Academic Writing Skills

Academic writing is a skill developed over the years. Of course, some authors are more talented than others. Budding researchers and writers can learn from the sifu or 'otai' how to write effectively. See the example below.

"Measures do exist that examine general (non-vaccine) conspiracy beliefs [10], [13], [14], [18], [19], and other (not conspiracy specific) vaccine attitudes [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25]. However, to the authors’ knowledge, no validated scale exists that explicitly evaluates vaccine conspiracy beliefs even though vaccine conspiracy beliefs are likely to influence vaccine intentions beyond other known predictive factors such as socio-demographic, vaccine knowledge, and health care provider's recommendation [26], [27], [28]."

source: (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405852116300325)

See how the authors of this journal article build their argument for developing a new questionnaire.

1) They presented the closest-available evidence. Some students changed their topic because they could not find articles that are DIRECTLY about their topic. What they should have done was look at the papers that are most directly related; sort of zooming out from the topic's focal point. See what is available in the periphery. In this example, the authors offer 11 papers that are the closest to the questionnaire that they want to develop.

2. Notice the humility in their authors' claim that a scale measuring vaccine conspiracy beliefs do not exist. They pre-faced their claim with 'to the authors' knowledge'. They avoided the cliche 'There is a lack of literature on ..." which sounds broadly accusative of the scientific community.

3. I like how the authors highlight the limitation of the existing knowledge. The limitation is not presented as a 'gap'. It looks more like pushing the envelope or identifying the edge of the growth area.

4. The authors also argue why research growth is important or significant. A new scale measuring vaccine conspiracy beliefs is needed because such beliefs are related to the intention to get a vaccination. The relationship is not just an opinion but rather based on the existing literature.

5. The most impressive of all is the authors' success in condensing the ideas (limitation of existing knowledge and the need to grow the research area) in two sentences. For me, this an elegantly written research problem statement.