Presentation to PSIL student jatna

Scientific Writing
Prof Jatna Supriatna, Ph.D
Dept of Biology Univ Indonesia

• Experiences:
– Chief Editor, Tropical Biodiversity 1992-2007
– Co-editor, Asian Journal Primatology
– Managing Editor, Asian Journal of Biodiversity
– Consulting Editor:
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Tropical Conservation Science (SAGE)
Park Journal (IUCN)
International Journal of Wildlife research and Policy
Biosphere Conservation

• See Google Scholar for further info

Scientific Writing
But in science the credit goes to the man (or woman) who convinces
the world, not to the man (or woman) to whom the idea first occurs
Sir Francis Darwin

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Scientific?????
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Contributing to the world of
knowledge

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Coherent

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Structured

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Originality

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Scientific style

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Critical thinking and insight

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No mistakes

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A clear focus … but on what?

Task vs. process
 How do you go about the writing
task?
 Why the process is important
 It is about organization, avoiding
frustration, finding your focus,
productive writing and …
 … a final product to be proud of

Scientific style
 Formality: creating distance
between writer and reader
 Goal: objectivity
 But style and formulation
should not make the reading
task impossible
 In this section: a few problems

Writing an introduction

 An important structuring mechanism
 Anouncing the topic
 Motivation to undertake the study
 Most important findings in the
published literature
 Research problem and hypotheses
 Brief review of following chapters

Problem statement
 Specific
 Highly focused, clear
 As concrete as possible
 Preferably one problem statement;
may be broken up into a number of
subproblems

Problem statement
Discussion of the problem statement in
the example text:
Can you find a single sentence

denoting the problem statement?
Where exactly is the focal element in
the section?
Another example on the overhead ...

Hypothesis
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The answer to your problem statement
 Should be refutable
 Should not be negative

Other components
 Theoretical framework
 Literature review
 Research design:
Problem statement(s), hypotheses,
pilot study, sample taking, sample size,
measuring instruments, statistical
techniques, etc.

 Presentation of findings
 Discussion of findings
 Conclusions