SBEditing Secrets

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You’ve done all the hard work. You designed your study, recruited the participants, collected the data, analyzed the data, and obtained results. Now it’s time to transform your study into a manuscript for publication. When writing for publication one cannot be overly specific when presenting data. When editing research I use the KISS (keep it simple and specific) formula, which I strongly recommend all of my clients adopt.

While editing manuscripts for publication I often leave comments for researchers when their writing is lacking the necessary specificity, as not being privy to their data I cannot make the corrections myself. Below I will provide you some examples taken from papers I have recently edited.

Example 1.

From the results section. LGA infants have an increased risk of birth trauma, hypoglycemia, and hypocalcemia during the early period, and metabolic syndrome during the late period. ?This sentence is grammatically correct, but is not scientifically specific. The researcher must define what constitutes both the early and late periods. The corrected version should look like this: LGA infants have an increased risk of birth trauma, hypoglycemia, and hypocalcemia during the early postnatal period (d 2-7), and metabolic syndrome during the late postnatal period (d 8-42).

Example 2.?

???????????From the discussion section. Fadanelli et al. (20) emphasized that most patients with linear scleroderma treated with MTX achieved complete and long-term remission. This sentence is grammatically correct, but is lacking scientific specificity, as most refers to the majority (which can be anywhere between roughly 51% and 99%, as 100% would be all patients), and long-term needs to be defined, as not all researchers agree on what constitutes long-term remission. The corrected sentence should look like this: Fadanelli et al. (20) emphasized that 78% of patients with linear scleroderma treated with MTX achieved complete and long-term (2-10 years) remission.

Example 3.

???????????From the materials and methods section. Staining was performed using standard techniques according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Here is another grammatically correct sentence that is devoid of the required specificity needed for publication.?We all know that among the purposes of publishing research is facilitation of other researchers to use the techniques you describe to conduct their own study and compare results. Not being specific about what staining techniques were used firstly limits the readers’ ability to fully understand your results and, secondly, limits the ability of other researchers to conduct their own comparative study. The corrected version of the sentence should look something like this: Samples were stained using H&E (Carl Roth, GmbH) and Pico-Sirius Red (DIANOVA, GmbH), according to the manufacturers’ instructions.

After all the hard work required to successfully complete a scientific study, researchers should not be shy concerning the presentation of their data. Using the KISS formula can help guide the manuscript writing process by reminding you to keep your sentences simple, but specific—very specific. In a later installment of SBEditing Secrets I will explore the keep it simple part of the KISS formula.