6 Steps to a Remarkable Scientific Paper

"Remarkable" is a loaded word, full of promise of the exceptional and extraordinary. But, when it comes to a scientific paper as a product of scientific inquiry "remarkable" encapsulates something that's even more critical than "exceptional" or "extraordinary". To be valuable, every scientific paper should aspire to be remarkable as in "worth remarking on", and thus worth following up on, being discussed and debated, and, ultimately, used to instigate further scientific ideas and lines of research. But how do you achieve this ideal of a remarkable paper, especially when publishing a paper these days may seem like adding just another drop into the vast ocean of scientific literature (some numbers from the late 2014 estimate the number of published scholarly articles at about 2.5 million a year)?

Below, I share some steps you can take towards making your scientific paper a remarkable one. This is by no means a complete list, nor perhaps the most erudite one - but it is a pragmatic collection of strategies that will get you writing and sharing your scientific ideas and findings more effectively and prolifically.

? Do science which you are passionate and excited about

It might seem odd to begin a list of steps towards a remarkable scientific paper with urging you to pick a scientific problem that you passionately care about, the one that makes you jump for joy, and energized to tackle. However, without a scientific question that you find worth pursuing, it is unlikely that you will be able to convince others to fund you, publish or read your work. Plus: scientific pursuits are mired with challenges, obstacles and lots and lots of daily micro-failures - failed experiments, I'm talking about you!

So, unless your endeavors are fortified with some personal zest and genuine excitement, it will be like an uphill battle where the sides of the hill are vertical, featureless and frozen over. And, because science is not a one-person show, it’s best to surround yourself with collaborators, advisors and mentors with a shared mission and enthusiasm. Trust me, when a group of smart and motivated scientists coalesce around a challenging question, one of many baffling Nature’s mystery, the remarkable observations, and eventually papers do follow.

(For more on this topic I recommend this personal account by Steve Perrin, CEO and CSO at ALS Therapy Development Institute)

? Read broadly and exhaustively

One of the best ways to stay current with your research field, as well as to be well-informed about major research trends and the direction of science is to read, read, read and then read some more. Reading extensively is also critical for becoming a better writer yourself, and the better you write the more remarkable your papers will be. As you read, do pay attention to the style and structure of the paper in addition to science. Ask yourself whether the authors are communicating their ideas and motivations clearly, whether they are presenting their data effectively, and whether their arguments are well-structured. If you find the paper that you really like, do share it with your colleagues and see if they share your views and why or why not. And when you finally converge on a collection of highly regarded papers, both in terms of their science and style, feel free to emulate and implement the strategies of others into your own writing. (Please note: I am not saying copy-paste is OK. Plagiarism is a serious breach of scientific and publishing ethics and you should never claim the writing of others as yours. You will be caught and this will compromise your scientific credibility and credentials!)

Lastly, don’t forget to read things beyond science. Fiction, non-fiction, journalism, social media, blogs (like this post) are all sources of information and inspiration. Although you may not be able to use the literary structure of One Hundred Years of Solitude as a guiding principle of your next scientific paper – although I bet it would be fun! – what you could learn from that novel is the importance of a strong opening line(s). That’s a worthwhile technique to get familiar with and become comfortable implementing, both in the context of writing (papers or blog posts), as well as in the context of public speaking and scientific talks. 

Reading in English beyond science is especially important for non-native English speakers. I am not a native speaker – far from it. But what has helped me tremendously over the years is my love of books and my decision to read books and writers I love (Agatha Christie, J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Jane Austen...) in their un-unbridged, original forms. Try this even if you live in a non-English speaking country. I began doing this as a high school student in Serbia, Yugoslavia, and it helped build confidence in my mastery of a foreign language as well as improved my sense of how written English ebbs and flows. And just in case you are wondering: yes, fast forward quarter of a century I am still learning and making mistakes, and that’s OK (more on The Perfection Trap below!).

? Make "writing" an integral part of "doing" science

One of the biggest mistake researchers, especially junior researchers, make is to view writing as something external to their research efforts, as something that comes at the end when all the science is completed, as a painful chore and necessary evil. If you feel that way, you have to step back, take a look at your approach to scientific writing, and give it a major overhaul. Unless you address this now, you will be one miserable scientist given that writing is such a critical component of your scientific skillset. You don't need to take my word for it, just take a look at the arguments Professor George M. Whitesides (Harvard University) makes for the importance of scientific writing and publishing.

One of the best ways to make writing painless it to do it every day, as you go. I recommend keeping an electronic notebook or diary, to capture things like background information on a specific research project, big picture ideas and questions, strategies for experimental design, actual experimental detail and results, as well as interpretation of the observations, and follow up questions. For this sort of thing to work well, you should be organized, date and label everything, and be able to retrieve bits and pieces of your writing, and your thinking, at any given time. It may also help to sit down with all your collaborators and storyboard your project, and if you are not familiar with storyboarding as a research strategy this article will help you get started.

There is one thing you should not worry about as you write and that's perfection. My advice is to write as you go, write often, write a lot or a bit, but do write as things are happening in order to capture your observations and information accurately and completely, and in a form that can be shared. Sharing and getting feedback is critical, and that's why perfection, especially at the beginning does not matter. As you write, share, receive feedback, then revise, and repeat, your writing will improve, and, more importantly, your scientific ideas, data and interpretations will be subject to scrutiny and refinement. This, for the lack of better term, "informal" peer review is something you should definitely make part of the way you do science. And if you would like to get broader feedback, you should consider placing your draft on a preprint server. At the moment, preprint servers tend to be domain specific, with arXiv, bioRxiv and ChemRxiv serving physics, biology and chemistry communities respectively. They allow authors to make their papers public prior to formal journal submission, peer review and publication and gather feedback from broader range of colleagues and peers. Most journals now allow this practice, but you should double-check to make sure before posting.

? Be ethical and conscientious

Perhaps there is no need to say the obvious, but a remarkable scientific paper is not possible without ethical research conduct and ethical publishing practices. In my view, unless research is conducted with integrity it is absolutely worthless. And the integrity must permeate every step of the research and publishing process, and includes absolutely everybody in the scientific ecosystem - trainees, principal investigators, editors, funders, publishers, journalists, policy makers, both people in public sector and people in the private sector. In my view, too much is at stake, and restoring the currently eroding public trust in experts can only be accomplished if each one of us takes research integrity and ethical conduct to heart.

If you need suggestions on how to foster integrity in research in your daily practice and work environment, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have recently published an excellent resource.

? Remember to be helpful

Scientific papers are technical and can be overwhelming, especially in this day and age when the amount of data in each paper is growing exponentially. This means that even people in your field may need help understanding your scientific story, so it is best that you limit each paper you write to a single - big, bold and beautiful - idea, or more accurately a single major outcome of research efforts. For some of you this may be a dataset, a piece of software, a mechanistic insight, a new material, or a new theory. The exact nature of your outcome does not matter, but being focused on describing your work around a single major outcome will help you help others understand and appreciate your work better. This makes writing the paper easier, because it should serve to introduce, develop, explain, and substantiate the idea you are putting forward, and if there are any parts that are not serving that purpose they can and should be removed.

The best ideas are those presented critically, with full acknowledgement of the current state of the field and the existing literature, and full discussion of competing models, alternative explanations, honest disclosure of limitations, as well as fully spelled out the implications. For me, the most helpful papers are those that make the status quo very clear, that state the motivation for the current work well, highlight the question they seek to answer, and take logically organized steps through well designed experiments and well presented data to a conclusion that is ultimately placed in a broader perspective. In many ways, the most remarkable papers are those that almost feel like a chapter in a great thriller - they leave you feeling excited to see what happens next!

You can help your readers and fellow scientists and science enthusiasts tremendously by avoiding jargon and pompous words, referencing the existing literature well, clearly organizing and labeling your figures, and making your data available. This last point is also very important if you hope that your paper will spark interest and follow up studies, and the likelihood of that is higher if you make your data, regents or resources you developed available to others. Some fields are better organized when it comes to data sharing (like structural biology where all the solved structures get deposited into the Protein Data Bank), and some non-profits, like Addgene, make sharing plasmids, a keep type of biological reagents, a breeze. Many journals are also making this a requirement, so you may want to start thinking about data, reagent and/or resource sharing early on in your research.

? Don't forget to promote your paper

Another way in which you can help others as well as yourself is to keep in mind that although it may seem like you are off the hook, your work does not end once the paper is published. Actually, the publication of your paper is an opportunity to start talking about it, very loudly. Many scientists are effective users of social media, and leverage that competency to share their newly published papers with the community not only to showcase their accomplishments but to continue to gather feedback and build interest in their work; some of the social media interactions have even led to new collaborations. Plus: this is a great opportunity to show excitement, to yell from the rooftops, and to post lots of smiling selfies!

Additionally, taking your newly published paper and transforming it into a social media and/or blog post allows you to tell your scientific story differently, to explain smaller points that you did not get a chance to go into because of, say, strict word limits, or to provide general public facing summary of your work and why it matters. Recently, I came across an excellent example where an author, Rivka Isaacson (King's College London) shared a detailed "behind the scenes" look at trials and tribulations that accompanied their newest publication. I think that having these open accounts of what it took to get to a certain scientific result is healthy, informative and instructive, and in my view something we should be doing more often to demystify the scientific process and approaches and make them real not only to the general public but to our trainees and ourselves.

The topic of how to put together an exceptional, first-class, remarkable scientific paper is both timely and timeless. As it happens, as I was putting together this post Nature published a Career Feature that included advice from six experts from a range of scientific disciplines. The advice offered revolved around the importance of being clear, concise, precise, and logical, which are maxims worth embracing, as I covered here as well. No matter which steps you decide to take, the main things to remember is to approach science with high level of personal integrity, to make writing and reading something you do every day, and to follow where your interests and excitement take you. Good luck!