Escrever um artigo é artesanato, não é arte!

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this article is to help the readers that wish to publish a paper. Suggestions on how to plan a good scientific writing are shown. Selected didactical articles by the authors. CONTENTS: Prepare your manuscript following the IMRaD principle (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion). Good scientific writing must be: brief, clear and simple. When planning one should first construct figures and tables, then go through material and methods and finally plan the discussion and introduction. The abstract should be writing after finalization. To structure the article construct a scaffold of headings, random ideas and rearrange order before writing. To write the methods one may cut and paste previous work. Refer only to the data that answer the research question. The introduction may have 2-3 paragraphs, first introducing broad area, followed by rationale and hypothesis. The discussion should start with the key findings, afterwards discuss major results and finalize with a summary and conclusions. Make your point with data, not arguments. To conclude, return to issues rose in introduction and resolve them. CONCLUSIONS: Good scientific writing is a craft task. Take a specific time to write and practice.