Writing a scientific manuscript is an important part of a student’s training (undergraduate or graduate), and almost all advisors and mentors have nuggets of advice to share with their mentees. Writing the draft of your first manuscript and showing it to your advisor can be stressful. Students imagine the writing, figures, and more will be critiqued. From the advisor’s viewpoint, however, the science, storyline, and presentation style take priority. Here are some tips and tricks that I hope would help the first-time writer in this daunting task.

1. Once upon a time...lived happily ever after. Writing a research paper is not that different from general storytelling, except that your readers are a specialized group of people who are excited to read your paper and appreciate the science. When you first started reading research papers it probably felt like deciphering ancient hieroglyphic symbols; however, at this point, you know the lingo and jargon that are commonly understood in your research area. A research paper follows an hourglass shape of writing. The opening sentences in the introduction are broadest in appeal, and by the end of the introduction one or two questions are proposed, whose answers form the “meat” of your paper. The conclusion section touches upon the results (the narrow part of the hourglass) and gradually broadens to the wider implications. Think about what makes your research exciting and why your readers should be equally excited about it! If the paper is about the outcome, focus more on the novel results and discuss the implications. If it is about the process of obtaining the outcome, focus on the logic and flow of using particular techniques and the results obtained.

2. “Writing comes only after experiments” Many students assume that researchers will complete experiments first and then start to write. Although this approach is appropriate for your first paper (e.g., advisor looks at the data and mentions that we are ready to publish), most often writing and performing experiments happen simultaneously. Once you have your hypothesis tested and you have publishable preliminary data, you would want to compile the data in a presentable format. During that process, you will likely find that additional experiments or data are required to fill the gaps. You should put together an outline of the manuscript that pinpoints what data need to be presented in the main text and what data need to be pushed to supplementary material. At this point, you will have multiple (and possibly frequent) discussions with your advisor, who can shed light on how they approach writing papers, and give guidance on developing the story of your manuscript.

3. Figures! Figures! Figures! First and foremost a peer-reviewer looks at the figures. The saying “a picture is worth 1,000 words” is aptly applied to a manuscript. The information, arrangement, color scheme, number of panels, are some of the issues to consider. Most readers get fatigued if there are more then three to four panels in a figure. As some journals limit the number of figures, think carefully about what goes in Figure 1A and what goes in Figure 2B. Well-written and structured papers have logic and flow to the figures and most importantly, the order of figures should mirror the text in the results and discussion sections. For some manuscripts, the introduction section requires a schematic figure to explain or give background to the reader; therefore it is common that Figure 1 is a diagram or flowchart that gels with the introduction. Many journals require authors to submit a graphical abstract, which is akin to a pictorial elevator pitch for the paper.

4. To table or not to table. After figures, tables are another essential part of the manuscript. If the table fills more than one page, consider if it would be better to push it to supplementary material. Again, this depends on the research area. It is not uncommon to see multi-page tables if they are essential to the paper. In general, most manuscript drafts start with four figures and four tables, and then polishing happens.

5. Citations. While you’re writing, it is a good idea to insert placeholders in the text where you will add a citation later. This makes it easier to plug them in rather than having to search at the last minute. There are multiple bibliographic tools that help with inserting citations, and this is the last step to be done before submitting to your advisor. Most often, advisors don’t expect you to have all the citations inserted and the reference section filled up. It is standard practice to insert and format citations just before submitting to the journal.

6. Expecting an A+. Apart from a handful of PIs bragging about their student’s writing, most PIs do not expect your first draft to be perfect. So, don’t sweat it! Just get it off your desk! Do keep in mind, however, that most PIs are put off when there are glaring spelling and grammatical mistakes in the manuscript when you submit it for critique. Critiquing the science becomes difficult if there are issues with language and word usage and presentation style. Show the draft to someone else (postdoc or another mentor) before it ends up in your advisor’s inbox. Your best critic is your colleague, so don’t hesitate to ask your batchmate or science friend to critique your paper. There could be a glaring gap or a logical jump that you overlooked.

7. Practice makes perfect. The experienced writer knows that writing is an unfinished task even after it gets the green signal. When all issues are ironed out, gaps filled, proper claims made, and the writing is clear, the paper is ready for submission to peer-review.

8. For non-native English speakers. The best piece of advice I got was first to write a paragraph in my native language, as if I am explaining the research to my friend or family member, then translate it into English, and correct the grammar. Poof!!! You have an original piece of writing and it will be a beauty to behold.

9. Nothing personal! Critiquing a manuscript is part and parcel of scientific writing. Do understand that the comments and critiques are not targeted to you at a personal level, they are intended to make the manuscript better. Your advisor and you are on the same team. Every reviewer hopes to read a well-polished manuscript and that manuscript could be yours!

Exercises for writing scientific papers

Writing a research paper is hard, but it can be mastered with lots of practice. Do the following, and you will see your scientific writing skills improve.

• Have a list of writing prompts to keep you writing frequently.
• Write about 100–200 words everyday religiously without worrying about the grammar and spelling. The only rule is that the cursor should keep moving towards the right.
• If you read a published paper and it looks perfect to you, emulate the writing style, and make it yours. This helps to overcome writer’s block, in case you feel stalled in your writing.