Building scientific writing skills is a crucial skill that must be developed by those engaged in scientific research. Scientific publications give its authors a self-interest and motivation to stay in that field. Scientific publications are also needed for the professional advancement of researchers. Scientific writing is different from the usual writing style.
It allows researchers to connect with other researchers globally through their ideas and scientific findings. Scientific write-ups help researchers to learn new things and to evaluate their work by comparing with other research groups. Scientific writing, therefore, must be clear, direct, and concise.
Obstacles
Several obstacles encountered in scientific writing have been identified.
That is, the difficulty of presenting research points within a framework, the inability to interpret data clearly, the inability to explain why the study is important, the inability to conveyed why the research is used, the clarity in the use of the English language, and weaknesses in brevity and lack of experience reading scientific articles.
Of these, the experience of reading scientific articles is most helpful in developing scientific writing.
I hope to present this article to new researchers, new students and those who are interested in advancing in this field with the support to build scientific writing skills through the experience I have gained through the use of scientific articles and books.
In my opinion, you don’t have to be a good writer to write a good scientific publication or scientific dissertation. You have to be a careful writer with the ability to think.
You can become a good science writer by carefully writing the subject matter / data and theories correctly and writing them in the right place.
Most scientific publications published in scientific journals today follow a simple pattern.
That pattern is called IMRaD, where I represents the method, M represents the method, R represents the results, and D represents the discussion. Before introducing scientific publications, the title, abstract, and keywords should be included.
Key points
The present article describes some important points to be followed when drafting the title of a Life Science-based research paper. The title of a research paper should be such that it is of interest to those who refer to it.
The title is like the trailer of a movie that should be able to attract the peer-reviewers during the peer-review process and after publication, which will be helpful to draw readers and increase the number of citations.
A good title tells readers what paper is all about. The content of a good title paper consists of a few words that can be adequately described, which accurately and precisely present the problem being researched in the paper.
It should not be too general or too detailed or not include unnecessary details. Although very long titles give detailed information about study or research content, they reduce the interest and fascination of those who refer to it at first sight.
Therefore, authors are advised to keep their titles shorter without specifying completeness, accuracy and clarity. High impact journals advise to keep the titles shorter than 100 words.
I have come across some cases where journals have withdrawn already published papers due to inappropriate or misleading titles. I have also seen some authors add funny or harmonious titles to gain readers interest.
A well-written concise article title will help other researchers to find the research paper through search engines.
It may be a good idea to write the title of the article following completion of the main body and the abstract of the article. Interestingly, it is also important to emphasize what we usually do not use in titles. Symbols such as %, &, *, # and @ are not usually used in titles.
In addition, underlined and ALL CAPS are rarely seen in the titles of the articles published in reputed journals.
It has been advised to avoid hyphenated titles. On the contrary, publications having titles with colons (two components separated) are well-cited. Standard abbreviations such as DNA, RNA, FDA, HIV, AIDS, EEG and EGC and chemical formulae (eg. e.g. N2O5) are allowed in titles.
Titles
Titles of articles can be descriptive, declarative or interrogative. Another type called compound type article titles are also found in Life science articles. Declarative titles mention key findings or conclusions of the study in the title itself.
Descriptive titles are more commonly used and mention the subject of the article, seldom mention the purpose of the study but do not state the main conclusions. Interrogative titles present the research subject in the form of a question. Compound or hanging titles comprise a main title and a sub-title which are separated by a colon.
A stepwise process can be adopted to write a proper title. What authors should follow in the first step is to summarize the article in 2-3 sentences, describing the main findings and subject of the paper. Then, authors need to make a clear, accurate and concise title by removing redundant and nonspecific words.
It is advisable to keep essential keywords and phrases in the titles and the keywords used in titles should be the same as that used in main research question and subject of the paper. Box.1 summarises useful tips for writing a good research article title in Life Science.
Tips for writing a successful abstract, introduction, results and methods for Life Science based research papers will be presented in upcoming articles.