This article is the second chapter of the writing strategy series, aiming to emphasize to scholars that special attention should be paid to in the writing of academic papers: keyword selection, article language style, and teamwork of research projects. The original text of this article was written by Charlotte Dixon, coordinator of the MDPI English Editorial Department. I hope that the essay writing and English usage techniques in the article can help you in your writing process.
3. "Click-through rate guarantee" - Selection of keywords
Keywords directly affect the visibility of the article, so you must select keywords wisely. For specific choices, please refer to the following suggestions:
• The keywords include the analysis/experimental techniques that will be mentioned in the article.
• Keywords include both broad-sense and specific terms. A broad-sense term means that your research will appear in a large number of searches, and specific terms help to let the most relevant readers see it (it can also prevent your manuscript from being lost in search results for a broad term, sometimes a single search will bring 13,000 search results, such as diabetes );
• Avoid keywords that already exist in the title. This may be a bit redundant, as your manuscript will appear in searches for words already included in the title.
• How to check whether the keyword is reasonable: Search for the keyword you selected. Are search results relevant to your research? If so, you can be sure that you have selected a valid keyword.
Top tip: Use the most common keyword form. If there are two ways to write a word, search both of them and select the one that produces the most "click rate". For example, FTIR and FT-IR.
4. "Keep it simple" - Choice of writing style
When writing an academic paper, the author usually wants as many people as possible to be exposed to the research. Therefore, it is best to keep the paper concise and not use unnecessary complex language, as this will blur the reader's meaning.
• Avoid unnecessary jargon;
• Avoid excessive use of abbreviation —This may make it easier for you to write, but using too many abbreviations that no one has seen before will make readers lose confidence in reading;
• Reduce the use of conjunctions, such as Besides, However, Therefore;
• Try to use active voice—don’t use “it is shown in the results”, but “the results show”.
Top tip: When writing a paper, please think for your own perspective—for example: Can postdoctoral students from other colleges understand the expression of the paper? If the answer is no, you may want to do some edits to simplify the language and make it easier to read.
5. "Share Issue" - Cooperation in Writing
Single-author papers are rare, especially in the field of science. If you are a team member who has been on a project, or you have sought help from colleagues to contribute to the research in your project and articles, it is important to shape a healthy team spirit from the very beginning. The tips on how to work in harmony with others are as follows:
• Discuss the author's identity before starting writing. This could be a controversial issue, and there may be several people who want the role of the first author. Select and determine the order of author identities fairly to avoid disagreement in the later stages;
• Divide tasks reasonably and clearly—work according to people’s strengths;
• Determine the deadlines for each part and the entire manuscript and make everyone agree—if everyone works on the same schedule, this will make the writing process smoother;
• Use collaboration tools such as shared file systems, cloud services, and GitHub.
Top tips:
· If you are multiple authors completing a manuscript together, please designate one person to supervise the manuscript and perform proofreading to ensure that the process is reasonable and the style will not be very different due to different authors writing different parts.
· Use reasonable file names—in chronological order rather than "new", "updated", "latest". The purpose of this is to get everyone to review the latest version of the manuscript. Consider adding a date at the end of the file name so that co-authors can easily identify the latest version.
· If you edit the work of other authors in Microsoftml2® Word, it is recommended to use tracking changes and full tags to clearly indicate where the changes are made. Importantly, the original author can easily check and approve every change.
· Finally, please provide constructive feedback to your collaborators and provide solutions instead of simply emphasizing the problem. Harmonious work is based on mutual respect.
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