How to write a paper
How to write a scientific paper
There is an online group at Nature Network called 'Ask the Nature editor' for scientists who want to learn more from the journal editors about writing papers and other aspects of getting their work published in the Nature journals. We invite scientists to join the group (it is free) and to post questions in the forum. Another Nature Network group is the Good Paper Journal Club, in which examples of well-written papers are posted and discussed. The group also provides links to articles containing advice that members have found helpful in writing their own papers. We invite you to join this group (which is free).
Advice about how to write a Nature journal paper is provided in the Nature Physics Editorial Elements of style. Dr Leslie Sage, a senior Nature editor, has written an article 'Writing a clear and engaging paper' in Astronomy Communication, 290, 221 (Springer, 2003), which is freely available at Nautilus, for personal use only. Advice about how to write a summary paragraph (abstract) in Nature Letter format is available as a one-page downloadable information sheet.
A useful set of articles providing general advice about writing and submitting scientific papers can be found in SciDev.Net's Practical guides section. Inter-Biotec provides a free online writing course to help biomedical scientists whose first language is not English to write and publish their papers in English-language journals. The Human Frontier Science Program's report "Websites and searching for collaborations" also contains useful writing guidelines for non-native-English speakers, as well as other helpful advice related to scientific publishing. The classic book Elements of Style by William J. Strunk, Jr (Humphrey, New York, 1918) is now published by Bartleby.com (New York, 1999) and is freely available on the web in searchable format.
Researchers whose first language is not English often find it useful to either ask a colleague whose native language is English to review the manuscript before submission to a journal, or to use one of the many services that will, for a fee, edit papers to ensure the English is clear and well written. One such service is Nature Publishing Group Language Editing.
Before writing a paper, authors are advised to visit the author information pages of the journal to which they wish to submit (see this link for a full list of NPG publications). Each journal has slightly different format requirements depending on readership, space, style and so on. The journal's website will contain detailed information about format, length limits, figure preparation, and similar matters.
We also strongly recommend that authors read a few issues of the journal to which they wish to submit, to obtain a sense of the level, length and readership of the journal. Looking at the print issue, or at PDFs in the online edition, is particuarly useful for details such as presentation of figures or style of reference numbering.
Writing for a Nature journal
Many papers submitted for publication in a Nature journal contain unnecessary technical terminology, unmanageable descriptions of the work that has been done, and convoluted figure legends. Our journal subeditors and copyeditors edit the manuscript so that it is grammatically correct, logical, clear and concise, uses consistent search terms, and so that the terminology is consistent with that used in previous papers published in the journal. Of course, this process is assisted greatly if the authors have written the manuscript in a simple and accessible style, as the author is the best person to convey the message of the paper and to persuade readers that it is important enough to spend time on.
Nature journals are international, so in writing a paper, authors should consider those readers for whom English is a second language. The journals are read mainly by professional scientists, so authors can avoid unnecessary simplification or didactic definitions. However, many readers are outside the immediate discipline of the author, so clarity of expression is needed to achieve the goal of comprehensibility.
Nature journals like authors to write in the active voice ("we performed the experiment..." ) as experience has shown that readers find concepts and results to be conveyed more clearly if written directly. We have also found that use of several adjectives to qualify one noun in highly technical language can be confusing to readers. We encourage authors to "unpackage" concepts and to present their findings and conclusions in simply constructed sentences.
We ask authors to avoid jargon and acronyms where possible. When essential, they should be defined at first use; after first use, the author should use pronouns when possible rather than using the abbreviation or acronym at every occurrence. The acronym is second-nature to the author but is not to the reader, who may have to refer to the original definition throughout the paper when an acronym is used.
Titles need to be comprehensible and enticing to a potential reader quickly scanning a table of contents, while at the same time not being so general or vague as to obscure what the paper is about. We ask authors to be aware of abstracting and indexing services when devising a title for the paper: providing one or two essential keywords within a title will be beneficial for web-search results.
Within the text of papers, Nature journals use a numbering (Vancouver) system for references, not the Harvard method whereby the authors and year of publication are included in the text in parentheses. We adopt this numbering style because we believe the text flows more smoothly, and hence is quicker for the reader to absorb.
Our experience has shown that a paper's impact is maximized if it is as short as is consistent with providing a focused message. Authors can place all the technical information (figures, protocols, methods, tables, additional data) necessary to support their conclusion into Supplementary Information (SI), which is published online-only to accompany the published print/online paper. SI is peer-reviewed, and we believe that its use means that the impact of the conclusions of the study is enhanced by being presented in concise and focused form in the print/online journal, emphasizing the key conclusions of the research and yet providing the full supporting details required by others in the field in online-only form. We encourage authors to use SI in this way to enhance the impact of the print/online version, and hence to increase its readership. We also encourage authors who are describing methods and protocols to provide the full details for accompanying online publication so that it can be downloaded with the rest of the paper by others in the field.
We all face the challenge of how to make the best use of our time in an era of information overload. Judicious use of SI to ensure that the printed version of a paper is clear, comprehensible and as short as is consistent with this goal, is very likely to increase the paper's readership, impact and the number of times others cite it.
Nature Physics: the Editorial Elements of style explains the importance of clear and accessible writing. The advice contained within this Editorial applies to all the Nature journals.
Please let us know by email if you find this advice useful, and if you have suggestions or comments about our provision of writing advice to authors.
