Students often misinterpret the objective "learn how to improve writing skills" that is found among the many objectives of the C471 course. We do not have a major writing assignment in this course, nor do we critique your writing skills. On the other hand, we do introduce you to many tools that will assist in the task of writing. One of the most important things to grasp in this session is the conventions used in formal science writing, such as the use of abbreviations for journal titles and the frequent omission of article titles from the citations. The terms "citation" and "reference" are used in several contexts in C471. In this session, they refer to items of a bibliography.
In C471, we will introduce you to some bibliographic programs and databases that will make easier the formal process of writing up chemical research. These include chemical structure drawing programs that integrate with wordprocessing programs or structure-searching databases, bibliography reference manager software, products/reference tools that facilitate putting bibliographic references in the proper format, as well as tools to help you formally name chemical substances, etc.
That science has advanced so rapidly in the last few centuries is largely due to the major developments in communications and publication technology, starting with the invention of the printing press and movable type. The vast majority of the archival record of science is still very much in the format of the printed word, and paper-based forms of communication will remain a very important part of science. The records of science exist because scientists write about and publish the results of their experiments.
As a scientist, you will be called upon to write many different types of compositions, ranging from laboratory notebooks to grant proposals, technical reports, and journal articles. There are books that attempt to teach you how to write better. This course does not duplicate the material in such books. However, there are science writing courses or style manuals on the Internet that you can take advantage of (see the SIRCh link for some of them). In this section, we will become acquainted with other tools that can help make the process of researching and writing scientific documents a much easier chore.
Images can easily be inserted into modern wordprocessing programs such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. These programs come with spellchecker dictionaries, but unfortunately, the scientific vocabulary is quite limited in them. Scientific dictionary programs to supplement wordprocessing dictionaries can be found at ChemSW, Chemistry Software for Windows.
Graphing and data analysis programs make the task of visualizing data much simpler nowadays. These are designed to provide a combination of the common, frequently used features found in spreadsheet, visualization, and statistical software. One such package is KaleidaGraph from Synergy Software. Another is Origin from Microcal. There are even scientific writing packages that handle mathematical expressions, such as MacKichan Software's Scientific Notebook.
A bewildering array of products could be considered tools to aid in writing, and many of those can be found among the products at ChemSW (formerly, WindowChem Software). In this lesson, we will cover only a few of the major tools that can help you write better scientific documents.
One of the most popular chemistry structure drawing programs is CambridgeSoft's ChemDraw.
The opening screen of ChemDraw is typical of
such
programs, with selections of pre-drawn chemical objects to choose from.
A version of ChemDraw that serves as a WWW structure client is available
free to educational users at the present
time. Other producers of chemical drawing software also give academics free
copies of their drawing products--either the full versions, as with MDL's ISIS/Draw, or freeware
versions such as ACD's ChemSketch
or Chemaxon's Marvin.
Several programs have been developed to take the image of the chemical structure one step further--to give it an acceptable IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) name. Thus, a program, such as AUTONOM will properly name close to 90 percent of the organic substances that are drawn with the program. ACD's Name program claims even higher accuracy. For other programs with this functionality, see the SIRCh supplementary page that corresponds to this lesson.
The more general personal bibliography manager software packages, such as ProCite, Reference Manager, and EndNote, while lacking in chemical capabilities, have other important features that make them very useful. For example, one can download records from a bibliographic database such as Science Citation Index and import the records directly into a personal database, without manipulating the data. Once loaded, the data can be re-used in the writing process. Such programs typically have a number of style sheets that allow the data in the records to be changed to suit the requirements of various publishers or authoritative style guides. One can mark a point in a manuscript and tie it to a reference in the bibliography that is automatically generated from the database. A recent feature in the personal database software is the capability to capture certain data from the Web, such as the TITLE and URL of a Web document and automatically load them into the database. Once a record has been formed for a Web page, the record can be recalled and automatically loaded through a Web browser. For additional information on the features of these three popular bibliography managers, see: Bibliographic Reference Managers.
Below is the answer screen from a search of the CASSI CD-ROM for the German journal with abbreviated title: Ber. Dtsch. Chem. Ges..
The journals published by the American Chemical Society are among the most important and highly cited scientific journals in the world. Likewise, books published by the ACS are also very respected. To assist both authors of papers and books and editors of ACS publications, the ACS has produced The ACS Style Guide: A Manual for authors and editors. There you will find instuctions and examples on the format required to cite all sorts of documents in a bibliography. In addition, the guide has a list of abbreviations for the most frequently cited journal titles. Other topics include grammar, style, usage, illustrations, tables, lists, and units of measure, as well as the conventions used in chemistry. It also covers numerous related topics, from peer review and copyrights to oral presentations and the ACS ethical guidelines for publication.
Link to
supplemental readings
Link to Internet
resources on this topic
Copyright
Gary Wiggins
24 August 1997