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I’ve been asked a lot about how to write your scientific stories approximately in a non-native language, English. Almost half a year ago, I joined a lecture by Steve Mao, senior editor in Science at Peking University and I think it was absolutely inspiring. I can’t agree with him more about the philosophy:

It’s not the language but the deep logic of your research.

1. Make your result simple. Do not describe the technical details too much if it’s not that newly-developed.
2. Outline the major steps or novelties. Order them by the logic (maybe not your original order of experimental progress).
3. Each paragraph tells just one idea. And mind the logic of inter-sentences inside the paragraph.
4. If the English became a hinder in ordering your continuous writing process, switch it into your native language. Especially when you outline the logic of the whole story at the very first writing period.
5. Tell some one who is not your peers about your story, making them clearly understand the major conclusions and the logic behind. This could be so useful until you try it!

The output of this could be that you can tell your whole story within just 20 sentences, 10 sentences (this could be your abstract or part of the cover letter), 5 sentences or even only 1 sentence (this could be the title of your story).

This probably suggests your manuscript is generally ready. By the way, you will never hesitate to so-called largely decrease the length of your pre-accepted manuscript by the editors since you could just easily keep the stem and cut the branches according to the clear logic route.

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I often receive some emails/messages from trainees for raw data or technical/academic help. Sometimes I got upset about the way they are writing although I ultimately offer suggestions. But I’m definitely not sure others would do the same with joy under the unskilled letters.

I also talk about this with some PIs, who face the similar situations a lot. Here are some advices,

1. Introduce yourself (name, lab, affiliation, etc), how you know the contact, what’s your situation, what specific troubles you meet and what you will do with the knowledge.
2. Try to do your best to prepare the specific questions. If it is already a well-known and conventional technology or concept, you probably could get what you need from the previous publications or even textbooks.
3. Try not to ask some senior PIs when you are a freshman in research. You’d better ask your supervisor for help. Let she/he write to them first. That is because the senior PIs are so busy (maybe they just lost a funding application, fight with the unhappy husband/wife, finish a crazy slow-pace discussion with students, rejected again by editors…), and they will take more seriously if your supervisor write first (also kinda respect).
4. Always be patient and thankful about even a little advice since maybe just a single valuable word for you is actually from dozens of failed and struggling experiments by others.

The plane just landed. It’s raining outside and ‘Dear Deloris’ (from the movie Green Book) come to my ears through the headphones. This flight is for my little brother, struggling a lot about his PhD thesis in geoscience. He reserved a meeting room beside the lab and hope we can make it right.

20 DEC 2019