Today, I saw the article Publish like a pro by Kendall Powell in Nature. Some tips on how to write:
- You are only as good as your last paper – previous success does not guarantee future acceptance.
- You’ve got to hook the editor with the abstract.
- Don’t delete those files. Keep every version. You never know what aspect you can use for some other piece of writing.
- Writing is an amazingly long learning curve. many authors say that they’re still getting better as a writer after several decades.
- The most significant work is improved by subtraction. Keeping the clutter away allows a central message to be communicated with a broader impact.
- Write every day if possible.
- once you’ve written what you wanted to convey, end it there.
These go hand in hand with this earlier post, although Kendall’s article does not stop there. Therefore, read it!
Personally, what I need for writing is a quiet, non-distracting environment with the internet switched off.
Via Scott Berkun, a nice 2007 article by Louis Menand in the New Yorker:
Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in “Casablanca” says “Play it again, Sam”; Leo Durocher did not say “Nice guys finish last”; Vince Lombardi did say “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” quite often, but he got the line from someone else. Patrick Henry almost certainly did not say “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; William Tecumseh Sherman never wrote the words “War is hell”; and there is no evidence that Horace Greeley said “Go west, young man.” Marie Antoinette did not say “Let them eat cake”; Hermann Göring did not say “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my gun”; and Muhammad Ali did not say “No Vietcong ever called me nigger.”
In order to have one that was said – Daniel Patrick Moynihan:
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Add to Connotea
Lately, the notion that geminate recombination in organic solar cells is a major loss mechanism is more and more under fire. Street et al present an “experimental test” for geminate recombination [Street 2010a]. They investigate P3HT:PC60BM nor PCDTBT:PC70BM bulkheterojunction solar cells with a transient current technique at 200K and 300K between -1 and 1V external voltage bias. The authors conclude that neither exhibit significant geminate recombination, while pointing out that
Since the relative importance of geminate or nongeminate recombination depends on the specific materials comprising the cell and possibly on the method of preparation, other cells may or may not have a larger geminate recombination contribution.