Writing scientific papers in English

Writing an effective scientific paper is not easy. A good rule of thumb is to write as if your paper will be read by a person who knows about the field in general but does not already know what you did. Before you write a scientific paper, read some scientific papers that have been written in the format of the paper you plan to use. In addition to the science, pay attention to the writing style and format because Scientific English writing has its own style and rhythm.   

   

Here, I assembled a compilation of the 5 most common “errors” when writing scientific papers in English. They do not always refer to incorrect English, but rather to poor English, and they are not necessarily absolute rules. Most of these are common mistakes or poor writing habits that affect even native English speakers, so correcting them before submitting your manuscript can give you an advantage with the reviewers. It may even help you to avoid the dreaded “needs to be reviewed by a native English speaker”.

1. Avoid beginning sentences with “It is…”

“It is important…”, “Also, it is very common…”, “There is little attention…”

Although these sentences are grammatically correct, they are weak and somewhat juvenile in structure (“The book is on the table”). One or two per section may be fine, but repeatedly using this sentence structure can diminish the perceived maturity of your work.

Weak English: “It is important to highlight the most recent works that…”

Strong English: “The most recent works that (…) are important to highlight.”

Weak English: “There is little attention given to the event.”

Strong English: “Little attention is given to the event.”

2. Learn when to use “the”; try to remove it from the beginning of the sentence and to only include it when referring to specific events/objects/people.

You should add “the” to a phrase when it refers to specific people, places, events or populations. The usage of “the” in the phrase here would depend greatly on the context of the paragraph.

3. Only capitalize subjects if they refer to the formal name of a place/department/title.

4. Try to use the first person (“I” and “we”) as little as possible and exchange it with passive voice.

Many native English-speaking researchers will use “we” in their writing, quite often actually. However, there is a defined theory as to why passive voice is specifically used in the scientific literature and not in other types of written material in English. In general, passive voice is used to give emphasis to an object upon which an action is being performed. For example:

In active voice: “The man ate the apple.” The main point of this sentence is that the man was the one who ate the apple.

If we reverse it to passive voice: “The apple was eaten by the man.” Now the main point of the sentence is that the apple was eaten.

If you say “we found various types of mosquitos,” then you are emphasizing that you found the results.

Now, if you put the phrase in passive voice: “Various types of mosquitos were found.” Here, you are emphasizing that various types were found, and it's no longer as important that you found them. In this case, you are emphasizing that in your well-designed study, which can be repeated by any other researcher, various types of mosquitos will be found. After all, aren't reproducible results what is truly important to emphasize when communicating research?

5. Prepositional phrases, transitions and adverbs in the beginning of sentences should be followed by a comma:

“In this study, this result was found.”

Other common phrases:

Of these,

However,

Therefore,

Currently,

As previously reported,

Try to read the phrase aloud. If you take a breath or pause when reading the sentence, then you likely need a comma there. If a sentence contains more than two commas (not including lists), it should be split into more than one sentence