I want to share some “exercises” and general suggestions on the writing of a scientific paper.

These exercise are just hints for your personal reflection and consolidation of some concepts. They are optional and not graded.

Please note that you can can perform these exercises on a notebook or a pepar. If not specified otherwise, you don't need to post your answers in the course forum.

Exercise 1: “the summary of summaries”

Write the summary of your paper in one page. Then, write the summary of the summary, in half a page. Then write the summary of the summary of the summary, in 30 words.

You can do the other way around: start with the 30 words summary and then expand it.

Exercise 2: “the spiral method for writing”

At my lab this is how we nick-named this method for writing a scientific paper. We first decide on the key messages the paper needs to entail. Then on the paper structure. Then on the main things to say in each paragraph and on where the key messages will be.

Then we make the first round of “real” writing, expanding the topics. Then a second and sometime a third round of writing. By the second/third, the first version of the paper is ready. If anyone is available, we then have an “external” review for final adjustments/polishing.

We can thus say that “the paper grows in the telling” (from the introduction to the Lord of the Rings by J.J.R. Tolkien: “The tale grew in the telling”).

EXERCISE 3: “A FRESH, NEW START!”

Take someone else’s paper and try re-writing the introduction in different possible ways: highlighting an issue the paper solves, an opportunity, a gap… or making up a “situation” that exemplifies the scenario of use (of whatever the paper is about).

I have my students do a similar exercise: I give them a paper without the abstract and I have them write it. Then I compare all their abstracts among themselves and with the real abstract, highlighting the quite different strategies being put into place.

Exercise 4: “good and sound plagiarism”

Like I said in previous weeks: please be assured that I know plagiarism is not ok. This is to suggest an “imitation exercise” of the kind Cicero would have loved. Please mind that this exercise is not easy.

Take a paper you like and mimic the incipit in writing the introduction of a paper of yours. You have to elicit the implicit schema of the paper you mean to copy and then apply that schema to your needs.