Substitutionof journalarticles for thesesto improve
Iwriting andthinking
2E. L. Brandner and I. D. Teare
ABSTRACT
publish because they have not learned to write
journal articles--how to "finish" their research. We
propose that agronomists
(and others too) use
journal article writing as a graduate-training
technique to help students organize their thoughts and
to establish a pattern for answering research questions and reporting research results in journals.
Because
fewscientistsusesimplelanguage
to communicatetheir findings, mostbooksand journal
articlesby scientistslack clarity. Graduate
students,
seldom
offeredcourses
in scientificwriting,goto current scientific publicationsfor examples
of howto
write. Thatperpetuates
dull, heavy,verbose
writing.
Wegive arguments
to supportthe idea that graduate
students
shouldbetaughtscientificwritingwhilethey
preparejournal articles, andthat graduateschools
should
acceptjournalarticlesin lieu of thesesanddissertations.
PURPOSEAND SCOPE
Additionalindexwords:Dissertations,Scientific
writing, Manuscript
preparation.
GOALS, besides academic achievement,
M AJOR
in training graduate students are: 1) to stimulate an inquisitive mind, 2) to teach knowledge and
skills for conducting research, and 3) to teach how
to present research information at professional
meetings and in scientific
journals.
Major professors and thesis committees generally have neglected to teach students
how to prepare wellwritten journal articles
(13). We use "thesis"
include "dissertation."
Substituting journal articles
for theses would provide time to teach and to improve scientific
writing. Theses seem to prevent
journal articles from being written. Whenall of a
student’s available time before graduation goes into assembling a thick thesis, no time is left to extract journal article(s)
from the thesis. The result
is research not published and therefore not completed.
A scientist
who does not publish in journals
generally remains unknown, at least for his scientific contributions.
The best way for him to serve
his institution,
his colleagues, and the public, in
relation to his research, is to publish. Wethink
that many scientists
with recent Ph.D.’s do not
IContribution no. 132, Vice-President for Agriculture
Office, and contribution no. 1360, Departmentof Agronomy, Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Manhattan
66506.
2Professor of technical journalism whoteaches "Scientific Writing" in the Graduate School, and Associate Crop
Physiologist, Evapotranspiration Laboratory, Kansas State
University, Manhattan66506.
22
In this article we discuss the purpose of scientific
writing, requirements for a good journal article, and
the advantages of journal articles over theses. Our
primary objective is to stimulate action that will
result in more graduate students publishing results
of their research.
THE JOURNAL-ORIENTED
THESIS
It is generally agreed that scientific
writing is
heavy, verbose, pretentious, and dull (13).
Webelieve that it became heavy and dull because
scientists copied German scientists’
writing, which
is noun-centered. Several other factors likely contributed to its being wordy, affected, and pompous:
America’s obsession with quantity
rather than
quality, pressures to publish before having anything
to-add to knowledge,
attempts
to hide muddy
thinking or to impress gullible persons with verbiage
and pretentious writing.
Labov (6) showed that our culture tends to reward pretentious,
affected writing and speech to
the extent that inner city children (so-called deprived children) who use "Black English Vernacular" reason better than "educated" persons who
temporize, qualify, and add unrelated detail and
verbiage.
Writing theses has for so long involved simply
the reporting of all literature and data that can be
found on a subject that: "If all the scholarly manuscripts seeking publication were stacked atop one
another, they would make a mighty tower. But is
it a tower of learning or a tower of babble?" (8).
JOURNAL OF AGRONOMIC EDUCATION,
Simplicity is the Key
What one finds in far too many theses is not the
rigorous precision demanded in gathering data but
the pompous, affected, complex language of middleclass Americans-who seem to avoid simple language for fear it will label them simple-minded.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as these
examples of simple writing demonstrate:
Persons whoare naturally very fat are apt to die
earlier than those whoarfi slender.--Hippocrates(9: 7).
I said that populations, whenunchecked,increased
in a geometrical ratio, and subsistence for menin an
arithmetical ratio.--Thomas Malthus(9:271).
¯ . .there is not muchradiumin a mineral; this we
did not know at the beginning. Wenow know that
there is not evenone part of radiumin a million parts
of good ore...to get a small quantity of pure radium
salt, one is obliged to workup a huge quantity of ore.
Andthat was very hard in a laboratorg.--Marie S.
Curie (9:495).
Students (not required to write theses,
but
allowed to write journal articles) should experience
the work and agony of constructing "public" tables
from their "private"
data and of making every
sentence as simple as possible without losing exactness (5). Doing such writing gave Darwin sieges
torturing headaches. But what he wrote was understood, and his style was far from "wretched," as he
called it. Here is one of his passages:
Thus we can understand howit has come to pass
that manand all other vertebrate animals have been
constructed on the same general model, why they
pass through the same early stages of development,
and why they retain certain rudiments in common.
(9.:371).
Sentences as long as Darwin’s are common in
theses but sentences that communicate an idea so
accurately are not.
Perhaps the best advice to give a student is: Get
rid of all words that ~nake you sound sophisticated.
Scientists’ writing should be as childlike as possible.
Scientists, like children, should use materials, not
utilize
them; simply give measurements and omit
"level of" and "magnitude," and try to replace
words like "paradigm" with "example" or "specimen." Scientists should impress others with ideas,
not big words.
Professors feel comfortable and competent teaching basic principles in their fields of knowledge, and
they are good judges of demonstrated ability to do
independent research. However, few professors have
had a course in scientific writing (13), so few feel
VOL.
3,
DECEMBER 1974
23
comfortable writing, much less teaching students to
write clearly, briefly, and concisely. Consequently,
it seems to us, students emulate examples of accepted theses and dissertations,
which only perpetuates scientific
writing that is, as we said before,
heavy, verbose, pretentious, and dull.
Instill
Desire to "Finish Research"
Wethink it would help if all scientists considered
"writing" a journal article as "finishing research,"
because that is a more acceptable idea to many
scientific-minded
persons. This term uses mneme
(3) to make "writing" a more acceptable idea
students.
Finishing research connotes scientific,
straightforward, exact, logical, and clear. Writing, on the
other hand, likely connotes creative, literary style,
rhythm, alliteration,
and avoiding monotony-all of
which must give way to exactness in a journal
article. "Finishing research," we think, appeals to
budding scientists,
whereas ideas that "writing"
brings to their minds often repel them. The more
palatable idea of finishing research also describes
more clearly what is wanted by journals.
Aids for Better Writing
Many books and manuals on writing theses and
journal articles
are available.
Some of the most
highly recommended books contain many of the
errors they warn against (2). We think Woodford’s
(13) is the best for teachers and that the CBE
Style Manual (4) is doing the most to establish
uniform journal style. Smith and Scifres cite ten
references on developing and writing scientific
articles (11).
Three books other writers
seldom recommend
but that we like are Rodale’s The Synonym Finder
(10), The American Heritage Dictionary
of the
English Language (1), and the University of Chicago Press’s A Manual of Style (7). The first,
think, has no peer for helping one find the exact
word wanted. The second gives usages that members of its usage panel prefer. The third gives rules
governing points that other style manuals often
omit.
Manuals, in general, give rules for writing and
conveying thought clearly, precisely,
and simply.
Calling the same rules "rules for finishing research"
would be more acceptable
to most graduate students.
24
BRANDNER & TEARE:
SUBSTITUTION
For example, rumormongers use the third person. Scientists
want truth, not rumor. First person makes it clear who did something. First person helps convey thought accurately, clearly, quickly. That’s what scientists
want to do, so they
should use first person at least when relating what
they did. In a discussion section that compares results of several scientists, "The authors" (third person) nearly always confuses readers. It would be
clearer to say "they" or "we."
Our experience indicates,
that using the active
voice to "avoid absurdities"
appeals to graduate
students more than does using the active voice to
improve their writing. Active voice does both. For
example, "Flying over the reservation
in a helicopter, three coyotes were shot. Selecting between
a shot gun and a rifle, the target was considered."
The absurdities of coyote pilots and a target selecting a weapon could have been avoided by using the
first person and active voice.
Steps to Clarity
Scientists must write clearly to prove that they
think clearly.
Surely the most appealing approach
for a teacher to use is that "finishing research" is
done by clearly conveying results (thoughts)
others. Using logic improves writing-so perhaps it
is the reverse of Woodford’s, "Sounder thinking
through clearer writing" (12). It also is true that
clear thinking leads to clear writing; and muddy
thinking, to muddy writing.
Omitting needless words improves writing, but
scientists
should omit them primarily because they
get in the way of thought. For example, writing
"It is interesting to note that" often dulls an idea.
"Interesting"
is a value judgment. Let the reader
decide. If it’s interesting,
you need not say so. If
it’s dull, saying that it is interesting weakens your
manuscript.
So omit all such words. Just write
interestingly.
A point to make is that communicating or writing accurately takes hard work and brains, which
challenges, rather than frightens, young scientists.
Writing a journal article requires sifting directly
related, relevant information and data from historical, obliquely related, and unrelated data and information. Seldom does writing a thesis give students the useful experience and practice that writing a journal article
does. We think most of the
worst manuscripts are those extracted from thesesdocuments that took time that could better have
OF JOURNAL ARTICLES
FOR THESES
been spent writing journal articles. Wethink stressing good writing by students preparing journal
articles would improve their writing and thinking.
Steps to "Finishing Research"
Before he starts a research project, a graduate
student defines a problem and selects appropriate
materials and methods to solve it. He previously,
of course, has written a literature
review for his
major professor.
Defining the problem will force
him to discriminate among related, slightly related,
and unrelated studies.
Doing that should reduce
the number of literature
citations
and give a
rough draft of an introduction for a journal article.
Describing how he will attack the problem will
give him a rough draft of his materials and methods,
which should include statistical
treatment to help
him catch errors or weaknesses in his plans. We
think graduate students going through those steps
will think and .write more clearly and perform
better research than students who do not.
Students expect to prepare tables for data they
plan to gather. Filled with data, the tables are the
heart of a journal article.
Tables usually document
the story a student wants to tell, but first-draft
tables often communicate well only to the person
who constructed them. That is, they are "private"
tables not yet in the best form to communicate to
readers. Such data should be kept in private files of
both students and major professors, because future
insights may show the stored data to be valuable.
But requiring students to store data in theses only
hinders thinking and reduces the likelihood of the
data ever being published. Including data in theses
for safe storage cannot be defended. A journal
article with all thesis data appended may be a first
step toward getting graduate schools to accept
journal articles in lieu of theses.
Because scientists
read tables before they read
the body of a manuscript, well-designed tables with
informative titles and complete footnotes save a lot
of writing.
Such tables often show purpose and
results at a glance and their footnotes often include
methods.
Rearranging data from "private" to "public" includes putting columns or rows to be compared side
by side, with data for controls to the left or at the
top. But one should consider all tables before arranging columns and rows of data in his first table,
because the pattern used in the first table should be
continued, unless logic dictates change.
JOURNAL OF AGRONOMIC EDUCATION,
Having graduate students do the work and make
the decisions necessary to change "private" tables
to "public" tables clarifies both their thinking and
their writing, as well as reducing the volume of
what they report.
While students are redoing tables to communicate to others is a good time for advisors to start
emphasizing communicating results. The principles
of communicating to others apply to constructing
a table the same as they do to writing. The idea of
using data to communicate appeals to most young
scientists. Because it does, we think instructors can
switch from emphasizing "finishing
research" to
"communicating" when their students are ready to
reconstruct tables or figures. A well-constructed
table or figure gives most of the results, so the student’s major task is to point out trends, changes,
and anomalies. That normally requires little
space
because most tabular or illustrative
data speak for
themselves and need not be discussed in the body
of the manuscript.
Because one should not repeat in the body of the
manuscript what is obvious in tables or figures, the
writing required is minimal, only enough to explain
what is not obvious. "Materials and methods are
given in the tables" conceivably could be all the
writing necessary under the materials and methods
section of a journal article.
It is not until after a student has constructed
public tables and figures that he is ready to do the
first draft of the text to record his results and to
discuss them. Writing an article around tables and
figures, rather than appending them, greatly reduces
the length of the journal article.
With the rough draft completed, what remains is
to make the article communicate to readers as clearly, exactly, and simply as possible.
To polish scientific writing, we suggest: use active voice, omit all unnecessary words, use first
person, break up clusters of adjectives (particularly
clusters of nouns used as adjectives), and write primarily with nouns and verbs.
Advantages .from Journal Articles
Preparing a manuscript for an externally refereed
journal helps a student organize and synthesize
ideas so he can report them clearly and accurately.
It helps him to make comparisons and to observe
changes, trends, anomalies-to see how to use his
information and data to support or challenge an
idea. Data that do not support or challenge an
VOL.
3,
DECEMBER 1974
25
idea should be omitted. Thus, writing a journal
article forces a student to makejudgrnents and decisions that writing a thesis seldom does.
Students at Kansas State University who take
the course, "Scientific Writing," and write journal
articles in lieu of theses or dissertations describe
colleagues who do not as "copping out" and getting
advanced degrees "the easy way."
Somegraduate schools are laying theses aside for
externally refereed journal articles and, thus, laying
the ground work for training
students
how to
publish. We agree with Martin (8), that journal
articles,
thus produced, should become an important alternative
to books by young scholars.
Few of them now can find a university
press even
"willing to give their manuscripts a reading" (8).
Students taking advanced degrees in agronomy
(crops and soils) may choose to do journal articles
in lieu of theses or dissertations at 20 of 48 landgrant universities
we surveyed in 1973. We have
listed the result~ of the survey below.
Twenty-eightuniversities require a classical thesis:
Univ. Arizona, Univ. Arkansas, Clemson Univ.,
Colorado State Univ.. Univ. Connecticut, Univ.
Delaware, Univ. Florida, Iowa State Univ., Univ.
Idaho, Univ. Kentucky, Louisiana State Univ.,
Univ. Maryland, MichiganState Univ., Univ. Missouri, Montana State Univ., Univ. Nevada, New
MexicoState Univ., Univ. NewJersey at Rutgers,
North DakotaState Univ., OhioState Univ., Oregon
State Univ., Univ. Tennessee, Texas A&M,
Virginia
Polytechnic Inst., WashingtonState Univ., Univ.
Wyoming,Utah State Univ.
Twenty give a choice between thesis and journal
article(s)
Auburn Univ., Univ. Califomia, Cornell Univ.,
Univ. Georgia, Univ. Hawaii,Univ. Illinois, Kansas
State Univ., Univ. Massachusetts, Univ. Maine,
Univ. Minnesota, Univ. Nebraska, Univ. New
Hampshire, North Carolina State Univ., Oklahoma
State Univ., Pennsylvania State Univ., Purdue,
Univ. Rhode Island, South Dakota State Univ.,
Univ. Vermont,Univ. Wisconsin.
Four of 28 are thinking of changingto journal article
thesis:
Iowa State Univ., Michigan State Univ., Univ.
Missouri, MontanaState Univ.
We hope this article encourages more major professors to have their graduate students go the journal article route as "partial fulfillment of the re3The Agronomy Department of Kansas State Univ.
allowed this choice beginningin 1972, Univ. Mainein 1948,
Univ: Nebraska in 1972, OklahomaState Univ. in 1962,
Purdue in 1957. All of these universities’ graduate schools
had earlier adopted the option.
26
WILFONG ET AL.:
PROFESSIONAL FIELD DAY
quirements" for an advanced degree. We think it
will improve writing, thinking, and possibly teaching. We have seen it give graduate students a competitive edge over others in seeking their first jobs.
We do not think doing journal articles is easier than
doing theses and dissertations. Rather it is a way
to improve students' writing and thinking.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We appreciate ideas and other help on this manuscript from Grace Muilenburg, Joseph Dallon, Fred
Parris, Pam Barnes, Richard Waldren, and Wayne
Rohrer.