《writing a paper》.doc

Whitesides Group: Writing a PaperGeorge M. WhitesidesDepartment of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA1.What is a scientific paper?A paper is an organized description of hypotheses, data and conclusions, intended to instruct the reader. Papers are a central part of research. If your research does not generate papers, it might just as well not have been done. “Interesting and unpublished” is equivalent to “non-existent.”[科技论文是集假说、数据和结论为一体的概括性描述]Realize that your objective in research is to formulate and test hypotheses, to draw conclusions from these tests, and to teach these conclusions to others. Your objective is not to “collect data.”[研究的目的是为了形成并证实假说，得出结论，不是简单的数据收集。]A paper is not just an archival device for storing a completed research program, it is also a structure for planning your research in progress. If you clearly understand the purpose and form of a paper, it can be immensely useful to you in organizing and conducting your research. A good outline for the paper is also a good plan for the research program. You should write and rewrite these plans/outlines throughout the course of the research. At the beginning, you will have mostly plan; at the end, mostly outline. The continuous effort to understand, analyze, summarize, and reformulate hypotheses on paper will be immensely more efficient for you than a process in which you collect data and only start to organize them when their collection is“complete.”[论文并不仅是收集研究结果，也有助于形成进一步的研究工作的框架][好的文章提要也是研究工作的好计划，在研究的过程中，应该反复修改这些计划或提要。研究工作开始时，应有完善的计划；工作结束时，应充分的总结。]2.Outlines2.1 The reason for outlines.I emphasize the central place of an outline in writing papers, preparing seminars, and planning research. I especially believe that for you, and for me, it is most efficient to write papers from outlines. An outline is a written plan of the organization of a paper, including the data on which it rests. You should, in fact, think of an outline as a carefully organiz