[...]... publishing your work Box 1.1 Reasons to publish your research results It is unethical to conduct a study and not report the findings You have some results that are worth reporting You want to progress scientific thought or improve health outcomes You want to give credibility to your research team You want your work to reach a broad audience Your track record will improve You will add credibility to your... conference This will have helped you to refine your ideas about how to interpret your data You may also have a feel for the topics that need to be addressed in the discussion With all this behind you and with good 6 Scientific writing writing skills, putting the paper together should be a piece of cake Achieving creativity You should allow yourself to get into a writing mood Finish the background reading,... or where you write, as long as you choose your best opportunities and organise yourself accordingly Whatever your creativity pattern, it is important to visit your writing as often as possible, every day if you can Writing new text may take a significant amount of work but reading and reviewing written text to polish it up can often fit into short time blocks and can be done anywhere When you have... have spare moments to edit your writing, you need to inspect your sentences and your paragraphs for needless words, silly flaws, and clumsy transitions Writing is a process of constant repair but if you are passionate about your research this will not be arduous It will be exciting to see your paper taking shape, becoming simple and clear, and acquiring impact Refining your writing so that it takes on... paper is easy if you begin with a plan in mind By using a template to put your paper together and by assembling your thoughts in a logical order, the task becomes much less daunting than you might imagine You also need to follow some simple rules when planning and writing your paragraphs and then your sentences It is important that papers are not allowed to meander and grow in an unplanned way If you were... party, you would work to a plan, so why not do this with something that is as fundamental to your research career as a scientific publication? This chapter will explain how writing using a logical framework helps you to structure your paper correctly, which then helps to prevent your readers and reviewers from getting lost Once your paper has a logical structure, Chapters 8–11 will help you to improve your... improve your writing style Throughout the writing process, you must focus on the potential audience for whom you are writing your paper The editor and external peer reviewers of a journal are the only people whom you have to impress in order to get your work into print, so write explicitly for them Odds on, if these people think that your work is worth publishing, then the scientific audience that you hope... management Before your fingers even think about approaching the keyboard or picking up a pen, you should have conferred with your authorship team about the specific questions that you will answer in your paper In an ideal world, you would also have decided to which journal you are going to submit your work and you will have obtained their “Instructions to authors” Then you can begin First, you will need... the other hand, if you don’t have an important question, good data with which to answer it, and a clear message for your audience, you should think twice about starting to write the paper You should try to reach a consensus with your coauthors about preferred journals when you are first ready to start writing your paper This will help you to decide on the style and the format in which you will write and,... with scientific papers As you write you may think new – and sometimes exciting – thoughts Certainly you will be forced to clarify your thoughts If you can’t write it clearly then you probably haven’t thought it clearly As you wrestle with the words new insights should occur What you didn’t understand you will have to understand I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I never quite know what I think until .