hi I'm Professor Carr University of
Minnesota Department of Chemistry I'd
like to talk to you this afternoon about
how to how to go about writing a
research paper over the years I and my
group have produced about 400 papers and
in working with new graduate students
I've learned that there's a lot of fear
and trepidation and at the same time
excitement about writing a research
paper especially the first one and I
want to see if I can make it an
enjoyable and productive experience for
you I believe that doesn't take that
much time to produce a first draft and
that's what I'm going to focus on this
afternoon is is how to produce a first
draft which is really important I think
one of the the biggest problems in
writing a research paper certainly the
first one is is suppressing the urge to
procrastinate and put off beginning the
work and that's that's part of my
strategy and the way I approach writing
research papers so before you get ready
to write the paper there are some
important preliminaries number one you
should review your own notes that you've
taken on papers that you've read that
are relevant to the work that you're
writing up and you should renew your
literature search this is very important
to have this done before you start
writing your paper the second
preliminary issue is very important and
it goes back to high school and that is
you need to determine who your audience
is I'm sure sure you were taught this
way back when and this is important in
in writing up a research paper you need
to know what the purpose of the paper is
is it a research paper is it a review
paper is it a tutorial paper what
journal is it intended for are the
primary readers of the paper going to be
undergraduates or researchers
but as always with any paper the real
primary reader is the reviewer these are
the gatekeepers and it is very important
that you address their concerns and the
more you can get get them addressed in
the first draft the better off you are
in and in finally getting the paper
published so preliminaries don't count
for the weekend that you're going to
write your paper you've got to have your
preliminaries done
okay now before getting into the details
I want you to understand what I consider
to be the big picture first of all
create producing your initial draft is
the creative part of the job and what I
want you to do what I think you need to
do is resist the temptation to correct
mistakes as you produce this first draft
your job now is to produce a complete
first draft not a perfect first draft
editing is the second stage of the work
it is the critical thinking analytical
part of the job and editing at this
point before you've completed your first
draft is a waste of time fixing a
sentence and making it perfect if it
never appears in the paper because it
turns out to be irrelevant is a waste of
time okay so over the years I've
developed an algorithm and I've talked a
number of my colleagues and many of them
use the same algorithm and it runs
roughly as follows number one just get
started don't procrastinate get
something down on paper number two you
need to work from an outline the reason
an outline is important is you may not
finish the paper in one sitting you
probably won't finish the paper in one
sitting and if you've got an outline you
can pick the work up
back where you you finished before
you're not going to have to read it over
you're going to know where to begin
the third part of this is that the
outline is easy to do so it's it's
actually fun to write an outline before
you you have a paper to write in your
head you've got your data you've got
your your tables of data you've got your
figures take those and put them in order
arrange them in some logical sequence
much like you might arrange them for a
talk and that list of paper of that list
of figures and and tables in order is
really the outline for the paper now the
next point is the following do not write
the introduction to the paper at this
time the introduction is the hardest
part of a paper to write so don't start
there because you're gonna you're the
urge to procrastinate is going to kick
in again the easiest part of a paper to
write is the experimental it's the part
of the paper that you're most familiar
with you've done the experiments you
know how they were done so write the
experimental and you will be moving
forward it's an easy part to write the
next part of the paper that I would
focus on would be the results in
discussion following the outline that
you're created from your list of figures
and your list of tables and the this
this is a little bit more difficult to
write than the experimental but you're
really you're really getting started now
okay so so basically you've got a draft
consisting of the experimental and the
results and discussion once that's done
the really hard part of writing kicks in
and that's doing the hard critical
editing but you've got a first draft and
that's the important thing
now the critical part is when you
convert that into clear concise and
coherent English and make sure that the
science that you've written is correct
the final part of the algorithm is is
the the the clean up right the
conclusions personally I like
conclusions or summaries that that is a
numbered format conclusion one
conclusion to conclusion three where
these these are quite clearly separated
from one another and it's it's easy to
see the contributions of the work now we
have to do the introduction and there
are two very important things that need
to be covered in the introduction number
one why was the study done what is its
purpose
number two you've got to collect the
relevant essential background
information and put that together in the
introduction you need to be able to give
the readers a sufficient background to
understand what you did so the the very
last step in following this out this
this algorithm is producing the
references for the paper actually I
think it's a good idea for you to write
some notes as you as you go through the
the first draft and manuscript
indicating what references might be
needed what they would be about but not
to stop and collect the references at
that time because it's it's just going
to interrupt the entire flow of the work
but when the manuscript is just about
finished you need to get the exact
references so that the the reviewers and
the readers can really find the
information without trouble it's
extremely annoying to reviewers and
readers when these are not done properly
so so basically you've got the job
now and I want to want to leave you with
a few final words there's there's an old
saying attributed to Sir Francis Bacon
reading maketh the Fullman conference a
ready man and writing an exact man and
each each of those things that we do in
doing science we we talk to our other
our fellow scientists we go to
conferences a lot of reading but in
producing a paper for publication that's
when we want to focus on on our critical
skills when we want to make sure that
our scientific arguments are are correct
and logical so writing is the most
exacting part of what we do as a
scientist some final points always
review the manuscript requirements for
the journal of interest there's no point
being a paper that doesn't follow the
manuscript requirements it will probably
be returned unreviewed with a semi nasty
note from the editor and and really
finally I want to leave you with a few
references on writing there are some
classic books here there are some books
very relevant to writing a paper on
chemistry and I want to point out a
wonderful short paper by Professor Royce
Murray the former editor of the journal
analytical chemistry skillful writing of
an awful research paper seven rules to
follow this this little little paper is
a gem it it will it in mock style tells
you the worst things you can do in
writing a manuscript I hope that you'll
find this this helpful and it was a
pleasure being here some reviewers get
bent out of shape and especially if it's
one of their papers
you