1. Introduction

Scientific writing has been around for at least hundreds of years and according to Dowson (2019) the first scientific journal was published in 1665 although it is debatable if that counts as what we consider a journal. From early on, the purpose of journals was to disseminate scientific information across scientists as a form of an early social network of sorts to allow sharing information and creating new science. Therefore it is not surprising journals still exist today, although in different forms than earlier, and remain an important source of scientific information in particular.

Journals are not the only format in which scientific information is published but there are other forms, such as theses. For students, theses or short papers authored for courses either alone or within a group, are often their first touches with academic writing. Compared to other types of writing, academic writing is in some ways harder and in some ways easier, assuming you know some of the rules and expectations around it.

My own experience as a writer is varied as I have done my share of academic writing in form of papers and theses (BSc, MSc, DSc), blogging, and technical authoring mainly in English, although my native language is Finnish. The main point is that you should not let your mother tongue hold you back and you can learn academic writing even if you do not feel comfortable with it initially. I wrote this guide to help you in your journey towards becoming an academic writer, or if you already have some experience with the topic, to inspire you to look at academic writing from perhaps a different angle. I do not claim to be a great academic writer myself but I have discovered series of practices that you may find helpful as well and in the end it is up to you to develop a writing process you are most comfortable with. All I can do is to provide you a vision of what academic writing entails as a topic and let you pick up the pieces as you wish.

I have structured the book per theme, and technically, you could approach it in any order as it is more like a collection of related tips without a strong narrative. I have outlined the contents briefly below:

1. In 2. What is scientific writing, I consider the special characteristics of scientific writing and show it is different from other types of authoring.
2. In 3. Research question, I discuss the significance of choosing your research questions carefully as those shape the rest of the work.
3. In 4. Elements of a paper, I discuss the basic elements expected by a scientific paper.
4. In 8. Process, I discuss how I approach the process of writing scientific papers.
5. In 5. Paragraphs, I discuss how to construct paragraphs.
6. In 6. Accessibility, I discuss how to consider accessibility of your work.
7. In 7. Citing, I discuss how to cite accurately.
8. In 9. Editing, I discuss how to take your work from good to great through editing.
9. In 10. Troubleshooting, I consider how to deal with problems that you might inevitably face in your writing process.
10. In 11. Technology, I discuss tools I have found useful for writing scientific papers.
11. In 12. Publishing, I discuss publishing-related aspects in case you want to get your work out there.
12. In 13. Popularizing results, I consider how to popularize your results and create a profile that is visible to other researchers.
13. In 14. Further resources, I mention several resources where to find more information related to writing, as what you see here is only the tip of the iceberg.
14. In A. Getting started with LaTeX appendix, I go into my LaTeX typesetting system related recommendations.

Remember that writing is a process and a journey and the more mileage you gain, the easier it gets. Don't forget that also reading counts!