Whitesides' Group: Writing a Paper** By George M. Whitesides* 1. What is a Scientific Paper? A paper is an organized description of hypotheses, data and conclusions, intended to instruct the reader. Papers are a cen- tral part of research. If your research does not generate papers, it might just as well not have been done. ��Interesting and unpublished�� is equivalent to ��non-existent��. Realize that your objective in research is to formulate and test hypotheses, to draw conclusions from these tests, and to teach these conclusions to others. Your objective is not to ��collect data��. A paper is not just an archival device for storing a com- pleted research program it is also a structure for planning your research in progress. If you clearly understand the pur- pose and form of a paper, it can be immensely useful to you in organizing and conducting your research. A good outline for the paper is also a good plan for the research program. You should write and rewrite these plans/outlines throughout the course of the research. At the beginning, you will have mostly plan at the end, mostly outline. The continuous effort to un- derstand, analyze, summarize, and reformulate hypotheses on paper will be immensely more efficient for you than a process in which you collect data and only start to organize them when their collection is ��complete��. 2. Outlines 2.1. The Reason for Outlines I emphasize the central place of an outline in writing papers, preparing seminars, and planning research. I espe- cially believe that for you, and for me, it is most efficient to write papers from outlines. An outline is a written plan of the organization of a paper, including the data on which it rests. You should, in fact, think of an outline as a carefully orga- nized and presented set of data, with attendant objectives, hypotheses, and conclusions, rather than an outline of text. An outline itself contains little text. If you and I can agree on the details of the outline (that is, on the data and organiza- tion), the supporting text can be assembled fairly easily. If we do not agree on the outline, any text is useless. Much of the time in writing a paper goes into the text most of the thought goes into the organization of the data and into the analysis. It can be relatively efficient in time to go through several (even many) cycles of an outline before beginning to write text writing many versions of the full text of a paper is slow. All writing that I do��papers, reports, proposals (and, of course, slides for seminars)��I do from outlines. I urge you to learn how to use them as well. 2.2. HowShould You Construct an Outline? The classical approach is to start with a blank piece of paper, and write down, in any order, all important ideas that occur to you concerning the paper. Ask yourself the obvious questions: ��Why did I do this work?�� ��What does it mean?�� ��What hypotheses did I mean to test?�� ��What ones did I actually test?�� ��What were the results? Did the work yield a new method of compound? What?�� ��What measurements did I make?�� ��What compounds? How were they character- ized?��. Sketch possible equations, figures, and schemes. It is essential to try to get the major ideas. If you start the research to test one hypothesis, and decide, when you see what you have, that the data really seem to test some other hypothesis better, don't worry. Write them both down, and pick the best combinations of hypotheses, objectives, and data. Often the objectives of a paper when it is finished are different from those used to justify starting the work. Much of good science is opportunistic and revisionist. When you have written down what you can, start with an- other piece of paper and try to organize the jumble of the first one. Sort all of your ideas into three major heaps (1��3). 1. Introduction Why did I do the work? What were the central motivations and hypotheses? 2. Results and Discussion What were the results? How were compounds made and characterized? What was measured? 3. Conclusions What does it all mean? What hypotheses were proved or disproved? What did I learn? Why does it make a difference? Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, No. 15, August 4 DOI: 10.1002/adma.200400767 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1375 �� [*] Prof. G. M. Whitesides Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138 (USA) E-mail: gmwhitesides@gmwgroup.harvard.edu [**] The text is based on a handout created on October 4, 1989. ESSAY

Next, take each of these sections, and organize it on yet finer scale. Concentrate on organizing the data. Construct fig- ures, tables, and schemes to present the data as clearly and compactly as possible. This process can be slow��I may sketch a figure five to ten times in different ways trying to decide how it is most clear (and looks best aesthetically). Finally, put everything��outline of sections, tables, sketches of figures, equations��in good order. When you are satisfied that you have included all the data (or that you know what additional data you intend to collect), and have a plausible organization, give the outline to me. Sim- ply indicate where missing data will go, how you think (hypothesize) they will look, and how you will interpret them if your hypothesis is correct. I will take this outline, add my opinions, suggest changes, and return it to you. It usually takes four to five iterations (often with additional experiments) to agree on an outline. When we have agreed, the data are usual- ly in (or close to) final form (that is, the tables, figures, etc., in the outline will be the tables, figures,... in the paper). You can then start writing, with some assurance that much of your prose will be used. The key to efficient use of your and my time is that we start exchanging outlines and proposals as early in a project as pos- sible. Do not, under anycircumstances, wait until the collection of data is ��complete�� before starting to write an outline. No project is ever complete, and it saves enormous effort and much time to propose a plausible paper and outline as soon as you see the basic structure of a project. Even if we decide to do significant additional work before seriously organizing a paper, the effort of writing an outline will have helped to guide the research. 2.3. The Outline What an outline should contain: 1. Title 2. Authors 3. Abstract Do not write an abstract. That can be done when the paper is complete. 4. Introduction The first paragraph or two should be written out complete- ly. Pay particular attention to the opening sentence. Ideally, it should state concisely the objective of the work, and indicate why this objective is important. In general, the Introduction should have these elements: d The objectives of the work. d The justification for these objectives: Why is the work im- portant? d Background: Who else has done what? How? What have we done previously? d Guidance to the reader: What should the reader watch for in the paper? What are the interesting high points? What strategy did we use? d Summary/conclusion: What should the reader expect as conclusion? In advanced versions of the outline, you should also include all the sections that will go in the Experimental section (at the level of paragraph subhead- ings) and indicate what information will go in the Micro- film section. 5. Results and Discussion The results and discussion are usually combined. This sec- tion should be organized according to major topics. The sepa- rate parts should have subheadings in boldface to make this organization clear, and to help the reader scan through the final text to find the parts of interest. The following list includes examples of phrases that might plausibly serve as section headings: d Synthesis of Alkane Thiols d Characterization of Monolayers d Absolute Configuration of the Vicinal Diol Unit d Hysteresis Correlates with Roughness of the Surface d Dependence of the Rate Constant on Temperature d The Rate of Self-Exchange Decreases with the Polarity of the Solvent Try to make these section headings as specific and informa- tion-rich as possible. For example, the phrase ��The Rate of Self-Exchange Decreases with The Polarity of The Solvent�� is obviously longer than ��Measurement of Rates��, but much more useful to the reader. In general, try to cover the major common points: d Synthesis of starting materials d Characterization of products d Methods of characterization d Methods of measurement d Results (rate constants, contact angles, whatever) In the outline, do not write any significant amount of text, but get all the data in their proper place: Any text should sim- ply indicate what will go in that section. d Section Headings d Figures (with captions) d Schemes (with captions and footnotes) d Equations d Tables (correctly formatted) Remember to think of a paper as a collection of experimen- tal results, summarized as clearly and economically as possible in figures, tables, equations, and schemes. The text in the paper serves just to explain the data, and is secondary. The more information can be compressed into tables, equations, etc., the shorter and more readable the paper will be. G. M. Whitesides/Whitesides' Group: Writing a Paper 1376 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim http://www.advmat.de Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, No. 15, August 4 ESSAY