how to write a paper (one possible answer)
Originally appeared on nature NYC blog: http://blogs.nature.com/nyc/2011/08/10/how-to-write-a-paper-one-possible-answer
10 Aug 2011 | 19:11 EDT | Posted by chris wiggins | Category: Uncategorized
how to write a paper
a student recently asked me how to write a paper. here’s an algorithm i’d suggest, with plenty of room for an individual to deviate.
- punchline(s)
- nickname
- *figures
- *references
- outline
- abstract
- (w) intro and outtro
- (w) middle
- show definite coauthors
- show possible coauthors
- acknowledgements
- title
- code
- submit and post
readers, reviewers, and you in 5 years are going to want to have some pithy way of remembering that paper. what is the “main result”? what did you learn? if answering this takes a long time, maybe you don’t understand the subject well yet, or maybe it’s really 2 papers.
most of the projects i work on have a nickname for the project. sometimes it’s just the name of the cvs/svn/github repository. it helps you and your collaborators define a bite-size quantum of research.
decide what figures are necessary to illustrate the punchline. decide which are going in the mansucript and which in supplementary material. the * indicates that this is how people read the paper — they’ll skim the figures and references first
decide who you should cite to support the argument and set the background/context. see above for *. someone i know once said to me that the first thing she or he reads in a paper is the references to see if she or he is cited. i’m still not sure if she or he was serious.
next write an outline. seriously you need to do this. don’t just sit down and start writing stuff.
now you are allowed to write the abstract
now write the beginning of the paper. the (w) indicates that htis is the part of the alogirhtm most people think of when they think of “writing a paper”
now write the conclusions, what you showed, what you’d like to do in subsequent papers, where to find the source code.
now write the rest
if you haven’t already, make sure you show to people who are going to be coauthors
if you haven’t already, show it to people who may or may not want to be coauthors. be generous
think about everyone who helped you and funded you. be generous. also people from the above section who elected not to be coauthors should be acknowledged
if your work is computational (including modeling and statistical work), upload all code + data to a neutral, 3rd party site (e.g., code.google.com, github.com, sourceforge.net ). For more on this see this blog post or this talk or this roundtable.
I’m not sure which is supposed to come first, but it seems reasonable to me that one submit to the journal and, as soon as possible thereafter, post to arxiv.org, with a note saying “submitted for publication” in the comment field.
edit: added two reproducibility steps; these two are really more about how to submit than how to write, but good for the species, so i added