A Beginners' Guide to Scientific Writing and Critical Reading

Abstract

Writing a scientific paper is a time-consuming task that requires enormous effort, especially for beginners. However, novel scientific discoveries or useful clinical information obtained from a single patient may not be shared with the scientific and medical community if they are not published. This short article is intended to inform beginners and their tutors on how to write a scientific paper/case report in the field of neuroscience in Japanese. In addition, the methods used to conduct the peer review process are briefly mentioned. To write a scientific article, authors are required to use simple and direct expressions to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. The introduction section must be attractive and flow from providing general to specific information, and the final discussion section should pertain to specific matter and end with general statements. A paper will be successful if the readers appreciate this "scientific arch" as a cardinal message of the article. Intensive reading of colleagues' papers also helps develop the beginners' writing skills. Although young researchers/physicians have rare opportunities to review scientific articles, peer-review experiences are useful for writing papers in the future.