Scientific writing is one of the main activities by any scholar in the world. That is how we show the significance of our job and share with the scientific community the results of our research. The audience is of specialists (otherwise we would be doing “science writing”) and the purpose is to allow our colleagues to learn from what we have done and possibly replicate our actions and experiments, to further push the state of the art. There are various kinds of scientific contributions: the main ones are original research, literature review and case-studies description. Original research papers are usually defined as “primary literature” and deal with experiments and experiences where (usually) data are gathered and analyzed. Literature review is “secondary literature” and consists in a critical scanning of existing literature on a topic. This kind of contributions has a practical advantage, in the “publish or perish” era in which being referenced is worth gold: they are usually much welcome by the scientific community and get quoted a number of times. Case studies are generally a qualitative description and analysis of something that cannot be generalized but is still interesting, under some respect. So, is there a macro-schema, a one-size-fits-all schema good for any scientific contribution? In a sense, of course, not. But in another, maybe yes: I’ve decided to use a completely heterodox idea that… may give the idea of how a scientific contribution can be organized. And it is quite general. The possible macro-schema is the “hero journey”, a schema used in storytelling and screenwriting. So, roughly, this is the “hero journey” schema. At first, we meet the hero in his normal life. But this life is bugged. There is something that does not work properly and it is clear that the would-be hero will soon be called to action. This happens when an “accident/opportunity” takes place. The hero starts the journey, where he has to take decisions and steer his actions. There are pitfalls in the journey and at times it may even seem that the hero is going to fail. But in the end, he actually learns something that changes everything, he wins the challenge and goes back to the initial situation that, due to the hero’s effort, is also changed – and for the better! There are different types of scientific papers, but they can all be seen as “hero journeys”, in a way: there is an issue, someone (the scientist) takes on the challenge of solving it. He reports the “journey” to the scientific community, to show how he made it and, eventually, in what sense the world benefited from his effort. It must be noted that a scientific paper is under some respect similar to a project proposal, where we also have an issue to solve, ways of solving it, challenges, benefits deriving from the solution, etc. Usually, papers do report on the results of a project, so there is a reason why they are similar. The main difference is: the paper is the story of something that has been done, a story in past tense, while a project proposal is a story in future tense, of something you mean to do. Moreover, most of the times papers are – much – shorter than project proposals, which may be as long as books, in some cases. What shall we talk about then? We will see the main sections of a scientific paper, focusing especially on the abstract, the introduction and the conclusions. We will share some tips on how to perform a literature review and eventually on how to review a paper. Enjoy!
