A few weeks ago I discovered a new weapon to add to my writing arsenal. Whatever your scientific discipline, I think you (or your students) might find this exercise helpful for writing papers for peer reviewed publication. The tool is the Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM) short form article: http://aem.asm.org/misc/journal-ita_org.dtl#04
Whether or not you plan to actually submit a paper to AEM in this format, writing a short form paper draft can be a useful method to tackle a manuscript, especially if you have trouble getting started.
The basic format is:
Title (keep it short)
Running Title (54 characters and spaces max)
Abstract (50 words max)
Body (1000 words max, no section breaks, combine methods, results and discussion)
Figures and tables (kept to a minimum)
References
The beauty of the short form AEM paper is it is SHORT. so you have to distill your thoughts down to the essential. The strict word limit really force you to focus your presentation. For example: 50 word abstract (!!). Initially, I misread the title requirements and though the running title limit was the character limit on the title - this is actually a great exercise too, it is very hard to compose a 54 character title! Maybe a bit too hard - but it does force you to be as succinct and relevant as possible.
Within a few hours you can have a rough draft in your hands. If you are unsure about the direction you want the paper to take, you can write another one. Why not try out different ways to present your work and determine the most appropriate and relevant way to present your results? The AEM short draft format is probably not the format you'll stick with for your second draft or onwards. Chances are your final product will need to be much longer and divided into sections (intro, methods, results, discussion). Thus, it is much easier to explore the presentation approach for your work at the first draft stage where the manuscript is short and easy to follow, then in later drafts where you can get lost in the forest of information presented.
If nothing else, using this method can help you get that first draft on the table to work from - better to start from somewhere than nowhere!
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Nice idea. It's true, you can throw together a first draft of a paper very quickly if you stick to a sensible format. You can then expand out to a full paper, but these short form papers or short communications are also really neat way to publish. If you can get your work into a short paper, why add more words? For microbiologists, the journal Antonie van Leuweenhoek also accepts short form articles. Happy writing!!
ReplyDeleteGavin! I missed your post, thank you for your feedback. Excellent point, there is no harm in being succinct. I'll check out AvL's article specs, thanks for the tip. I owe you a Christmas card, meep!!
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