Overview
Good scientific writing is essential to career development and to the progress of
science. A well-structured manuscript allows readers and reviewers to get excited
about the subject matter, to understand and verify the paper’s contributions, and
to integrate these contributions into a broader context. However, many scientists
struggle with producing high-quality manuscripts and are typically untrained in paper
writing. Focusing on how readers consume information, we present a set of ten simple
rules to help you communicate the main idea of your paper. These rules are designed
to make your paper more influential and the process of writing more efficient and
pleasurable.
Introduction
Writing and reading papers are key skills for scientists. Indeed, success at publishing
is used to evaluate scientists [1] and can help predict their future success [2].
In the production and consumption of papers, multiple parties are involved, each having
their own motivations and priorities. The editors want to make sure that the paper
is significant, and the reviewers want to determine whether the conclusions are justified
by the results. The reader wants to quickly understand the conceptual conclusions
of the paper before deciding whether to dig into the details, and the writer wants
to convey the important contributions to the broadest audience possible while convincing
the specialist that the findings are credible. You can facilitate all of these goals
by structuring the paper well at multiple scales—spanning the sentence, paragraph,
section, and document.
Clear communication is also crucial for the broader scientific enterprise because
“concept transfer” is a rate-limiting step in scientific cross-pollination. This is
particularly true in the biological sciences and other fields that comprise a vast
web of highly interconnected sub-disciplines. As scientists become increasingly specialized,
it becomes more important (and difficult) to strengthen the conceptual links. Communication
across disciplinary boundaries can only work when manuscripts are readable, credible,
and memorable.
The claim that gives significance to your work has to be supported by data and by
a logic that gives it credibility. Without carefully planning the paper’s logic, writers
will often be missing data or missing logical steps on the way to the conclusion.
While these lapses are beyond our scope, your scientific logic must be crystal clear
to powerfully make your claim.
Here we present ten simple rules for structuring papers. The first four rules are
principles that apply to all the parts of a paper and further to other forms of communication
such as grants and posters. The next four rules deal with the primary goals of each
of the main parts of papers. The final two rules deliver guidance on the process—heuristics
for efficiently constructing manuscripts.
Principles (Rules 1–4)
Writing is communication. Thus, the reader’s experience is of primary importance,
and all writing serves this goal. When you write, you should constantly have your
reader in mind. These four rules help you to avoid losing your reader.
Rule 1: Focus your paper on a central contribution, which you communicate in the title
Your communication efforts are successful if readers can still describe the main contribution
of your paper to their colleagues a year after reading it. Although it is clear that
a paper often needs to communicate a number of innovations on the way to its final
message, it does not pay to be greedy. Focus on a single message; papers that simultaneously
focus on multiple contributions tend to be less convincing about each and are therefore
less memorable.
The most important element of a paper is the title—think of the ratio of the number
of titles you read to the number of papers you read. The title is typically the first
element a reader encounters, so its quality [3] determines whether the reader will
invest time in reading the abstract.
The title not only transmits the paper’s central contribution but can also serve as
a constant reminder (to you) to focus the text on transmitting that idea. Science
is, after all, the abstraction of simple principles from complex data. The title is
the ultimate refinement of the paper’s contribution. Thinking about the title early—and
regularly returning to hone it—can help not only the writing of the paper but also
the process of designing experiments or developing theories.
This Rule of One is the most difficult rule to optimally implement because it comes
face-to-face with the key challenge of science, which is to make the claim and/or
model as simple as the data and logic can support but no simpler. In the end, your
struggle to find this balance may appropriately result in “one contribution” that
is multifaceted. For example, a technology paper may describe both its new technology
and a biological result using it; the bridge that unifies these two facets is a clear
description of how the new technology can be used to do new biology.
Rule 2: Write for flesh-and-blood human beings who do not know your work
Because you are the world’s leading expert at exactly what you are doing, you are
also the world’s least qualified person to judge your writing from the perspective
of the naïve reader. The majority of writing mistakes stem from this predicament.
Think like a designer—for each element, determine the impact that you want to have
on people and then strive to achieve that objective [4]. Try to think through the
paper like a naïve reader who must first be made to care about the problem you are
addressing (see Rule 6) and then will want to understand your answer with minimal
effort.
Define technical terms clearly because readers can become frustrated when they encounter
a word that they don’t understand. Avoid abbreviations and acronyms so that readers
do not have to go back to earlier sections to identify them.
The vast knowledge base of human psychology is useful in paper writing. For example,
people have working memory constraints in that they can only remember a small number
of items and are better at remembering the beginning and the end of a list than the
middle [5]. Do your best to minimize the number of loose threads that the reader has
to keep in mind at any one time.
Rule 3: Stick to the context-content-conclusion (C-C-C) scheme
The vast majority of popular (i.e., memorable and re-tellable) stories have a structure
with a discernible beginning, a well-defined body, and an end. The beginning sets
up the context for the story, while the body (content) advances the story towards
an ending in which the problems find their conclusions. This structure reduces the
chance that the reader will wonder “Why was I told that?” (if the context is missing)
or “So what?” (if the conclusion is missing).
There are many ways of telling a story. Mostly, they differ in how well they serve
a patient reader versus an impatient one [6]. The impatient reader needs to be engaged
quickly; this can be accomplished by presenting the most exciting content first (e.g.,
as seen in news articles). The C-C-C scheme that we advocate serves a more patient
reader who is willing to spend the time to get oriented with the context. A consequent
disadvantage of C-C-C is that it may not optimally engage the impatient reader. This
disadvantage is mitigated by the fact that the structure of scientific articles, specifically
the primacy of the title and abstract, already forces the content to be revealed quickly.
Thus, a reader who proceeds to the introduction is likely engaged enough to have the
patience to absorb the context. Furthermore, one hazard of excessive “content first”
story structures in science is that you may generate skepticism in the reader because
they may be missing an important piece of context that makes your claim more credible.
For these reasons, we advocate C-C-C as a “default” scientific story structure.
The C-C-C scheme defines the structure of the paper on multiple scales. At the whole-paper
scale, the introduction sets the context, the results are the content, and the discussion
brings home the conclusion. Applying C-C-C at the paragraph scale, the first sentence
defines the topic or context, the body hosts the novel content put forth for the reader’s
consideration, and the last sentence provides the conclusion to be remembered.
Deviating from the C-C-C structure often leads to papers that are hard to read, but
writers often do so because of their own autobiographical context. During our everyday
lives as scientists, we spend a majority of our time producing content and a minority
amidst a flurry of other activities. We run experiments, develop the exposition of
available literature, and combine thoughts using the magic of human cognition. It
is natural to want to record these efforts on paper and structure a paper chronologically.
But for our readers, most details of our activities are extraneous. They do not care
about the chronological path by which you reached a result; they just care about the
ultimate claim and the logic supporting it (see Rule 7). Thus, all our work must be
reformatted to provide a context that makes our material meaningful and a conclusion
that helps the reader to understand and remember it.
Rule 4: Optimize your logical flow by avoiding zig-zag and using parallelism
Avoiding zig-zag
Only the central idea of the paper should be touched upon multiple times. Otherwise,
each subject should be covered in only one place in order to minimize the number of
subject changes. Related sentences or paragraphs should be strung together rather
than interrupted by unrelated material. Ideas that are similar, such as two reasons
why we should believe something, should come one immediately after the other.
Using parallelism
Similarly, across consecutive paragraphs or sentences, parallel messages should be
communicated with parallel form. Parallelism makes it easier to read the text because
the reader is familiar with the structure. For example, if we have three independent
reasons why we prefer one interpretation of a result over another, it is helpful to
communicate them with the same syntax so that this syntax becomes transparent to the
reader, which allows them to focus on the content. There is nothing wrong with using
the same word multiple times in a sentence or paragraph. Resist the temptation to
use a different word to refer to the same concept—doing so makes readers wonder if
the second word has a slightly different meaning.
The components of a paper (Rules 5–8)
The individual parts of a paper—abstract, introduction, results, and discussion—have
different objectives, and thus they each apply the C-C-C structure a little differently
in order to achieve their objectives. We will discuss these specialized structures
in this section and summarize them in Fig 1.
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005619.g001
Fig 1
Summary of a paper’s structural elements at three spatial scales: Across sections,
across paragraphs, and within paragraphs.
Note that the abstract is special in that it contains all three elements (Context,
Content, and Conclusion), thus comprising all three colors.
Rule 5: Tell a complete story in the abstract
The abstract is, for most readers, the only part of the paper that will be read. This
means that the abstract must convey the entire message of the paper effectively. To
serve this purpose, the abstract’s structure is highly conserved. Each of the C-C-C
elements is detailed below.
The context must communicate to the reader what gap the paper will fill. The first
sentence orients the reader by introducing the broader field in which the particular
research is situated. Then, this context is narrowed until it lands on the open question
that the research answered. A successful context section sets the stage for distinguishing
the paper’s contributions from the current state of the art by communicating what
is missing in the literature (i.e., the specific gap) and why that matters (i.e.,
the connection between the specific gap and the broader context that the paper opened
with).
The content (“Here we”) first describes the novel method or approach that you used
to fill the gap or question. Then you present the meat—your executive summary of the
results.
Finally, the conclusion interprets the results to answer the question that was posed
at the end of the context section. There is often a second part to the conclusion
section that highlights how this conclusion moves the broader field forward (i.e.,
“broader significance”). This is particularly true for more “general” journals with
a broad readership.
This structure helps you avoid the most common mistake with the abstract, which is
to talk about results before the reader is ready to understand them. Good abstracts
usually take many iterations of refinement to make sure the results fill the gap like
a key fits its lock. The broad-narrow-broad structure allows you to communicate with
a wider readership (through breadth) while maintaining the credibility of your claim
(which is always based on a finite or narrow set of results).
Rule 6: Communicate why the paper matters in the introduction
The introduction highlights the gap that exists in current knowledge or methods and
why it is important. This is usually done by a set of progressively more specific
paragraphs that culminate in a clear exposition of what is lacking in the literature,
followed by a paragraph summarizing what the paper does to fill that gap.
As an example of the progression of gaps, a first paragraph may explain why understanding
cell differentiation is an important topic and that the field has not yet solved what
triggers it (a field gap). A second paragraph may explain what is unknown about the
differentiation of a specific cell type, such as astrocytes (a subfield gap). A third
may provide clues that a particular gene might drive astrocytic differentiation and
then state that this hypothesis is untested (the gap within the subfield that you
will fill). The gap statement sets the reader’s expectation for what the paper will
deliver.
The structure of each introduction paragraph (except the last) serves the goal of
developing the gap. Each paragraph first orients the reader to the topic (a context
sentence or two) and then explains the “knowns” in the relevant literature (content)
before landing on the critical “unknown” (conclusion) that makes the paper matter
at the relevant scale. Along the path, there are often clues given about the mystery
behind the gaps; these clues lead to the untested hypothesis or undeveloped method
of the paper and give the reader hope that the mystery is solvable. The introduction
should not contain a broad literature review beyond the motivation of the paper. This
gap-focused structure makes it easy for experienced readers to evaluate the potential
importance of a paper—they only need to assess the importance of the claimed gap.
The last paragraph of the introduction is special: it compactly summarizes the results,
which fill the gap you just established. It differs from the abstract in the following
ways: it does not need to present the context (which has just been given), it is somewhat
more specific about the results, and it only briefly previews the conclusion of the
paper, if at all.
Rule 7: Deliver the results as a sequence of statements, supported by figures, that
connect logically to support the central contribution
The results section needs to convince the reader that the central claim is supported
by data and logic. Every scientific argument has its own particular logical structure,
which dictates the sequence in which its elements should be presented.
For example, a paper may set up a hypothesis, verify that a method for measurement
is valid in the system under study, and then use the measurement to disprove the hypothesis.
Alternatively, a paper may set up multiple alternative (and mutually exclusive) hypotheses
and then disprove all but one to provide evidence for the remaining interpretation.
The fabric of the argument will contain controls and methods where they are needed
for the overall logic.
In the outlining phase of paper preparation (see Rule 9), sketch out the logical structure
of how your results support your claim and convert this into a sequence of declarative
statements that become the headers of subsections within the results section (and/or
the titles of figures). Most journals allow this type of formatting, but if your chosen
journal does not, these headers are still useful during the writing phase and can
either be adapted to serve as introductory sentences to your paragraphs or deleted
before submission. Such a clear progression of logical steps makes the paper easy
to follow.
Figures, their titles, and legends are particularly important because they show the
most objective support (data) of the steps that culminate in the paper’s claim. Moreover,
figures are often viewed by readers who skip directly from the abstract in order to
save time. Thus, the title of the figure should communicate the conclusion of the
analysis, and the legend should explain how it was done. Figure making is an art unto
itself; the Edward Tufte books remain the gold standard for learning this craft [7,8].
The first results paragraph is special in that it typically summarizes the overall
approach to the problem outlined in the introduction, along with any key innovative
methods that were developed. Most readers do not read the methods, so this paragraph
gives them the gist of the methods that were used.
Each subsequent paragraph in the results section starts with a sentence or two that
set up the question that the paragraph answers, such as the following: “To verify
that there are no artifacts…,” “What is the test-retest reliability of our measure?,”
or “We next tested whether Ca2+ flux through L-type Ca2+ channels was involved.” The
middle of the paragraph presents data and logic that pertain to the question, and
the paragraph ends with a sentence that answers the question. For example, it may
conclude that none of the potential artifacts were detected. This structure makes
it easy for experienced readers to fact-check a paper. Each paragraph convinces the
reader of the answer given in its last sentence. This makes it easy to find the paragraph
in which a suspicious conclusion is drawn and to check the logic of that paragraph.
The result of each paragraph is a logical statement, and paragraphs farther down in
the text rely on the logical conclusions of previous paragraphs, much as theorems
are built in mathematical literature.
Rule 8: Discuss how the gap was filled, the limitations of the interpretation, and
the relevance to the field
The discussion section explains how the results have filled the gap that was identified
in the introduction, provides caveats to the interpretation, and describes how the
paper advances the field by providing new opportunities. This is typically done by
recapitulating the results, discussing the limitations, and then revealing how the
central contribution may catalyze future progress. The first discussion paragraph
is special in that it generally summarizes the important findings from the results
section. Some readers skip over substantial parts of the results, so this paragraph
at least gives them the gist of that section.
Each of the following paragraphs in the discussion section starts by describing an
area of weakness or strength of the paper. It then evaluates the strength or weakness
by linking it to the relevant literature. Discussion paragraphs often conclude by
describing a clever, informal way of perceiving the contribution or by discussing
future directions that can extend the contribution.
For example, the first paragraph may summarize the results, focusing on their meaning.
The second through fourth paragraphs may deal with potential weaknesses and with how
the literature alleviates concerns or how future experiments can deal with these weaknesses.
The fifth paragraph may then culminate in a description of how the paper moves the
field forward. Step by step, the reader thus learns to put the paper’s conclusions
into the right context.
Process (Rules 9 and 10)
To produce a good paper, authors can use helpful processes and habits. Some aspects
of a paper affect its impact more than others, which suggests that your investment
of time should be weighted towards the issues that matter most. Moreover, iteratively
using feedback from colleagues allows authors to improve the story at all levels to
produce a powerful manuscript. Choosing the right process makes writing papers easier
and more effective.
Rule 9: Allocate time where it matters: Title, abstract, figures, and outlining
The central logic that underlies a scientific claim is paramount. It is also the bridge
that connects the experimental phase of a research effort with the paper-writing phase.
Thus, it is useful to formalize the logic of ongoing experimental efforts (e.g., during
lab meetings) into an evolving document of some sort that will ultimately steer the
outline of the paper.
You should also allocate your time according to the importance of each section. The
title, abstract, and figures are viewed by far more people than the rest of the paper,
and the methods section is read least of all. Budget accordingly.
The time that we do spend on each section can be used efficiently by planning text
before producing it. Make an outline. We like to write one informal sentence for each
planned paragraph. It is often useful to start the process around descriptions of
each result—these may become the section headers in the results section. Because the
story has an overall arc, each paragraph should have a defined role in advancing this
story. This role is best scrutinized at the outline stage in order to reduce wasting
time on wordsmithing paragraphs that don’t end up fitting within the overall story.
Rule 10: Get feedback to reduce, reuse, and recycle the story
Writing can be considered an optimization problem in which you simultaneously improve
the story, the outline, and all the component sentences. In this context, it is important
not to get too attached to one’s writing. In many cases, trashing entire paragraphs
and rewriting is a faster way to produce good text than incremental editing.
There are multiple signs that further work is necessary on a manuscript (see Table
1). For example, if you, as the writer, cannot describe the entire outline of a paper
to a colleague in a few minutes, then clearly a reader will not be able to. You need
to further distill your story. Finding such violations of good writing helps to improve
the paper at all levels.
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005619.t001
Table 1
A summary of the ten rules and how to tell if they are being violated.
Rule
Sign it is violated
1: Focus on one big idea
Readers cannot give 1-sentence summary.
2: Write for naive humans
Readers do not “get” the paper.
3: Use context, content, conclusion structure
Readers ask why something matters or what it means.
4: Optimize logical flow
Readers stumble on a small section of the text.
5: Abstract: Compact summary of paper
Readers cannot give the “elevator pitch” of your work after reading it.
6: Introduction: Why the paper matters
Readers show little interest in the paper.
7: Results: Why the conclusion is justified
Readers do not agree with your conclusion.
8: Discussion: Preempt criticism, give future impact
Readers are left with unanswered criticisms and/or questions on their mind.
9: Allocate time wisely
Readers struggle to understand your central contribution despite your having worked
hard.
10: Iterate the story
The paper’s contribution is rejected by test readers, editors, or reviewers.
Successfully writing a paper typically requires input from multiple people. Test readers
are necessary to make sure that the overall story works. They can also give valuable
input on where the story appears to move too quickly or too slowly. They can clarify
when it is best to go back to the drawing board and retell the entire story. Reviewers
are also extremely useful. Non-specific feedback and unenthusiastic reviews often
imply that the reviewers did not “get” the big picture story line. Very specific feedback
usually points out places where the logic within a paragraph was not sufficient. It
is vital to accept this feedback in a positive way. Because input from others is essential,
a network of helpful colleagues is fundamental to making a story memorable. To keep
this network working, make sure to pay back your colleagues by reading their manuscripts.
Discussion
This paper focused on the structure, or “anatomy,” of manuscripts. We had to gloss
over many finer points of writing, including word choice and grammar, the creative
process, and collaboration. A paper about writing can never be complete; as such,
there is a large body of literature dealing with issues of scientific writing [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17].
Personal style often leads writers to deviate from a rigid, conserved structure, and
it can be a delight to read a paper that creatively bends the rules. However, as with
many other things in life, a thorough mastery of the standard rules is necessary to
successfully bend them [18]. In following these guidelines, scientists will be able
to address a broad audience, bridge disciplines, and more effectively enable integrative
science.