Writing for Publication: Part 3

Office of Graduate Studies Author

12/22/2016 Added

307 Plays

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Part 3 of an 8-part Writing for Publication workshop presented by Dr. Brian Waters

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[00:00:02.490]The article tells a good story.
[00:00:05.714]And so this is the opposite of boring.
[00:00:07.840]It's telling a good story.
[00:00:10.619]So what do we mean by that?
[00:00:14.140]Okay, so here's where you use your first handout.
[00:00:21.732]So let's talk about how to tell
[00:00:23.460]a good story in your article.
[00:00:26.104]Okay, by story I don't mean you're going
[00:00:27.767]to make up something that's not true.
[00:00:31.187]It needs to be a true story.
[00:00:33.866]It needs to be a credible story,
[00:00:36.339]but it should be interesting.
[00:00:37.753]If it's a story, then that's something
[00:00:39.116]that has a beginning, a middle, and an end
[00:00:43.061]and people want to see what's happening next.
[00:00:47.342]So, this is kind of a conceptual framework
[00:00:51.030]that you can use to organize your thoughts
[00:00:54.225]to tell a complete story.
[00:00:56.334]So we're going to use this figure.
[00:00:58.956]So what is this shape?
[00:01:02.346]Hourglass.
[00:01:03.179]Hourglass, okay this is like an hourglass shape.
[00:01:06.680]So you could think of the top part as a funnel
[00:01:10.922]that's feeding down into this pyramid down below.
[00:01:18.118]So, you can take notes on your paper if you want to.
[00:01:22.101]That's what it's for.
[00:01:25.002]So we're going to talk about the top part of this figure,
[00:01:28.876]the funnel part, as the introduction.
[00:01:32.541]This is the introduction section of your article.
[00:01:36.696]And so what you're going to do
[00:01:38.808]is start out introducing the readers to your topic,
[00:01:43.554]setting the context with the most general
[00:01:49.633]statements that you can make about the field.
[00:01:52.712]So this is the view from the airplane at 30,000 feet.
[00:01:56.919]You're starting out very general.
[00:01:59.028]And then you're adding information
[00:02:00.793]that becomes more and more specific,
[00:02:03.934]funneling down to your specific research questions.
[00:02:09.679]So the introduction should not
[00:02:12.129]be a miniature review article.
[00:02:15.110]And you're not writing a little tiny review article.
[00:02:18.069]What you're going to give the readers
[00:02:19.899]is exactly the information they need
[00:02:23.238]to understand your results and why they're important.
[00:02:28.062]And so what you're going to do
[00:02:29.339]is use the known information,
[00:02:32.128]references one, two, three, and four,
[00:02:35.305]and you're gonna use them as some bricks
[00:02:38.309]to build part of a wall.
[00:02:40.705]And then you're going to give some
[00:02:42.857]more information from known sources.
[00:02:47.493]And so what's here?
[00:02:50.489]There's a gap, right?
[00:02:52.430]So you've built a wall of knowledge,
[00:02:54.353]but there are gaps in that knowledge.
[00:02:58.611]So these are the knowledge gaps.
[00:03:00.847]These are the unknowns, okay.
[00:03:03.273]So you need to make those clear to the reader,
[00:03:05.750]this is what we know, this is what we don't know.
[00:03:09.673]And then you very specifically and clearly state
[00:03:13.829]this is what we don't know,
[00:03:15.885]or this is our knowledge gap.
[00:03:18.564]And so once you have stated those knowledge gaps,
[00:03:21.996]that's the focus of your article.
[00:03:25.028]And those knowledge gaps will allow you
[00:03:27.666]to propose specific research questions
[00:03:32.192]or a specific purpose for the article.
[00:03:38.094]And so once you've stated those specific research questions,
[00:03:42.306]you can generate some specific objectives
[00:03:45.591]to answer those research questions.
[00:03:51.060]I'll just give you a little more time to write this down.
[00:03:59.219]Okay, so you can see the funnel shape.
[00:04:01.450]We're funneling from the general to the specific.
[00:04:05.972]Building up what's known,
[00:04:07.520]pointing out what's unknown,
[00:04:09.669]using the unknown to generate
[00:04:11.282]research questions and specific objectives.
[00:04:15.251]So that's the introduction.
[00:04:19.897]Then the introduction is going to funnel
[00:04:22.960]down into the materials and methods and the results.
[00:04:28.816]In some journals the materials and methods come last,
[00:04:31.574]and the results come after the introduction.
[00:04:35.386]Regardless, those are basically linear.
[00:04:40.240]You can think of those sections of the paper
[00:04:43.080]as straightforward, linear.
[00:04:47.624]But as you discuss the results,
[00:04:50.869]you should relate those back to the specific objectives.
[00:04:55.109]So you need to write the objectives in a way
[00:04:57.906]that the readers see how they
[00:05:01.496]directly correspond to the results.
[00:05:04.058]And write the results in a way that the readers see
[00:05:06.613]that they directly correspond to the objectives.
[00:05:13.409]Okay, so now in the bottom part of the hourglass,
[00:05:17.971]we're moving into the discussion part of the paper.
[00:05:22.705]So in my opinion, the introduction
[00:05:25.499]and the discussion are the most important parts.
[00:05:28.677]And I think the introduction
[00:05:31.569]is really, really important because
[00:05:33.783]it sets up the reader's understanding
[00:05:36.420]of all the rest of the paper.
[00:05:43.002]When you start the discussion,
[00:05:45.129]you want to first discuss the major new findings
[00:05:48.883]that you have, the major new knowledge.
[00:05:51.511]And make sure that you relate that
[00:05:53.352]in your discussion back to the objectives
[00:05:56.154]in the research questions.
[00:06:02.402]And then as you continue with the discussion,
[00:06:05.498]in the following paragraphs you're going
[00:06:07.165]to talk about other new knowledge
[00:06:10.073]that you produced that maybe is not
[00:06:12.623]the most important point, but it's also new knowledge.
[00:06:17.562]How that relates within itself
[00:06:21.380]and especially how that new knowledge
[00:06:23.394]relates to the knowns from up above,
[00:06:27.991]how it fills those knowledge gaps
[00:06:29.904]that you identified in the introduction,
[00:06:32.933]and how this creates new understanding in your field.
[00:06:39.938]Okay, so if you can write your paper
[00:06:43.549]with a structure like this, you will tell a good story.
[00:06:48.116]And that will help you increase your chances of publication.
[00:06:55.044]Okay, so this is how to tell a good story.
[00:06:58.793]Now we've talked about reasons to reject,
[00:07:02.558]reasons to accept, and how to tell a good story.
[00:07:06.551]Let's go back to our friend, Frank,
[00:07:09.521]and his manuscript with this title, Guppies Love Cheerios.
[00:07:14.909]Is that a good title, first of all?
[00:07:17.668]And so now, this is your friend.
[00:07:21.769]Maybe you thought his research wasn't publishable,
[00:07:24.755]but maybe you can help him do some things
[00:07:28.688]to make it publishable.
[00:07:29.924]So what suggestions do you have for Frank
[00:07:32.157]to help him publish this article?
[00:07:35.358]Okay, so another five minute discussion
[00:07:38.295]and then we'll talk again.
[00:07:43.213]All right, so what did you come up?
[00:07:44.674]What suggestions did you have
[00:07:46.861]to make this move from not publishable to publishable?
[00:07:52.725](student speaks off microphone)
[00:07:55.324]Yeah?
[00:07:56.157]I think just honing your flow chart
[00:07:58.384]of how he describes where the unknown knowledge gaps
[00:08:03.655]in related research and that explains how this
[00:08:07.431]fills those gaps (murmurs) to those other things researched.
[00:08:11.525]So pointing out where the knowledge gaps are.
[00:08:13.925]How eating Cheerios fills these knowledge gaps.
[00:08:17.337]Yeah, great, what else?
[00:08:20.189]I think if we could give a more (murmurs) a comparison
[00:08:24.889]for the price of Cheerios and some fish food.
[00:08:28.117]Okay, so she said a price comparison
[00:08:30.517]between Cheerios and fish food.
[00:08:32.913]You know if he can show that
[00:08:34.650]the Cheerios work as well, but they cost less,
[00:08:37.876]then that's important to people that have pet fish.
[00:08:41.286]And so that gives it some relevance.
[00:08:43.966]You had?
[00:08:45.417]It sort of piggybacks off that.
[00:08:47.002]Just sort of picking an angle.
[00:08:48.868]Maybe goes where the chemical composition
[00:08:50.851]of Cheerios versus fish food,
[00:08:52.972]or you could go get sort of that (murmurs)
[00:08:55.680]and then that would help you pick
[00:08:56.972]what journal you're gonna
[00:08:59.756]go towards in targeting your audience.
[00:09:01.735]Sure, add a chemical composition element to the paper.
[00:09:05.208]Great, yes?
[00:09:07.762]It's not just the method (murmurs)
[00:09:10.727]because of something was (murmurs)
[00:09:14.167]in the published papers,
[00:09:15.543]or that he (murmurs).
[00:09:17.411]So if he can date the paper
[00:09:20.860]and then a comparison of a traditional (murmurs).
[00:09:25.247]Great, yeah, if he can show
[00:09:27.160]that this is a new way of doing things, a new framework.
[00:09:31.656]I think the (murmurs) simplication
[00:09:32.900]is that one important issue.
[00:09:34.722]Okay, can maybe generalize the result
[00:09:36.456]or can we treat all the (murmurs).
[00:09:40.672]Okay, can we generalize these results to other situations?
[00:09:44.238]Okay, good.
[00:09:45.359]Those are great suggestions.
[00:09:47.384]So maybe if your friend listens to you,
[00:09:50.412]maybe he can make this publishable.

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Writing for Publication: Part 3

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