Chemicals in My Food

OK so you think you have enough data? Congratulations, time to write a paper.  Different journals and fields have different expectations and my focus will be on the forms usually preferred in my field – food chemistry.  I’ll touch on other aspects of manuscript preparation later but I’ll start with the hardest; the results and discussion.   Results are a description of what you found. Discussion is the narrative you weave around your results, incorporating related findings from the literature.  You discussion is the argument that leads you to conclusions – what you know as a result of your efforts. Some journals prefer to separate results from discussion but as most food chemistry is published with blended results and discussion so I will take that approach.

Start by preparing as good version of the figures and tables you plan to use in your work.  Make sure you show your statistics along with the data so it’s clear what is significant.  Write a legend. Now, under each figure make a bullet list of the points you can conclude from it (A is bigger than B, x is proportional to y, some theoretical line fits your data well).  Be exhaustive but be careful to only not statistically significant work - if p>0.05 you don’t get to talk about it!  These are your results. 

Now try to arrange your figures into a sequence that makes for a compelling narrative.  Don’t write anything at this point but try telling the story out loud.  Talk about the figure in front of you.  You can refer backwards (“remember that data from a few figures ago?”) but not forwards (“all this is confirmed in a few pages”). Building the narrative is the hardest part of writing a manuscript and you may need to change the figures but keep working until your story really shines. This is a great time to practice with a lab mate or a mentor.  Remember – don’t write at this stage; tell your story out loud.

When you have your narrative together, turn your bullet points into full sentences and finally bind them into paragraphs.  You don’t need to repeat details from your methods section but add enough narrative description to guide your reader through your story (“Based on what we learnt in the first part of our study, we did this other experiment {describe it} and here are the results”.)

Take a second pass through and think about how your narrative relates to previously published work.  Add in references that critically draw on details from the literature.  This isn’t the time for generalities (“Smith (1909) also worked on this problem”), instead look for real quantitative comparisons (“Smith (1909) working on a similar system found a rate constant two order of magnitude greater than that reported here.  However…”).

Take a break for a couple of days then come back for a round of edits.  Did you cover all your bullet points? Do each of your paragraphs have a clear point and are they connected to their neighbors?  Does your work read like a story?  Again here, turn to your peers for advice.  If they don’t understand your work an anonymous reviewer will certainly have no patience.  All good?  Time to see what your advisor thinks…

(image “Frustration” uploaded under a creative commons license by Flickr user Sybren A. Stüvel)

 …each State which may take and claim the benefit of this act, to the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.

Section 4 of the Morill Act Establishing Land Grant Universities (1862)

The University currently receives less than 8 percent of its annual operating budget from the state, a figure that has eroded significantly over the last two decades. Under the governor’s proposal, that figure will fall to 4 percent.

Response from Penn State to the Governor’s budget proposal (2012)