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What citation style should you use?

What is citation?

When writing, if you refer to specific information from another source, you are often expected to identify that source. For example, if I wrote, “Francis Scott developed a new form of measuring temperature.”, I should acknowledge the source by making some type of notation directly after the statement. This is known as citation or in-text citation.

In-text citation is usually written immediately after the citable text, often by inserting the author(s) surname(s) and publication date in brackets. This type of citation is known as the Author-Date System. Another common form is the Number Citation System where a superscript number is written directly after the citable text. In both types, the full details of the source of the citation is compiled as a list of references at the end of the document. The number system is commonly used in all Wikipedia articles where hyperlinking is also commonly used to refer to sources.

Should everyone use citation?

No. Whether you cite the source of your information depends on whether your information is common knowledge, the type of document you are writing and what discipline you are writing for. In-text citations are expected in academic and peer-reviewed research publications and in many scientific reports and other technical publications. If you are writing an industry, client, government or commercially-sensitive report, first check whether you are expected to cite. For scientific blogposts and other online documents, hyperlinking your sources may be sufficient but be mindful that these links should be regularly checked to ensure they are still working.

What citation style should I use?

There are a wide variety of referencing styles stipulating how to record an in-text citation and how to compile a bibliography or list of references. The most common types for the sciences are either Harvard or APA (American Psychological Association) which are both an Author-Date system. What style you choose may depend upon your document type, publisher, discipline or organisation. If working within a research institution or university, check with your library, department or supervisor about what style you should use. However, depending upon the circumstances there is often individual choice.

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What is science writing?

What is science writing?

Although this question appears straightforward, there are different definitions and common misconceptions about what constitutes science writing. Some students attending my writing workshops initially assume that science writing is restricted to academic writing to produce theses or research papers. Some assume science writing is communicating scientific concepts in plain English to a wide audience, while others assume that their consultancy report is not science writing. I teach that the term is not restrictive. At its simplest and broadest definition, science writing is writing about science.

There are different types of science writing

Science writing takes different forms, according to the topic, the purpose of the author and who the document is designed for. Science writing can create a thesis, a research paper, a report, an email, a conference talk, client criteria, project deliverables, a proposal, a funding application, a blogpost, a magazine or news article, a brochure, a fact sheet or a video script. A scientist publishing a research paper will write for their peers, a journalist writing for a popular science magazine will write for people who are fascinated by science and technology, while a technician writing a report may write for people who need to know about a new process, methodology or technique.

Science writing is writing about science

The key feature of all types of science writing is that the topic under discussion is a scientific topic: that the information presented has been gathered, analysed and critiqued using accepted scientific methods. This is true whether you are presenting new science (e.g. research papers, theses), reviewing research by others (e.g. literature reviews, desktop reviews), reporting scientific approaches and methods to solve commercial or industry issues (e.g. reports, policy reviews) or writing about the astonishing world of science (e.g. news or magazine article).

Who can write about science?
You don’t need to be a scientist to write about science. You don’t need a degree to do science writing. Anyone can write about science, irrespective of their background or qualifications. Occasionally some people assume they are not science writers if they are not publishing papers, but if the work they write about describes scientific processes, follows scientific procedure or refers to scientific research, then it is science writing.

Science writing includes technical and industry reports
Not all science projects produce empirical data or are investigative. These projects might not be considered ‘research’ as such. Not all research projects are designed to be published by peer-review; some projects are written up and published in-house, online or via government publications, or remain unpublished for confidential reasons. Vast amounts of valid scientific documents are produced in this way.

Some projects are exploratory, information-sourcing or descriptive and do not produce empirical data or follow a classic approach of the scientific method. Therefore, these projects are not necessarily written following the traditional science report structure of AIMRD: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion.

Science projects that investigate commercial issues are often structured according to topic, industry, client and legal requirements. Separate from the PhD and research paper, there are so many different types of scientific documents that it is not possible to summarise their structure here. However, key sections that are common to both science reports and peer-review papers are a summary (Executive Summary in reports and Abstract in paper), an Introduction and Discussion or Conclusion sections.

What is central to all types of science writing
The key requirement of all types of science writing is that it must be based upon evidence; the information presented and discussed needs to have been gathered, analysed and critiqued using accepted scientific methods. Any assumptions, ideas, predictions or suggestions must not be presented as though they are a scientific fact.

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* Introduction to Digital Resolution.
* Image resolution and print quality.
* How do I make high quality figures for my scientific publication?.
* The difference between image re-sizing and re-sampling.
* Science: preparing your figures.

How to maintain high-quality images for publication

How to ensure your photos, graphs and illustrations are of suitable quality for publication

Digital images are stored in different formats, depending upon the software. Common examples include TIFF, JPEG and EPS. Before preparing figures for the web or for print, it is vital to ensure that the appropriate resolution is used.

Resolution describes the number of pixels within an image and image quality increases with resolution. A pixel is the smallest unit of digital information that forms an image. Resolution can be expressed as the number of pixels per dimension (e.g. 1200 pixels wide by 750 pixels high) or as the number of pixels within a specified area (pixels per inch or ppi). An image that has a resolution of 300ppi and is 4 x 2.5 inches in size, will be 1200 pixels wide (4 x 300) = and 750 pixels high (2.5 x 300). In general, the more pixels you have per unit area, the more detailed the image will be and the larger the file size. Some software (such as Photoshop) allows you to change the units to pixels per centimetre; however, the publishing standard is usually ppi.

The resolution of an image for viewing on a monitor is described in ppi, whereas the term dots per inch (dpi)describes the resolution of a printed image, as printers print dots and not pixels. The terms are used interchangeably but for most purposes, ppi and dpi are essentially the same thing to describe resolution. To view an image on the accepted resolution is 72ppi as most LCD monitors display 67-130ppi. When submitting figures for publication, 300 ppi is the generally accepted resolution for print images.

High quality (300ppi) Low quality (50ppi)

If your image needs to be 300ppi, then you need to consider the size of your image in the final printed form and the number of pixels in your total image. A photo that will be 4 x 2.5 inches when printed will need at least 1200 x 750 pixels to achieve the desired print-quality resolution of 300 ppi. If you have fewer pixels, then the quality of the image (i.e. the resolution) will be reduced. You can also quickly check whether the resolution is sufficient by zooming your image to 400% and if it is blurry (pixelated), then the image may not reproduce well when printed. For more information on image resolution, and another way to check if the resolution of your image is appropriate, see https://www.thecanvasprints.co.uk/image-resolution-for-printing.

When re-sizing an image, some software programmes automatically change the size of the image without changing the number of pixels. For example, if you re-size a 1200 x 750 pixel image from 4 x 2.5 inches to a 12 x 7.5 inches the number of pixels will remain the same but the resolution will drop from 300ppi to 100ppi . The larger image will look OK on the screen, but the image quality will be poor if it is printed. Whatever image size you require, ensure the final version is at the desired resolution.

Additional terminology

Colour space is the way colour information is stored in a file. Grayscale refers to black and white (and grey!) images which use a single colour channel. RGB is a commonly-used colour space that divides colours into 3 channels: Red, Green and Blue. RGB is used by computers and digital devices and is commonly used by publishers who want to make sure their documents are properly displayed on their reader’s devices. CMYK is a four channel colour space (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) commonly used during the printing process. An RGB image might need to be converted to CMYK if it will be printed. Some publishers will do the conversion themselves, so you need to be aware that the colour of RGB images may look different when converted to CMYK.

Re-sampling changes the number of pixels in an image. Re-sampling is different to re-sizing. Down-sampling removes pixels and creates a smaller image, whereas up-sampling adds pixels using algorithms. Because re-sampling adds or removes pixels, a loss of image quality could result. This could be particularly important if you are presenting images that are taken from a microscope; it is imperative that re-sampling does not change the specific features of the data within the micrograph. As a general rule, create your images at the highest resolution possible to avoid the need to re-sample. However, re-sampling may sometimes be necessary; for example, when converting a very high-resolution image to a small size (2 x 2 inches). Always keep original files and ensure that the re-sampling process only happens towards the end of the figure creation process, so that you can go back to the original image if needed.

Image compression: Some file types (e.g. JPG) compress the pixels in the image to reduce file size. Be aware that different compression methods can affect image quality. Pay attention to the publisher’s requirements for compression and whether your software compresses by default.

Raster vs vector images: Raster images use raster data that is stored as pixels, for example, digital photographs. Because raster images use pixels, the quality is highly dependent on resolution. Vector images use vector data comprised of lines and curves, for example, line graphs. Because vector images do not use pixels, they can be re-sized to a very large size without becoming pixelated and losing quality. If you are publishing images that are line graphs only, consider using vector format files such as EPS. However, if you are assembling a line graph into a larger figure that includes digital images, the entire figure will become rasterised at some point; meaning that your vector image will become a raster image and need high resolution.

Infographic Summary

Additional reading on this topic

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