you devote yourself to these preliminary work, it will take 3-4 days.
From the difficulty of writing my first scientific research paper in 1994 to the ease of writing it now, I have summarized the following experiences:
1. If you want to write a good research paper, you must first get into the habit of reading English articles and strive for 30-60 minutes a day. At first, you can choose to read English newspapers and news, and gradually turn to professional magazines. I will write a blog post in the near future to introduce a set of effective methods to enhance the reading ability of professional magazines.
2. The most important thing in writing scientific research papers is logic. The formation of logic comes from the overall analysis of experimental data. You must first discuss a clear set of ideas, then make pictures according to them, and finally you can write.
3. When writing the details, first write a framework based on the idea (that is, the picture), and then start writing the details. The first draft should not pursue the perfection of every sentence, let alone the floweriness of words, but mainly focus on the logical flow, the logical relationship between the preceding and following sentences and the logical relationship between adjacent paragraphs. When writing, go all out, try not to be disturbed by external things as much as possible (turn off the mobile phone and landline), and strive to produce the first draft in the shortest time. Also note: don't be too long in a sentence.
4. Learn to paint. No one is born to write excellent scientific research papers, they are all learned from others. When studying other people's articles, we should pay attention to the differences in professional fields. Some fields (including my structural biology) have their own writing rules. Some words in scientific research articles are formulaic, such as "In order to investigate the mechanism of ...", the results support the former, but not the latter, assuming ... ","I am eager for the recent progress, how to cherish it ... "and so on. After using it twice, I gradually learned to use it flexibly. When learning from others, don't copy. In some institutions in the United States, seven consecutive English words are exactly the same as others', which is considered plagiarism in principle.
After writing the first draft, give yourself no more than one day's rest and start to revise the second draft. The revision is still based on logic, but every sentence should be scrutinized, and the key sentences in the abstract and text should be carefully selected. Learn to use "thesaurus" (synonym substitution) to avoid too much repetition. The revision of the second draft is extremely critical, and there will be no major changes in the future.
6. The changes after the second draft mainly focus on specific words and will not change the overall logic. Before submitting a manuscript, you must read it as a whole, and make slight changes to individual words. Remember: academic journals generally don't reject an article because of specific grammatical errors, but they will definitely reject an article because of logical confusion.
This method is effective, and I will teach all students and postdoctoral students like this. My first postdoctoral fellow was Chai, who joined my laboratory at Princeton University from 65438 to 0999. At that time, Ji Jie's English reading and writing ability was very poor. My first advice to him was, "spend half an hour reading English newspapers every day." What is commendable is that he persisted! After several years' efforts, Ji Jie finally wrote a good funding proposal in 2004. In 2006, his first independent scientific research paper was published in Molecular Cell, followed by two papers in Nature and more than ten papers in other first-class academic journals. Writing ability began to mature.
Publishing a paper is a pleasure, but it should be understood that the paper is only a carrier to announce your scientific research findings to colleagues and an important tool for communication in the scientific field. Therefore, when writing scientific research papers, we must keep in mind: express the most understandable meaning in the simplest words, but be logical! In fact, both Chinese and English papers are like this!
Experience sticker 2:
Common English writing mistakes: