Scientific Writing

Scientific Writing

Purpose

Help draft, diagnose, and revise scientific writing so the reader can see the claim, evidence, caveats, and section logic without losing scientific accuracy.

Use this skill when

• First classify the requested artifact and output: continue only when audience-facing scientific prose or argument is primary, not merely because a technical document discusses science.
• The user provides scientific prose and asks for a rewrite, critique, outline, or readiness check.
• The artifact is an abstract, introduction, results paragraph, discussion, conclusion, figure legend, thesis chapter, author contribution statement, or acknowledgement.
• The user asks for clearer flow, a sharper gap or claim, less overclaiming, better section structure, or manuscript-ready wording.
• The request needs a concrete edited artifact, not only general advice.

Do not use this skill when

• The request concerns computational or analysis plans, pipeline or implementation documentation, README files, code comments, object names, variable names, or terminology inside scripts without a primary audience-facing scientific argument.
• The request is mainly journal selection, submission logistics, peer-review strategy, grant writing, slide design, poster layout, or literature synthesis without a writing deliverable.
• The user asks for statistical analysis, code, figure generation, or experimental design rather than prose revision.
• Authorship questions require institutional, legal, or policy determinations beyond wording and documentation guidance.

Core workflow

1. Identify the artifact type, target audience, venue constraints, user goal, central claim or question, evidence boundary, and requested output. If context is missing, state assumptions and ask only the minimum needed question.
2. Diagnose the section job before editing sentences: name the intended rhetorical move, the reader confusion, paragraph job, and highest-leverage structural fix.
3. Decide the intervention level before rewriting:
   • Structure: missing claim, wrong section job, chronology instead of reader logic, overloaded paragraph, or weak transition.
   • Rhetoric: missing gap, result, implication, limitation, comparison, or contribution.
   • Sentence: hidden actor, noun stack, vague verb, unstable term, overlong modifier chain, or overclaim.
4. For manuscripts and thesis chapters, trace the evidence spine: question or hypothesis, prediction or task, figure/table, finding, local conclusion, limitation, and final implication.
5. Route to the relevant reference playbook and checklist before rewriting.
6. Preserve meaning, uncertainty, statistical direction, actor, scope, caveats, and terminology while tightening language.
7. Return a concrete output: revised text, section outline, prioritized revision plan, checklist review, or before/after diagnosis.

Output formats

• Diagnosis + rewrite: brief problem statement, revised prose, and rationale for key changes.
• Section plan: ordered rhetorical moves with one-sentence job for each paragraph or subsection.
• Readiness review: pass/fail checklist with highest-priority fixes.
• Compression pass: what to cut, combine, or move while preserving the claim.
• Contribution wording: careful authorship, contribution, or acknowledgement language with caveats.

Reference routing

• Open references/abstracts.md for abstracts, summaries, graphical-abstract text, or compressed paper descriptions.
• Open references/introductions.md for gap, significance, aim, scope, or field-context problems.
• Open references/results-sections.md for results paragraphs, figure callouts, finding-first structure, or interpretation leakage.
• Open references/discussions.md for interpretation, limitations, implications, conclusions, and overclaim control.
• Open references/figure-legends.md for figure captions, panel logic, labels, statistics, and self-contained legends.
• Open references/paper-structure.md for whole-manuscript flow, central contribution, titles/headings, paragraph order, chronology-to-reader-logic problems, and style diagnostics.
• Open references/thesis-writing.md for thesis/dissertation chapters and institution-sensitive structure.
• Open references/authorship-and-contributions.md for contribution statements, acknowledgements, or authorship-sensitive wording.

Quick checklist

• What is the one main contribution or question?
• Does the section do its specific job, or is it borrowing another section's job?
• Can a reader identify the gap, method or approach, evidence, interpretation, and caveats?
• Can each main result be traced to a question, figure/table, comparison, and bounded local conclusion?
• Are claims calibrated to the supplied evidence?
• Is the draft organized around reader logic rather than the order in which the work happened?
• Are important terms searchable and stable, especially in abstracts, titles, figure legends, and contribution statements?
• Does the rewrite keep the author's scientific meaning, comparison, quantity, actor, scope, and uncertainty while reducing friction?

Common pitfalls

• Polishing vague prose before fixing the argument.
• Reordering prose around research chronology rather than reader logic.
• Turning results into discussion or discussion into a second results section.
• Replacing accurate uncertainty with confident overstatement.
• Cutting searchable method, system, comparison, or result terms during compression.
• Treating acknowledgements as hidden authorship credit or contribution statements as praise.
• Applying abstract or introduction patterns to every section.
• Copying source-like phrasing, citation fragments, or provenance into the user-facing answer.

Quality bar

The answer should be section-specific, concrete, and conservative with evidence. It should improve reader orientation, preserve uncertainty, avoid generic writing advice, and return usable prose or a prioritized plan unless the user asked only for diagnosis.