Envision Your Readers

Abstract

The purpose of a scientific paper is to communicate the work, findings, and thoughts of the authors to other people. If such communication was not the goal of the authors, there would be no need to write the paper. Yet writing is mostly a solitary activity done almost entirely in isolation from any readers. Authors generally do not see their readers or ever hear any feedback from them. The regrettable consequence is that many scientific papers are written in ways that show a lack of awareness of who the readers really are and what they will or will not understand in a paper. Insofar as a scientific paper is not understood by its readers, it does not succeed in fulfilling the purpose of a scientific paper.