Postdoc Roshan Paladugu is featured in this month’s issue of Science in the Careers section on the topic of: “How to write a research paper.” Congratulations Roshan!
In the discussion, I try to explain how the data supports my assertions and how strongly. I feel it is the most difficult section since there is always a risk of under-explaining your data. Giving some thought to how to give a twist to the title or make it unique is important so the paper can be more easily found and remembered in the tide of research manuscripts. For the acknowledgments, I usually keep a spreadsheet with all the individuals and organizations that have supported the research. Finally, I consult with my supervisors or institute’s legal office to fill in the declarations about funding, potential conflicts of interest, and compliance with ethical standards and reporting guidelines. The choice of journal may affect the length of the manuscript and order of the sections. Formatting and citation style can easily be changed by working in reproducible workflows using LaTeX and RMarkdown.
—Roshan Paladugu, postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology