Writing for Earth Scientists

52 Lessons in Academic Publishing

Stephen K. Donovan

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781119216773
• eBook ISBN: 9781119216742
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geology & Earth Sciences

The time has come. You are an Earth scientist. You've spent weeks, months, years working on this project – now is the time to pull it together for publication. You might be writing an undergraduate or graduate thesis, a research paper for a leading journal, a note for the newsletter of the local amateur scientific society, a book review or an abstract for a specialist geological conference. How do you make the transition from promising unpublished researcher to established academic author? Of course, the phrase 'academic publishing' covers a multitude of sins; monographs, research papers, book reviews, conference abstracts or whatever each requires a different approach. You have to decide what it is you are going to write and where to publish it. There are co-authors, supervisors of your degree, peer reviewers and editors to deal with on the way. But the only way to write like an academic is to write like an academic. . . where do you start? You could do much worse than start here.

There are many books on how to write and be published aimed at research students and other aspiring academics. Many of these are readable, comprehensive and provide good advice. This book is composed of numerous short chapters on this subject, all directly relevant to one or more aspects of academic publishing and aimed particularly at the Earth scientists in the broadest sense. Geologists will be encouraged to use the book as much as a reference as a reader, 'dipping in' to the chapters that contain relevant tips, hints and comments to enable them to improve the paper that they are currently writing. The book is intended to be informative, readable and, above all, of practical application for all readers.  In summary, the volume will be a readable compilation investigating many facets of academic publishing relevant to the Earth sciences. It will be of particular interest to postgraduate students, postdocs and new academics 

1
Introduction to Writing

‘“A discovery dates only from the time of the record of it, and not from the time of its being found in the soil.” This classic sentence of [General Augustus Henry Lane‐Fox] Pitt Rivers [1827–1900] proclaims fairly and squarely the ultimate moral and scientific duty of the field‐archaeologist’ (Wheeler, 2004, p. 182) and, needless to say, also the Earth scientist.

Speech … is an invention of man’s to prevent him from thinking.

(Christie, 1958, p. 162)

To speak to many academics, you would be mistaken to think that their sole purpose for writing research papers and conference abstracts is to keep their job. Their university, museum, laboratory or head of department instigate annual publication targets which must be met – or else. But is pressure from above the sole reason to record your latest ideas and discoveries in print?

There has to be some element of a desire to get it recorded in the psyche of each and every academic author. As expounded in the quotation in the epigraph, scientific ideas only enter the true playing field of science by being published. I have heard many talks and seen many posters at meetings that never got further than a conference abstract. And an unpublished thesis is just that, unpublished.

So, are you a writer? At secondary school, I was poor at spelling and had little understanding of the rules of English, but I read widely. This is not necessarily the worst way forward for a writer. My style of writing has been influenced and guided by authors who are masters of the language. My own foibles and idiosyncrasies have been found out and corrected by an army of editors and reviewers over the past 35 years. Spelling has never been simpler; not only has my own vocabulary and accuracy improved with time, but, unlike my old typewriter, word processing programs will actively argue with you if they disagree with your spelling.

The time has come. You are an Earth scientist – geomorphologist, tectonicist, palaeontologist, geochemist, Earth systems scientist or whatever. You’ve spent weeks, months, years working on a project – now is the time to pull it together for publication. You might be writing an undergraduate or graduate thesis, a research paper for a leading journal, a note for the newsletter of the local amateur scientific society, a book review or an abstract for a specialist geological conference. How do you make the transition from promising unpublished researcher to established academic author? And how do you maintain momentum once published? Of course, the phrase ‘academic publishing’ covers a multitude of sins; monographs, research papers, book reviews, conference abstracts or whatever, and each requires a different approach. You have to decide what it is you are going to write and where to publish it. There are co‐authors, supervisors and examiners of your degree, peer reviewers and editors to deal with on the way. But the only way to write like an academic is to write like an academic … where do you start? You could do much worse than start here.

There are many books on how to write and be published, aimed mainly at research students and other aspiring academics. Many of these are readable, comprehensive and provide good advice. Although I am no longer aspiring – I have about 1000 assorted publications to my name and I have, if anything, become more productive as I have got older – I enjoy buying and reading (and, not uncommonly, reviewing) such volumes as each and every one contains something that is new and useful to me. Over the years they have helped me increase my productivity, as well as improving my style of writing, the organization of my papers and their content. Further, they have inspired me to compose my own essays on academic publishing, written from my perspective as an author and editor.

Writing for Earth Scientists is comprised of numerous short chapters on this subject, all directly relevant to one or more aspects of academic publishing and aimed particularly at Earth scientists in the broadest sense. As a palaeontologist, I am an Earth scientist with strong leanings towards biology, but I also have active research interests in Caribbean geology and the history of geology. But any book on writing can provide useful ideas to any writer. Earth scientists are encouraged to use the book as much as a reference as a reader, ‘dipping in’ to the chapters that contain relevant tips, hints and comments to enable them to improve the paper that they are currently writing. This book is intended to be informative, readable and, above all, of practical application for all readers.

My aim has been to make this book a clear reference that readers will be able to read from cover to cover, but also to make it more akin to an owner’s manual for a car than a textbook. If you have a book review to write or are having trouble formatting the tables for a paper, then turn to the relevant chapter(s). That there are 52 chapters in Writing for Earth Scientists is more than a coincidence; there is one for every week of the year. I rarely see other academics reading volumes aimed at improving their communication skills, yet many should aim to advance their writing, which is often poor even in senior academics. So, I have made Writing for Earth Scientists accessible at various levels, including as a ‘one chapter per week’ dipper, which may encourage at least some to read a chapter every week. That is, I want Writing for Earth Scientists to be a readable compilation investigating the many facets of academic publishing relevant to the Earth sciences from which anyone can benefit. While I anticipate that postgraduate students, postdocs and new academics will be my core readers, do not hesitate to point out relevant comments to your lecturers and supervisors. It is not just young authors who struggle to write; many established authors would benefit from examining their own style of writing and their approach to publication. Fringe readership will include ambitious undergraduates who want to ‘break in’ to academic publishing early, amateurs in various fields of natural history who want to write up their own findings, and authors in academic fields outside the target audience, all of which I welcome; geology and geologists can never be too diverse.

I also emphasize that there are many other worthy books on academic publishing. It may seem eccentric that I am praising, even advertising my ‘competition’, but who would write a research paper with only one reference? This list is personal and I apologize to authors of those excellent books that I do not include; either I, sadly, have not read your book or you do not appear on my bookshelf. Some of these books have now gone into new editions; I merely list those that I actually use. Thus, some particularly valued examples include Day (1998), Luey (2002), Kitchin and Fuller (2005), Thody (2006), Silva (2007), Germano (2008), Connah (2010), Greene (2013) and, probably my favourite, Hartley (2008). (Although some of these volumes are available in newer editions, but these are the ones that I actually use.) Some pairs of books can provide a contrast, none more so than Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing (2012) and Billig’s Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences (2013). (Do not be concerned if a book, like Billig’s, is aimed at a specific and non‐geological academic niche; academic writing is academic writing, whatever the field.) I also mention, quietly, my own slender collection of essays on academic writing (Donovan, 2014). These books are either comprehensive introductions to all aspects of the academic publishing process or, in the examples of Silvia (2007), Sword (2012) or Billig (2013), focus rather differently on the requirements of the writing process.

Writing for Earth Scientists is a rare beast, a specialist book on how to publish in geology and related fields, although I admit that there are other guides to writing papers in the Earth sciences (such as Cochran et al., 1984; AIPG, 1986; Irvine and Rumble, 1992; US Geological Survey, 1995). I propose to take a structured textbook approach, which cynically might be described as buy a word processing package on page 1, publish your paper/monograph on the last page. I trust that Writing for Earth Scientists will be much better than this, however. It is intended that it will be as readable as any of the distinguished competition listed above and will focus on most aspects of the academic publishing process that are important in the Earth sciences. It is thus intended to be comprehensive for the Earth scientist, whi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction to Writing
• 2 Publication Diversity
• 3 Theses
• 4 Books and Monographs
• 5 Invited Chapters for Books
• 6 Peer‐Reviewed Research Papers
• 7 Short Notes
• 8 Discussions of and Replies to Published Papers
• 9 Book Reviews and Book Reviewing
• 10 Conference Abstracts
• 11 Papers for Non‐Peer‐Reviewed Publications
• 12 Field Guides
• 13 Title
• 14 Abstract
• 15 Key Words
• 16 Introduction
• 17 Materials and Methods/Localities and Horizons
• 18 Results
• 19 Discussion and Conclusions
• 20 Acknowledgements
• 21 References
• 22 Why Write? (1)
• 23 Line Drawings
• 24 Maps
• 25 Photographic Plates
• 26 Tables
• 27 Co‐authors and Others
• 28 Cover Letters
• 29 Submission
• 30 Editors
• 31 Reviewers
• 32 Why Write? (2)
• 33 Reviews
• 34 Revision: Corrections and Resubmission
• 35 Acceptance
• 36 Rejection
• 37 Copyright
• 38 Open Access
• 39 Offprints and Pdfs
• 40 Reading
• 41 Reviewing
• 42 Why Write? (3)
• 43 Productivity
• 44 Space and Time
• 45 Writer’s Block
• 46 Plain English
• 47 The Native English Speaker
• 48 Why Write? (4)
• 49 Editing Journals
• 50 A Space of Your Own
• 51 Contracts, Agents, Publishers and Your First Book
• 52 How Did I Write This Book?
• Appendix Book Proposal
• Index
• End User License Agreement