How to Revise the First Draft of Your Scientific Paper

Congratulations! You’ve finished the first draft of your scientific paper. The bad news is that you must now revise to ensure the paper is publication ready. In this video, I provide some tips to make the revision process less painful.

If English is not your first language and you are having difficulty understanding the audio, turn on closed captioning and select your language. You will then be able to read a word-for-word transcript of everything I say in the video.

00:00 Intro
00:59 Four steps
02:31 Argument or thesis
03:20 Example
05:37 Completeness & consistency
09:12 Clarity & narrative flow
09:40 Errors & formatting
10:26 Final thoughts

Link to example paper used in this video:

McKee, K.L., J.E. Rooth, and I.C. Feller.  2007.  Mangrove recruitment after forest disturbance is facilitated by herbaceous species common to the Caribbean Region.  Ecological Applications 17(6): 1678-1693.  https://doi.org/10.1890/06-1614.1

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If you use video in your research or would like to make a video about your research, check out my other YouTube channel, The Scientist Videographer: sciencevideography

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