I am no expert in writing papers. I have not written too many of them either (just 8 in total, of which 2-3 were my writing). But I have read quite a few papers to know what is considered ABSOLUTELY annoying to the reader. A lot of scientists, when reviewing papers only look at the scientific content and the data. They don't care much about the writing. I on the other hand, care a LOT about the writing. The text of the paper. May be its because I'm too dumb to make sense of the figures directly without having to read through the text, but I think the text in the paper is an integral part. As an author you end up spending a LOT of money to publish your text.. also think of the trees getting chopped up to make paper to accommodate the text!! So my 2 cents is that an author needs to, and in fact most authors do, spend a LOT of time and energy "writing" and effectively communicating their findings to the scientific audience in a coherent manner.
We recently reviewed a paper for our journal club meeting and a colleague picked a very recent Cell - Stem cell paper for all of us to discuss. Before I go any further, for all of you "non-geeky" readers, if any, I must tell you that Cell - Stem Cell is a journal with one of the HIGHEST impact factors among life science related journals. It doesn't get any better or bigger than a Cell paper and getting it published there is extremely difficult. But this recent paper that I'm referring to was a piece of crap in terms of the writing. The first figure legend (for the non-geeks: it's the text at the bottom of the figure to tell the readers what the figure actually means, as in all the stuff about the type of cell used, the amount of drug/chemical/reagent added, the time, what the graph/picture shows and all that jazz goes in the figure legend) had 2 words in it. I'm not kidding. Figure legend 1A had 2 words "Colony size", with no explanation what so ever about what the colonies are, where they came from.. nothing!! I'm of the opinion that a figure legend needs to be so good that the reader needs to get most of the information about the experiment without having to read through the "Methods" section, or actually having to search through the entire paper for the explanation. But I did search through the paper since this was just figure 1 and I HAD to read through it entirely. And when I did search, I couldn't find it there. Later I figured that the explanation for figure 1A was after figure 3. Turns out that there were 3 authors who had apparently contributed equally to the paper, and my guess is they just sat and pasted each of their texts together and did not have anyone read through it. I have no idea what the PI (principal investigator) or other people in the lab did when they read the paper.. turns out the prof is quite big in the field which is probably why it got into Cell Stem Cell.
Anyways, I'm okay with authors getting confused with their drafts and accidentally using an older draft/version of the text while focusing on the figures entirely.. accidents happen...but seriously what were the REVIEWERS of the paper doing?? Did they only look at the name of the authors and the figures and absolutely ignore the text??? Did they not even skim through the text, if not read it word by word??? Do most reviewers do that?? I'm seriously wondering how stringent the review process is, especially with journals like Cell Stem cell. Totally drives me mad!
Mebbe I'm being too dramatic about this.. but I just think that when you're writing or doing something that other people will judge you for/about, you might as well put your heart and soul into it and do a great job and stop getting on people's nerves by communicating effectively and doing it the right way. And when you're asked to judge somebody else's work as a reviewer, please realize that it's your responsibility and your job to point out and clear up that somebody's crap before it goes into press and gets read by nitwits like me. That's the bottom line of this seemingly endless rant...
We recently reviewed a paper for our journal club meeting and a colleague picked a very recent Cell - Stem cell paper for all of us to discuss. Before I go any further, for all of you "non-geeky" readers, if any, I must tell you that Cell - Stem Cell is a journal with one of the HIGHEST impact factors among life science related journals. It doesn't get any better or bigger than a Cell paper and getting it published there is extremely difficult. But this recent paper that I'm referring to was a piece of crap in terms of the writing. The first figure legend (for the non-geeks: it's the text at the bottom of the figure to tell the readers what the figure actually means, as in all the stuff about the type of cell used, the amount of drug/chemical/reagent added, the time, what the graph/picture shows and all that jazz goes in the figure legend) had 2 words in it. I'm not kidding. Figure legend 1A had 2 words "Colony size", with no explanation what so ever about what the colonies are, where they came from.. nothing!! I'm of the opinion that a figure legend needs to be so good that the reader needs to get most of the information about the experiment without having to read through the "Methods" section, or actually having to search through the entire paper for the explanation. But I did search through the paper since this was just figure 1 and I HAD to read through it entirely. And when I did search, I couldn't find it there. Later I figured that the explanation for figure 1A was after figure 3. Turns out that there were 3 authors who had apparently contributed equally to the paper, and my guess is they just sat and pasted each of their texts together and did not have anyone read through it. I have no idea what the PI (principal investigator) or other people in the lab did when they read the paper.. turns out the prof is quite big in the field which is probably why it got into Cell Stem Cell.
Anyways, I'm okay with authors getting confused with their drafts and accidentally using an older draft/version of the text while focusing on the figures entirely.. accidents happen...but seriously what were the REVIEWERS of the paper doing?? Did they only look at the name of the authors and the figures and absolutely ignore the text??? Did they not even skim through the text, if not read it word by word??? Do most reviewers do that?? I'm seriously wondering how stringent the review process is, especially with journals like Cell Stem cell. Totally drives me mad!
Mebbe I'm being too dramatic about this.. but I just think that when you're writing or doing something that other people will judge you for/about, you might as well put your heart and soul into it and do a great job and stop getting on people's nerves by communicating effectively and doing it the right way. And when you're asked to judge somebody else's work as a reviewer, please realize that it's your responsibility and your job to point out and clear up that somebody's crap before it goes into press and gets read by nitwits like me. That's the bottom line of this seemingly endless rant...
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