Product Description

The detailed, practical, step-by-step advice in this user-friendly guide will help students and researchers to communicate their work more effectively through the written word. Covering all aspects of the writing process, this concise, accessible resource is critically acclaimed, well-structured, comprehensive, and entertaining. Self-help exercises and abundant examples from actual typescripts draw on the authors' extensive experience working both as researchers and with them. Whilst retaining the user-friendly and pragmatic style of earlier editions, this third edition has been updated and broadened to incorporate such timely topics as guidelines for successful international publication, ethical and legal issues including plagiarism and falsified data, electronic publication, and text-based talks and poster presentations. With advice applicable to many writing contexts in the majority of scientific disciplines, this book is a powerful tool for improving individual skills and an eminently suitable text for classroom courses or seminars.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122777 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 256 pages

Review
'This book is beyond reproach and should be regarded as compulsory reading for all biomedical and science undergraduate and postgraduate students and all others likely to have to write or edit scientific reports.' Times Higher Education Supplement

'... very well organized and easy to scan for useful tips ... will soon become one of the more well-thumbed volumes on our laboratory bookshelf.' Trends in Neuroscience

'... pragmatic, well-written and comprehensive ... each stage - from marshalling ideas through bashing out a first draft, revising it, honing it for publication and correcting it in proof - is demystified with exercises and examples.' New Scientist

'...does not disappoint. It is everything a 'How to' book needs to be, stuffed with plain common sense and sprinkled with useful tips.' The Biologist

'... strongly recommended for all geoscientists. There are three possible ways to use it. The first is to read it as a normal book from the first page to the last ... The second way is to use it as a reference ... The third way is ... as a textbook ... Despite of what way to choose, you will find this book always very suitable. Reading of any passage is enjoyable and stimulating. The book in the whole is a great success ...' Zentralblatt for Geologie und Palaeontologie

About the Author
Janice Matthews is a scientist, writer, and educator with a broad background in the biological sciences and a professional focus on facilitating clearer communication of scientific material. She graduated summa cum laude from Michigan State University, obtained a Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University, and earned the Educational Specialist degree in Science Education from the University of Georgia. She has written and edited books, technical manuals, and hundreds of scientific research papers in the veterinary and biological sciences, both in university settings and for private industry.

A Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor and member of the Teaching Academy at the University of Georgia, Robert Matthews is a specialist on the behavior of insects, particularly wasps and bees. He earned his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. His publications include books, popular articles, and over 160 peer-reviewed research articles.

Customer Reviews

Watch what you eat!
Words can hardly express the beauty and cleverness of "Successful Scientific Writing" by Matthews, Bowen and Matthews as a step-by-step guide on how to write scientific reports for publication in English. I am using this book for a course that I teach on scientific writing at the Postgraduate School of Health Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark, and I find it to be perfect! Before this book was published, there was none that dealt so well and so entertainingly with so many aspects of what it actually takes to prepare a manuscript for publication in a scientific journal. Many young (and old) scientists are good thinkers, but they are often poor writers! Thus, although they may have been able to design and carry out an experiment, they often lack the ability to express what they have done clearly and concisely. This book is for them! The first few chapters provide mainly words of encouragement for getting the writing process underway. There are also remarkable bits of advice, such as the notion of avoiding certan snacks that could derail ones momentum. In my view, the crux of the book appears in chapters 5, 6 and 7 in which extraordinarily lucid and practical instructions and exercises are presented for improving one's ability to write scientifically. There are also tips on how to optimize word-processing so that the manuscript submitted to the editor of a journal is most likely to be accepted for publication. Perhaps some old-timers in Science can do without this book, but they should nevertheless have a copy of it on hand for their students.

A Must-Get For All Scientists!
This is a funny, well-written, thorough, and authoritative book that goes through every step in the process of creating a journal article, including some topics unique to this process, like how to deal with multi-author editing, peer review, and lit searches. Lots of great advice about how to overcome writer's block. Although the book is written with biomedical science in mind, the advice on grammar, style, structure, and process management is useful to all technical writers. No scientist should be without it.

Good, but could be better
Our lab used this book for a study group on effective scientific writing. We are located in Korea, so with the exception of the instructor and I, all participants were not native speakers of English. As a result, this review is from the viewpoint of foreign students. It is based on chapter reviews written by the members of our lab after finishing the book.

The book is just what it claims to be, a step-by-step approach to writing a scientific manuscript intended for publication. The first chapter helpfully furnishes a checklist (Table 1.3) for preparing a research paper. The chapter is actually a summary of the rest of the book so a reader already in the process of writing can easily find which chapter they wish to skip to via Table 1.3.

In the subsequent chapters, the authors provide good advice accompanied by helpful tables, examples and exercises, although the figure chapter could have used more tips on actually preparing the figures. Examples of poorly prepared and corrected figures would be a useful study aid. One student suggested that the second chapter on computer use was not particularly informative for graduate-level students. Regarding the chapter on grammar (chapter 6), another student pointed out that in some scientific articles, ungrammatical sentences are not corrected in order to effectively deliver the point.

The overall use of informal expressions and phrases seemed intended to make the text livelier for English-speaking students, but was confusing for several participants with English as a second language. We would like to suggest that the authors take their own advice and refrain from using slang and jargon. Several of us liked Appendix 2 and thought it was a good read for those unfamiliar with the practice of journal editors.

Apparently the authors had intended to attract those who had not already submitted a manuscript to read their book, but Successful Scientific Writing contains many helpful pointers for published scientists and journal editors, as well.