Scientific Writing

As a researcher, a significant portion of one’s time is spent on writing, editing and reviewing papers. Unfortunately, Scientific writing is a skill the fewest are taught and are expected to teach themselves often purely by reading scientific publications. There are a number of courses and tools out there to assist and improve your scientific writing process.

Here a short List of Scientific Writing Guides and Courses :

• Free Scientific Writing course from Stanford
• Leicesters Scientific Writing Guide
• Monash University Guide to Scientific Writing for undergraduates

Papers are almost exclusively written in LaTeX, an advanced typesetting program specifically designed for the production of technical documents.
It can be run through a number of editors and compilers locally or alternatively using an online editor like Overleaf.
Overleaf has grown in popularity for its large number of templates to choose from (MNRAS included) as well as the option to work directly with collaborators on the same document.

Common Latex editors and documentation:

• The LaTeX Project page
• Editor pages for Overleaf and BBEdit
• The LaTeX documentation on overleaf including a “getting started with LaTeX in 30min” tutorial

Finally, there are programs with the purpose of annotating and filing papers as well as creating bibliography files to use in conjunction with LaTeX. While the method of “a large stack of papers on the desk” remains ever-popular you should consider a more efficient way.

Most popular methods for managing read papers and bibliographies:

• Mendeley
  • will allow you to back up all your read annotated papers into one large bib.tex file
• EndNote