In a comment to my previous post, TheGrinch wrote:
... In my competitive academic field, I simply cannot let my students to take however long they want (or need) to come up with a manuscript with a certain acceptable standard.?
Case in point: my first PhD student, who is an excellent and independent researcher. For his first paper, the draft he gave me was so painful that I kept only the figures and rewrote it entirely. For his second paper, I am trying my best to avoid the temptation to rewrite again. We are now at 9th draft, and it is still nowhere near the minimum passable standard. And as the time goes by, I am starting to lose my patience. No doubt, this process is also hard on the student, who I sense nearing his breaking point. I have heard murmuring of protests, of why I am making it so hard being so hard to please, and why am I not "helping."?
And not just PhD students, the same story goes for postdocs as well. Though at least they are more independent in executing the work. Keep in mind though, these guys are otherwise excellent, and I really have no complaints.?
I really really want them to learn how to write well, as writing well is so important for a successful career as a professional scientist. However, I am also bound by the expectations my organization has for my performance, one of the most important measure of which is the number of papers my group publishes every year. So I cannot also wait forever.?
I was going to just respond in a comment, but then the comment got too long, so here we are...
TheGrinch, I definitely agree. When a piece of work is completed, papers need to go out sooner rather than later, and there are several reasons for that. First, papers are how funding bodies judge success of a project. Grants have milestones and reviews and renewals, which all need to be respected. Secondly, we as PIs are obligated to the funding agencies and the taxpayers to disseminate the knowledge promptly, so that others can benefit from it and build on it. Thirdly, ?for junior PIs, there is the relentless tenure-track clock ticking, and publications need to go out and fast, or the PI's career will be over. There are those who will say that the latter is selfish, that we are there to educate the students first and foremost. No. Caring about keeping your own job -- highly competitive and unlikely to get a second chance at -- is not selfish; losing it for reasons that are within your ability to fix is just stupid. Nobody will give you a medal for the most caring mentor evah if your get denied tenure on account of not enough papers, which you only didn't publish out of some misguided belief that the students should be allowed to take as much time as they need to produce publishable text.
On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that training students and postdocs how to write technical papers is an important part of PhD and postdoctoral training, regardless of the student or postdoc going into academia or not. No matter what they end up doing, they are PhD-holding scientists and engineers, and will be writing technical texts one way or another throughout their careers. Writing is paramount. (The same goes for being able to give presentations, but that's another story.) Therefore, I am all for giving the student or postdoc who did the work the opportunity to draft and revise the manuscript, incorporating detailed comments. However, the student/postdoc has to take this task seriously and the text has to significantly improve between drafts; the manuscript actually has to converge to a publishable form within a reasonable time frame, otherwise the student or postdoc loses the privilege (or some would say the burden) of working on the text. Now, what is a "reasonable time frame"? Well, that depends on a number of variables, with a few that come to mind being:
Is there a ?grant application or renewal deadline? Is it a paper on the work from a grant that ended and that you are not renewing? Is it from a grant that's in year 2 out of 3? Is the PI going up for tenure in the next couple of years?? Are you in danger of getting scooped? Is the publication of this work holding up something else, perhaps more impactful, in the pipeline? (e.g. you need to get the instrumentation paper published, so you can write up a paper on the awesome new experimental finding using said instrumentation) So a paper may need to get out in a matter of weeks, but you may also have months. While on the tenure track, I was considerably more high-strung and anxious about papers getting out ASAP and was quicker to say "Screw it, I am rewriting this whole damn thing" than I am now.
Among professional scientists and engineers, there are some who naturally have more of a talent for writing in general and those who have less. Still, all have to learn to write competently. Fortunately, technical writing is to a great degree formulaic, so there is a fairly low natural ability threshold for becoming decent at it. I am confident that any methodical, systematic scientist or engineer, who understands the importance of clearly communicating findings, can become at least a competent writer regardless of literary talent. But the key is accepting that technical writing is an inherent part of the profession, and that mastering it is not a nuisance.
No junior researcher starts their technical writing journey with flawless prose. Everyone needs guidance, especially when they first start. Many PIs provide copious comments on (usually) written drafts of manuscripts, which the student is supposed to take to heart and not only incorporate the corrections in the text, but also learn from the comments and extrapolate for the future, understanding why these comments were made and why certain things fly and certain others don't in research manuscripts (obviously, when things are unclear, the advisor should be for clarification).
In my experience, there are several types of students based on what happens after that first draft of the first paper.
1) There are students whose quality of writing ramps up remarkably fast. I don't think that correlates with whether or not they want to be professors; my first student went to industry and was like that. I also don't think it necessarily correlates with natural writing or speaking ability. Some people just really own their writing proficiency and are very focused on improving it. My first student showed remarkable improvement within the timespan of two papers; the first draft of the second manuscript was already in excellent shape, it looked like a scientific article rather than ruminations of a near-layperson. I have had the fortune of working with a few others junior researchers who were like that. These people really strive to improve, analyze what needs to be changed, are not afraid to seek input from me or others, and are open to criticism.
2) Some students are really not motivated to improve their writing because of a misguided idea that it's unimportant for their jobs in the "real world" but only something they need to suffer through in order to get the diploma. No matter how often I tell my students that no matter where they work chances are they will have to write technical texts all the time, some nonetheless keep thinking they know better and don't want to put in much effort. I had a student who published prolifically and who was like that. Even his very last paper was barely passable after many draft iterations, you could see that didn't give a rat's ass about the paper. He dutifully entered specific corrections, but refused to engage his brain in writing. I always ended up having to heavily revise despite many, many back-and-forths on each manuscript.
3) Some people think you, the advisor/PI, have stupid and unreasonable demands, such as that the text actually be readable by humans. They think you are ruining their manuscript by dumbing it down, and that the worthy will understand the innumerable "implied" assumptions while the unworthy are, understandably, not worthy of an explanation anyway. I had a brilliant student who was like that, and with whom every article was like pulling teeth, as we would argue over every change. (He behaved similarly in regards to comments to his presentations -- whenever I said something was unclear and should be presented differently, he would not take it at face value and go fix it, but would instead go on to argue with me how it is in fact clear and should be understood in a following manner.)
4) Many students have the right attitude and are willing to make improvements, but really have a hard time deciphering what it is that makes a difference between a well-written manuscript and a poorly-written one. I am afraid there is no substitute here for the advisor pinpointing what the building blocks of a manuscript are and what the students are to look for, how certain parts are structured, and what good and bad examples of writing are. I do this with students individually as well as in group meetings periodically. We talk about the common parts of short communications and comprehensive articles, how each part is structured etc. The abstract and introduction are the hardest for students to write well, and we talk about them a lot and often. There are also differences in how to write for a Reputable Society Journal versus Prestigious Society Letters versus a Glamour Magazine, on top of deciding what type of publication venue is appropriate for given results. Talking about all these with group members is important.
It's tempting to send students to take technical writing courses, but I would advise caution. Recently, a student advised by another professor in a 3-PI collaboration submitted the first draft of his manuscript. It was a passive voice monstrosity. When all three PIs went "WTF passive voice?" he told us that he had taken a technical writing course in which he had been taught explicitly that he was to use passive voice for objective facts and only use first person singular (plural) when stating his (our) subjective beliefs. Being that this was technical paper, it was almost all in passive voice. Now, I have no idea who taught this class he took, but this is decidedly NOT the way to write scientific articles today. Passive voice is passe, and is generally used sparingly in technical writing. There is nothing wrong with saying "We measured this..."
My point is we cannot just send students to be educated by others, without knowing what it is that they are getting. Sure, students for whom English is a second language would often benefit from writing in a variety of forms, as much as they can, and all sorts of courses where they get feedback on grammar and vocabulary and general style are likely to be very useful. But when it comes to writing scientific manuscripts, there are conventions ?that are best taught by practicing scientists. There is no substitute for a motivated student learning from an involved advisor, getting feedback on drafts, and doing their best to understand what the improvements mean and trying to internalize them.
Source: http://academic-jungle.blogspot.com/2013/06/more-musings-on-technical-writing.html
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