Reprinted with permission from CHOICE http://www.cro2.org/, copyright by the American Library Association.

47-6207 Q223 2009-39865 CIP
Science & Technology \ General

Schultz, David M. Eloquent science: a practical guide to becoming a better writer, speaker, and atmospheric scientist.
American Meteorological Society, 2009. 412p bibl index; ISBN 9781878220912 pbk, $45.00.
Reviewed in 2010jul CHOICE.

Scientists often enter their respective fields to escape grammar and sentence structure, and soon discover that there is much more writing to come. In Eloquent Science, Schultz (experimental meteorology, Univ. of Helsinki, Finland) gathers the tools he has accumulated over his own career as a researcher, editor, and teacher, and methodically addresses the rules and processes for all arenas of scientific communication. He initially focuses on journal publication, from issues as large as deciding where to submit a manuscript, to details as small as strategies for combating writer’s block. Later chapters provide guidelines for editing, peer reviewing, and delivering oral and poster presentations. Schultz finishes by stressing the importance of clear and appropriate communication throughout one’s career. This book is essential for the graduate student presenting results at a conference, the early career scientist struggling with his or her first publication submission, and the seasoned scientist writing a constructive review as a manuscript editor. The book’s full title will unfortunately stave off non-meteorologists, but the work is perfect for becoming a better communicator in any scientific discipline. Every scientific professional would profit from this eloquent and well-structured reference.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and above. — D. L. Jacobs, Rider University

The American Meteorological Society has the Authors Resource Center as a clearinghouse for author information. One resource linked off this page (Journal Author Information) on this page is the Author Reference Guide.
This format is also adopted by the Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology.

The American Geophysical Union has an Authors Guide with reference formats inside. (Link at the bottom of this page.)

Wiley publishes the journals of the Royal Meteorological Society, such as the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. Information for authors can be found here.

The journals of the European Geophysical Union are published by Copernicus. Their format of reference types can be found here.

The National Weather Association publishes several journals (including National Weather Digest and the Electronic Journal of Operational Meteorology). Their guide to authors for National Weather Digest, which includes referencing information applicable for all journals, can be found here.

Elsevier (publisher of Atmospheric Research, among others) has information for authors here.

I would argue that there are two extremes of what one might call “case studies.”

On the one extreme is what we might call a scientific case study. A scientific case study would be a description of a weather event that reveals how to improve weather forecasting or something new about the science of meteorology.

On the other extreme is what we might call a descriptive case study. A descriptive case study is a description of a weather event with no insight into how to improve weather forecasting or no new scientific knowledge.

In between these two extremes are all kinds of case studies with varying degrees of new scientific knowledge or forecasting insight.

Quite a few journals will publish scientific case studies: Monthly Weather Review, Weather and Forecasting, QJRMS, and the Electronic Journal for Severe Storms Meteorology (EJSSM), for example. All of these are available online, and EJSSM is open access, as well (although not ISI ranked). Only a few journals that I am aware of publish descriptive case studies. International Journal of Meteorology and Weather magazine, published by the Royal Meteorological Society, are two I can think of. There are probably local or national journals that also publish case studies pertinent to local weather forecasters, as well. I am aware of the Romanian Journal of Meteorology that serves this purpose. None of these is ISI ranked that I am aware of.

So, the question is whether the case study has new scientific content or applicability to forecasting. To me, this is what authors considering writing up a case study should aim for. To write up a descriptive case study isn’t useful to too many people, except perhaps those who want to relive the event or read about hazardous weather in other parts of the world. Many descriptive case studies originate because the authors lived through the event (perhaps even busted a forecast on it) and want to figure out what happened for themselves. Although personally interesting, this is not too useful to others who want to learn how to forecast the event better next time unless the event is placed in some context.

So, the question that many journals are asking is whether this case study is a new and original contribution to the literature. Does authors’ paper tell the audience something that they haven’t known before? I think this is where many authors of case studies fail in their duty to their readers. Many case studies are not much more than a description of the weather that day. Such a document would not help anyone make a better forecast or understand the weather better.

If you have seen Eloquent Science, chapter 2 tries to address this question about choosing a good scientific question upon which to base the paper. If an author can select a good question and answer it in a written document, then case studies are welcome at many journals.

The problem is three-fold.

1) No good question to base the paper around. Nothing new learned.

A case study of a devastating tornado event is not enough to get published in many journals. If your study reveals something new about tornadic storms that hasn’t been seen before in the abundant literature on tornadoes, then you may have something publishable.

2) Poor diagnosis of the event.

Unfortunately, even if there is an interesting scientific question or a possible improvement to forecasting, many authors fail in their ability to convince the readers that their ideas are correct. This may be because they don’t know how to formulate a scientific argument and present evidence to test their hypothesis. This often isn’t easy with inadequate data, inappropriate tools available, or inadequate understanding of how the atmosphere works by the meteorological community.

3) Poor description of the science and event

Even if a good scientific question is present and the author has the appropriate diagnostic tools to address the question, the author may not be able to communicate their argument effectively. They don’t have the ability to write well or present their argument in text.

For these three reasons, I think case studies have gotten a bad reputation. Too many bad case studies have been written and published, which also makes many journals reluctant to consider new case studies, even though many good case studies are published each year.

As far as MWR goes, the mission statement on the Web site does not exclude case studies.
<http://journals.ametsoc.org/loi/mwre>
“Research results relevant to the analysis and prediction of observed atmospheric circulations and physics, including technique development, data assimilation, model validation, and relevant case studies. This includes papers on numerical and data assimilation techniques that apply to the atmosphere and/or ocean environments as well as socioeconomic analyses of the impacts of weather and weather forecasts. MWR focuses on phenomena having seasonal and subseasonal time scales. Reviews of climatological aspects of high-impact events such as hurricanes, as well as review articles, are occasionally published.”

If you haven’t seen it, then this article on how to write an effective case study may be of use to you and your colleagues.
http://www.ejssm.org/ojs/index.php/ejssm/issue/view/20

Some examples are the following.

Data. “Data” is always plural. “Datum” is the singular form, but I think saying “data point” sounds better.

Dynamics. This term is often used to describe physical processes vaguely
without actually stating what those processes are. Replace such expressions
with a more physical description.

DRAFT: The strong dynamics of the rapidly developing extratropical cyclone . . .

IMPROVED: A strong short-wave trough in the jet stream was responsible for
the rapid development of the extratropical cyclone.

t test. Formally known as Student’s t test, not “the student t test.” Student was the penname of author William Sealy Gosset, who published the test in 1908 (Student 1908).

What are your most annoying pet peeves in atmospheric science?

Submit them as comments below, or email me: eloquentscience at gmail.com.

The best ones will receive an Eloquent Science mug for your home or office.

This month’s issue of the Annals of Improbable Research answers the question of whether a tree falling in the forest will make a sound if no one is around to hear it. The answer is yes (Melchior 2010). Moreover, the bigger the tree, the louder the sound.

What I like about this article is that it pokes fun at the format and style of many scientific articles:

• Unrelated facts that are important to the author are included for no reason.
  
• Acronyms and jargon are just thrown in for no apparent reason.
  
• Problems with Excel for data analysis and plotting are exposed.
  
• A wandering discussion section closes the paper.

Melchior, M., 2010: The sound-ness of tree falls. Annals of Improbable Research, 16 (3), 12–13.

(Image from maloneyonmarketing.com)

“As a scientist, you get lots of rejections, but not a lot of supportive comments.”

I had had similar thoughts before, but never articulated them in the succinct way that Prof. Gleeson did. My idea was that we rarely receive any feedback on anything we do as scientists, even negative feedback.

When was the last time you got an email from someone who read your recently published article and had a question about it? Or, they just wanted to drop a note to say how much they enjoyed reading it?

When was the last time a colleague sent you a link to a recently published paper that you might have missed on a topic that you may be working on?

I wouldn’t change being a scientist for anything. I love my job. But, I worry that by not interacting with others, supporting our friends with positive assurance, and challenging our colleagues to be better, we deprive ourselves of the human experience. Even a note to someone you never met before saying how much you enjoyed reading their latest article can be a start to developing a new friendship, or even a coauthor.

Interestingly, several students over my career have told me that they were avoiding a career as a research scientist because they didn’t want to sit in an office and not interact with people. I can probably speak for many of us at this stage in our careers where we wish we had more time to sit and work peacefully alone in our offices for even just an afternoon!

Interaction is a big part of what we do as we advance in our careers. I think the (sometimes) isolating experience that we see (or imagine) grad students to have can be a big factor in this perception.

So, I recommend that everyone reading this, at some point over the next few weeks, send just one email, make one phone call, say just one nice thing to one of your colleagues. Be a supportive and encouraging person…for the betterment of our field.

Schultz, D. M., 2010: How to research and write effective case studies in meteorology. Electronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 5 (2), 1-18.

Keith Seitter, the Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society, was able to provide a great answer to this question. Here is what he said.

The manuscript in a different language is not a new work, but a translation of an existing published work. As such, it cannot be submitted as though it was independent of the previous work.

As a thought experiment, imagine an author published a novel in French last year and you want to publish an English translation of it. You would need to get the author’s and/or publisher’s permission as copyright holders of the original and you would have to identify it clearly as a translation of that original work. You could not publish it in English as though it was your own. You could have your name on it as the translator, and your English version would have its own copyright attached because there is authorship in the art of translating that belongs to you, but it would still need to clearly identify its original publication in French and its original authorship and copyright. Failing to do so would be copyright infringement.

Translating that situation (pun intended) to a case in which you as an author publish in one language and then seek to publish that research again in another language, the second publication represents a translation of the first and so you would have to seek permission from the original journal it was published in, and you would have to submit it as a translation of the prior publication with full reference to that earlier publication. It would be up to the journal to which this was submitted to decide if it wanted to republish the paper as a translation. This is done from time to time, but is not all that common. It usually only happens if the original paper was very important scientifically AND in such an obscure journal that it would be hard to access. In all other cases, the original publication would stand alone and would be referenced as any other paper would, and it would be up to those seeking to use the citation to obtain a copy and have it translated.

Photo by Gary

As my career has developed, a greater percentage of my reviews over time have been nonanonymous, but not all. Beck (2003, “Anonymous reviews: Self-serving, counterproductive, and unacceptable,” Eos, 84 (26), p. 249) imagines four conditions that might require anonymity, but finds none valid.

1. You need to say something negative about a manuscript written by somebody in power over you. If you cannot do so openly, you should of course refuse the review. Perhaps you should also look for another job….

2. You have just deep-sixed a paper by a bitter scientific rival and hope to get away with it. Again, obviously, you should have declined the review. A more courageous and useful alternative would be to do the review, suppressing your dislike of the conclusions, then argue politely for a different interpretation. But this is hard, and would take more time.

3. You have agreed to do a review, then find you have no time, or are uninterested in the topic. One way out is to do a slap-dash, superficial, inadequate job, then remain anonymous to protect your reputation. Far better to apologize to the editor and send it back.

4. A friend or respected colleague has submitted a paper that, in your judgement, is wrong and should be rejected. Clearly, if your relationship with the author is such that a friendship would be ended by a negative review, you should not be doing the review. However, having agreed to do it, the easy way out is to lambast the paper, then duck from sight. A far better course of action would be to return the paper to the editor unreviewed, then contact the author and explain your problems with his/her ideas.

So, what is your opinion of anonymous peer review? Why do you submit reviews anonymously?

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Mark Hibberd writes:

I think your Figure 11.10 [to the right] clearly shows a very common mistake of inappropriately using a standard least squares fit. The fit given (y = -13.2 + 0.42 x) assumes that there is no uncertainty in the y values. Eye-balling the data, it is clear that the line is not a good fit.

If you swap the axes and redo the standard least squares fit you get a fit that would be shown the figure as y = 36.0 + 1.89 x, which is even worse. (I digitised the figure to do the fitting.)

The correct method is to use a bivariate fit, which allows for uncertainty in both x and y. If we assume equal uncertainty in both x and y values, we get y = -2.1 + 0.75 x.

This method is well explained by Cantrell, C.A. (2008) “Technical Note: Review of methods for linear least-squares fitting of data and application to atmospheric chemistry problems” Atmos. Chem. Phys., 8, 5477–5487. He also includes a very useful spreadsheet in supplemental material available with the paper, which I strongly recommend to all scientists who fit data.

Note that a useful warning sign of problems is if fitting x vs y and y vs x give different standard least square fits.

Thanks, Mark, for the advice. For what it’s worth, in the figure in question, we weren’t expecting a great fit to the data, no matter the method. Nevertheless, our inclusion of the regression line should have been done appropriately, regardless.