Robert A. Day is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Delaware. For 19 years he directed the publishing program of the American Society for Microbiology, where he was the managing editor of the Journal of Bacteriology and 8 other journals. Professor Day is considered an authority on scientific publishing. Day became director of ISI Press, the book-publishing subsidiary of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), and later became vice president of ISI. He is the author of How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, now in its seventh edition.
Dr. Day taught writing seminars all over the world and many of his articles and books have been translated into other languages. He recently published another important writing guide for scientists and other professionals with his daughter, Nancy Sakaduski, who is a writer in her own right. Their new book is the third edition of Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists and Other Professionals.
Nancy Sakaduski has published more than 100 articles and 15 books, under the name “Nancy Day." Most of these are geared to a young adult audience and deal with science, history, or contemporary issues. "Mapping the Mind," which appeared in Odyssey magazine, won the 1995 Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Award for Nonfiction. Passport to History: Ancient Greece was named best social studies book for the year 2000 by the Society of School Librarians International. Nancy has also published dozens of business and technical articles. She co-authored the third edition of Scientific English, published in 2011, and was the developmental editor for an upcoming book on global energy innovation. She is currently working on a book about how to manage volunteer workforces.
I am so pleased to be able to interview Robert Day and Nancy Sakaduski for the English Writing Help blog. As most of you are already familiar with Professor Day’s extremely popular guide, How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, I am sure you are anxiously awaiting the interview.
First I want to welcome Robert Day and Nancy Sakaduski to our blog forum.
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I want to begin by asking, “Why the new book?” When the former guide to writing and publishing a research paper was so wildly popular, and was translated into so many languages, why did you feel the need to write Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists and Other Professionals?
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NS: Scientific English had not been updated since 1995. The topic is more important today than it ever was, but some of the examples had become outdated and we needed to address the increasing role of electronic forms of communication. I will let my father address why he wrote Scientific English initially.
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RD: The How to book, first published in 1978, covers a very large subject area. In 1992, I published the first edition of Scientific English, which I designed as an intensive study of the nuts and bolts of the English language.
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My next question is for Professor Day and involves the common scientific writing errors that you have seen in your scientific editing career. What common problems have you seen when scientists submit manuscripts to peer reviewed journals?
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RD: Over the years, I have become ever more convinced that most writing errors result from embellishment. To write clearly, you should keep it simple. As one wag said, use the KISS system (Keep it Simple, Stupid). It usually comes down to syntax. That’s what people have the most problems with—word order.
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If you could give advice to the young scientific writer today, in getting their research published, what would you say?
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RD: I would remind them to keep the KISS system in mind. It’s publish or perish, so it’s not enough to do science, you have to write and publish science. An important part of that is being able to communicate clearly.
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What would you say were your greatest joys and your greatest disappointments in your professional life?
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RD: The reception of my two principal books, within the scientific community, has of course been very satisfying. However, the level of scientific writing doesn’t seem to have improved very much, so maybe I shouldn’t do any crowing. I am pleased to have had such a long career in this field, to have had the opportunity to lecture in many different countries, and to have met many scientists from a wide variety of fields.
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Is there an online forum or professional journals where the young scientists can publish their research, even if they are not associated with a famous professor in their field who can co-author their paper?
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NS: Some good blogs we mention in the book include: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org and http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org. Blogs are a good place for young scientists to follow their field and get started writing and publishing online. Blog aggregators such as http://scienceblogs.com and http://science.alltop.com are a good place to find blogs of interest. Many of the mainstream scientific journals now have online content as well, although their requirements for online publishing are usually just as stringent as for their print publications. Young scientists should definitely check out World Association of Young Scientists http://ways.org for lots of great information. Another good resource is AuthorAid http://www.authoraid.info, which helps researchers in developing countries.
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If you could live your life over again, would you work in the sciences or some other field? Why?
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RD: In the sciences, or in writing, preferably both, creativity brings the greatest joys in life.
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Nancy, I have to ask this question for myself: What is it like for a daughter to write a book with her father?
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NS: It was an enormous honor and extremely satisfying. Although I am not an expert in the subject area, I was able to work with my father to update the book and add material about electronic publishing. We had each published books on our own, but having both of our names on the cover of the same book was a great joy.
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Why did you choose to write for the young adult audience?
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NS: I started in that area because it is very rewarding to write for young people. It also gave me an opportunity to write on a lot of different topics. I am now writing for adults, but I sometimes have ideas for books for young people, so I may go back to it at some point.
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Do you believe that young adults have an accurate perception of the working lives of scientists?
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NS: One thing I hope is changing is the perception that all scientists are men. A female friend of mine who is a virologist went into a classroom to talk about her career and at the end of her presentation she showed a photograph of a group of people in a lab and asked the children to point out the scientist. The children pointed to the man, even though she herself was in the picture! She had just told them about her work, but they had failed to grasp that she was a scientist until she pointed it out.
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What are your impressions of the young people today, who are interested in science and want to pursue it as a career?
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NS: One of the people I asked to review and give input on the manuscript is a very serious high school student (now in college). While still in high school he started a science blog and worked in a laboratory. I was very impressed with his focus, but I think it’s unusual. Many young people are disheartened by the job market and lack of (in America) government support for the sciences.
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If I walked into your study or library, what books or journals would I see?
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NS: That’s a great question! I think most good writers are great readers. I read a wide array of books and articles, on all different topics. As an example, I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the book about HeLa cells and the woman whose cells were used to create that immensely important cell line, and am now reading Treasure Island, inspired by a recent visit to an art museum where they had the original illustrations on display. My shelves hold my father’s books (of course), mysteries, writing references, books about gardening, novels, nonfiction, and some of the books my mother collected before she died.
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I want to thank you both for this opportunity to interview you for the English Writing Help blog.
Thank you.
Kimberly Fujioka, Head Academic Editor
You can purchase Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists and Other Professionals at Amazon.
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