CHAPTER 1
How to use this book

1.1 Getting started with writing for international publication

This book is for all authors who want improved strategies for writing effective scientific papers in an efficient way, including those new to the task. The focus is on writing in English, but many of the strategies are equally effective for writing science in other languages. Plurilingual authors - those using English as an additional language (EAL) - will find their situations and needs addressed alongside those of authors with English as a first language (EL1), as well as those common to both groups.

In this book, we will use other terms as well as paper for what you are aiming to write: it may be called a manuscript, a journal article, or a research article. (See Chapter 2 for comments on other types of scientific articles, Chapter 12 for writing review articles, and Chapter 18 for how to apply the book's approach to writing funding grant proposals.) All of these terms are in use in books and websites providing information and advice about this type of document: this genre. The concept of genre is important for the way this book works, as we have based our approach in writing it on the findings of researchers who work in the field of genre analysis. These researchers study documents of a particular type to identify the features that make them recognisable as what they are.

One of the key concepts in use in this field of research is the idea of the audience for a document as a key factor in helping an author write effectively. Whenever you write any document, it is helpful to think first about your audience: whom do you see in your mind's eye as the reader of what you are writing? The idea of audience belongs as part of a "communication matrix" made up of four elements: audience (as described in the previous sentence), purpose (what do you want the document to achieve?), format (how will the required format constrain how you write the document?), and assessment (what criteria will be used to decide if the document is successful?). We will use all the elements of this matrix to guide our discussion of the genres we will analyse in the book, and we begin now by thinking about the audience for a scientific research article.

Who is your audience?

Often the audience that you think of first is your scientific peers - people working in areas related to yours who will want to know about your results - and this is certainly a primary audience for a research article. However, there is another "audience" whose requirements must be met before your peers will even get a chance to see your article in print: the journal editor and reviewers (also called referees; see Chapters 3, 13, and 14 for more information). These people are often thought of as gate-keepers (or as a filter), because their role is to ensure that only articles that meet the journal's standards and requirements are allowed to enter or pass through. Therefore, it can be useful from the beginning to find out and bear in mind as much information as you can about what these requirements are. In this book, we refer to these requirements as reviewer criteria (see Chapters 3 and 14 for details), and we use them as a framework to help unpack the expectations that both audiences have of a research article written in English. We aim to unpack these expectations in two different but closely interrelated ways - in terms of:

• the content of each article section and its presentation; and
• the English language features commonly used to present that content.

To do this, the book uses an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from experienced science authors and reviewers about content with those from specialist teachers of research communication in English about the language. Elements of language that are broadly relevant to most readers of the book will be discussed in each chapter. In addition, Chapter 17 focuses on ways in which users of EAL can develop the discipline-specific English needed to write effectively for international publication. This chapter can be studied at any stage in the process of working through the book, after you have completed Chapter 1.

1.2 Publishing in the international literature

If you are going to become involved in publishing in the international literature, there are a number of questions it is useful to consider at the outset: Why publish? Why is it difficult to publish? What does participation in the international scientific community require? What do you need to know to select your target journal? How can you get the most out of publishing? We will consider these questions in turn.

Why publish?

We have already suggested that researchers publish to share ideas and results with colleagues. Other reasons for publishing include

• to leave a record of research which can be added to by others;
• to receive due recognition for ideas and results; and
• to attract interest from others in the area of research.

However, there are two additional reasons that are very important for internationally oriented scientists:

• to receive expert feedback on results and ideas; and
• to legitimise research; that is, to receive independent verification of methods and results.

These reasons underscore the importance of the review process we discussed earlier. However, there are difficulties associated with getting work published - difficulties that operate for all scientists, plus some that are specific to scientists working in contexts where English is a foreign or additional language.

Why is it difficult to publish?

In addition to any language-related barriers that spring to mind, it is also important to realise that writing is a skill, whatever the language. Many of the points covered in this book are equally important for EAL and EL1 scientists. In addition, because most science research contexts are now multilingual and multicultural wherever they are located, an overt focus on the role of language in writing for publication will benefit all players, from novices to mentors.

Getting published is also a skill: not all writers are published. Some reasons for this fact include the following:

• not all research is new or of sufficient scientific interest;
• experiments do not always work - positive results are easier to publish; and
• scientific journals have specific requirements which can be difficult to meet - publishing is a buyer's market.

These issues will be addressed as you proceed through the book.

Another reason that researchers find the writing and publication process difficult is that communicating your work and ideas opens you up to potential criticism. The process of advancing concepts, ideas, and knowledge is adversarial, and new results and ideas are often rigorously debated. Authors facing the blank page and a potentially critical audience can find the task of writing very daunting. This book offers frameworks for you to structure your thinking and writing for each section of a scientific article and for dealing with the publishing process. The frameworks provided will allow you to break down the large task of writing the whole manuscript into small tasks of writing sections and subsections, and to navigate the publishing process.

What does participation in the international scientific community require?

A helpful image is to think about submitting a manuscript to an international journal as a way of participating in the international scientific community. You are, in effect, joining an international conversation. To join this conversation, you need to know what has already been said by the other people conversing. In other words, you need to understand the "cutting edge" of your scientific discipline: what work is being done now by the important players in the field internationally. This means:

• getting access to the journals where people in the field are publishing;
• subscribing to the e-mail alert schemes offered by journal publishers on their websites so that you receive tables of contents when new issues are published; and
• developing effective skills for searching the Internet and electronic databases to which you have access.

Without this understanding, it will be difficult to write about your work so as to show how it fits into the progress being made in your field. In fact, this knowledge is important when the research is being planned, well before the time when the paper is being written: you should try to plan your research so it fits into a developing conversation in your field.

Active involvement in international conferences is an important way to gain access to this international world of research in your field. Therefore, you need confident skills in both written and spoken English for communication with your peers. This book aims to help with the written language as used in international journals, and some ideas for developing spoken science English are given in Chapter 16. As you become a member of the international research community in your field in these ways, you will develop the knowledge base you need to help you select the most appropriate journal for submission of your manuscript: we call this your target...