The DOI matches its Crossref record.
How to write consistently boring scientific literature
Open accessAbstract
Although scientists typically insist that their research is very exciting and adventurous when they talk to laymen and prospective students, the allure of this enthusiasm is too often lost in the predictable, stilted structure and language of their scientific publications. I present here, a top‐10 list of recommendations for how to write consistently boring scientific publications. I then discuss why we should and how we could make these contributions more accessible and exciting.
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“From the perspective of science communication, having exciting and objective abstracts could make it easier for readers to appreciate the work, which in turn may promote knowledge dissemination (Sand-Jensen, 2007).”
From Can ChatGPT be used to predict citation counts, readership, and social media interaction? An exploration among 2222 scientific abstracts (2024) · cites this paper as Sand-Jensen, 2007
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Research works printed but not linked: 8
- 10.1146/annurev.es.19.110188.000315 · DOI
- Lawton J., 1990, Views from The Park. A series of 27 essays, Oikos, 59
- Lundberg P., 2006, Editorial, Oikos, 113, 3
- Odum E. P., 1971, Fundamentals of ecology
- Surlyk F., 2006, Pladetektonikken, Aktuel Naturvidenskab, 3, 28
- Warming J. E. B., 1896, Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzengeographie
- 10.1038/171737a0 · DOI · Paper page
- Vogel S., 1994, Life in moving fluids
Cited by
de Winter, J. (2024) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-024-04939-y · Cited by 34
Metadata
- Authors
- Sand‐Jensen, K.
- Affiliations
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- Corresponding author
- Sand‐Jensen, Kaj
- ORCID
- Sand‐Jensen, Kaj
- Venue
- Oikos
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2007-05
- Volume
- 116
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 723-727
- ISSN
- 0030-1299 (ISSN-L)
- 1600-0706
- OpenAlex
- W2103300546
- Cited by
- 87
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 23.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Oikos (publishedVersion)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Keywords
- scientific writing, writing style, scientific publications, readability, accessibility of science, science communication
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
