The Scientist's Guide to Writing: How to Write More Easily and Effectively throughout Your Scientific Career

The Scientists’ Guide to Writing is about the process of writing, and is not a nuts and bolts style reference. Stephen Heard takes the reader from author behaviors, such as procrastination versus bashing, finding your story and sticking with it, working with collaborators, dealing with the science article publishing process, and responding to reviews (including responding to idiotic reviews). Heard is a bit of heretic, with the gall to suggest that whimsy, jokes and occasional literary flourish have a place in science writing. He’s an ecologist, but the book is agnostic to discipline and he went to the trouble to base his many examples around a contemporary research dispute from astronomy.This is certainly the only book on science writing that I found myself reading from cover to cover, and it’s created a bit of buzz among other authors. (It’s probably the only book on science writing to be live tweeted chapter by chapter, #SciGuideToWriting.

Stephen Heard's book is magnificent ! I am only on page 30 but I am wearing out my yellow magic marker, highlighting his advice. He has identified all the reasons I have struggled to write throughout my scientific career.... particularly distractions e.g. " dog sees squirrel" - constantly getting sidelined by emails, Facebook, lunch, sports- any excuse for a diversion and has solid advice on how to change. The book is very enjoyable to read and there is a lot of LOL humor in it. I highly recommend this for any graduate student, or professional who depends on scientific writing in their career.

This book was insightful, helpful, and actually enjoyable to read. Heard lays bare scientific writing as a process, pointing out places where improvement can be had. He also dives in to the sections of scientific papers and has valuable advice on style. All the while, his witty footnotes and asides sprinkle enough humor to entertain without distracting from the overall themes (i.e., he practices what he preaches).As a published researcher, this book has already had an impact in the way I go about starting the writing process; I now think of writing as much more of an iterative process instead of an eureka-seeking adventure. I have no doubt that this book will be useful to others in clarifying writing as process and for building a scaffold that can be used again and again for easy scientific story-telling.

A bit long on the agrandizement

I am using ng this book to teach a research case. I find it more easy for new researchers to comprehend than the typical textbook. The writing is not dry or overly technical for my students.

A book about how to write well should be well-written. Indeed, this book is a very enjoyable read. It provides a summary of scientific writing, incorporating an invaluable historical perspective and rational to current formatting trends in science writing. Heard has a spunky sense of humor. I have enjoyed reading this book as I work to improve my writing skills. Anyone serious about publishing in the scientific literature should read this book.

This is my favorite book on scientific writing! I bought a copy for everyone in my research group at the U of Michigan last year. We used the book to help critique our writing and published papers, structure our stories, and look for hints on how to cultivate good practices. This book made it a lot easier to understand what makes great writing such a pleasure to read.

I purchased this to help parse down dissertation chapters into publishable manuscripts. I wish I had done so before starting to write the dissertation itself.Well written insight into the processes and practices of academic writing - easily accessible book with clear advice and practices to improve the workflow for producing manuscripts.

This is my reference book to write scientific articles. But also was a key element to prepare my course on Scientific Writing. It has the perfect combination of practical tips on what goes where in a paper, with techniques to beat the common mental blocks. The chapter where he talks about procrastination is simply brilliant! And my students who have read it all equally loved it. I bought it because the author is an ecologist as I am, but actually, he gives examples of all kinds of disciplines.

Nice Book with a good structure, sometimes maybe a bit too much of the authors personal opinion for some students, but it also gives the book a nice character taking it from school book to almost feeling like an actual person is giving you advice .

Excellent book! Heard' tips and suggestions are very well grounded and practical! The best book of this subject I've read so far (n=4).

This book would make an excellent addition to recommended reading lists for any undergraduate science course. There are plenty of resources out there that go in depth into the details of specific citation styles, grammar, etc., but few cover that the act of scientific writing quite like this book.Each chapter manages to pack in a wealth of practical advice without being dry and boring. The tone is light and enjoyable, with a few good chuckles thrown in for good measure. Thanks to this book, I now have a much clearer and efficient approach to not only writing, but reading scientific papers.My only regret with this book was purchasing the ebook version, as I found myself wishing I could fill it with sticky notes and reminders. I will absolutely be purchasing a hard copy of this book and keeping it within reach of my desk, as it is an invaluable source of information for future reference.

Best writing guide ever.