Prelude: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Scientific Writing

This book is running in a long beta. Revisions are currently underway. Check back in January 2025 for updated content.

Think about the last time you started a research project. Why did you start? Maybe there were gaps in knowledge or problems in the field, or maybe you had some general questions or hypotheses that have not yet been addressed. As researchers, we often take steps to address these concerns. In the case of experimental research, we may try and try again to get noteworthy results, and once we get those results, what’s next? At that point, we want to communicate our research, often in the form of writing. But scientific writing is not easy.

There are thousands of researchers globally who struggle to communicate findings in high-impact journals. So, how does one become a successful research writer? Of course, there are many ways to become successful, but we will introduce you to a five-step scientific writing process to help you publish peer-reviewed journal articles to a discipline-specific audience. Throughout this process, you will learn how language shapes our knowledge and helps explicitly communicate research contributions with meaningful connections to one’s field.

Step 1: Discover. To advance your scientific writing, we must first establish foundational understanding about why you are writing up your research (your purpose) and to whom you are writing (your audience). Chapter 1 helps to build a deep understanding of the rhetorical situation before attempting to write effectively for a target audience. The rhetorical situation refers to the interplay between the purpose, audience, context, and genre of a text. When you grasp these components, you can tailor your writing to fit the conventions and expectations of the specific academic community you are addressing.

Step 2: Learn. Learning how to efficiently read research articles for not only content but also writing conventions will help you understand how published researchers communicate. In each chapter, you will be introduced to communicative goals, strategies, and language use features for each section of a traditional empirical journal article (i.e., Introductions, Methods, Results, Discussions, and Conclusions). While some disciplines vary in how journal articles are organized, the concepts introduced in this book apply to a wide range of disciplines because the process includes the skills of learning to read through a critical lens in order to be a better, disciplinary-specific writer.

Step 3: Analyze. The second step is to use your acquired reading skills for analyzing model articles in your field. This step will help you visualize variations in argument structure by noting language use patterns that are indicative of scientific writing. Reflecting on discipline-specific writing conventions is integral to this step so that you can begin internalizing the content as you transfer your skills to writing.

Step 4: Explore. Exploring additional language use patterns in your field will help you identify how language shapes meaning. These patterns represent universal language that scientists use to communicate to other scientists. These patterns can be used as a springboard for constructing patterns for use in your own writing, helping you meet the expectations of scientific readers in your field.

Step 5: Write. And then finally, after analyzing scientific writing conventions in your field, you will be ready to apply your skills to the writing of your own research. Writing, like any other acquired skill, takes time, but with this four-step process, you will learn to focus your time on the task so that you can overcome those challenging times. Those times when you don’t know what to write or even worse; how to write. In this step, you will practice your writing skills, obtain feedback from experts in your field, and work to improve your research argument and establish the value of your research.