Research is Communication
The following is based on ideas presented in a lecture on academic writing which is part of a compulsory course for PhD students in the Computer Science department at the University of Manchester.
Research is communication. If you’re not writing, you’re not doing research. A strong statement, but hard to argue with when you consider that if you had a great idea but failed to share it with even one person, you might as well not have bothered.
Here’s one way in which you might increase your output while simultaneously sharing your work with more people: when you have a new idea, start writing it up as a paper before diving into the implementation. Doing so should make apparent any holes in the hypothesis and will force you to be clear about what it is that you are aiming to investigate.
As for the sharing, you now have an actual artifact that you can show people and get feedback on. In the draft paper you will have outlined the problem, approach etc. clearly and so it should now be in a form where a colleague could understand the content and give useful feedback.
It won’t always be as simple as that of course, as perhaps your colleague won’t understand and if that is the case, the blame most likely lies with how you have presented the material. It is important to bear in mind that this colleague can only read your paper for the first time once. It is therefore very important that when a first-time reader is confused by what you are presenting, you fix it before showing it to others. If in the end your paper is easy to read and understand, then this will be beneficial when your paper is reviewed for publication.
Key points:
- Never make the reader feel stupid.
- The reader/reviewer’s misunderstanding is your fault.
- Examples early and often.
- Could you explain it to someone while walking in the woods, with no whiteboard or visual aids?
- Be aware of how first-time readers react to your paper/presentation and improve accordingly.
