Author: Ana Pérez-Escoda Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
The value of knowledge – its generation, access and even its format – has changed promoted by the Internet, connectivity and the proliferation of devices. This transformation is affecting the scientific production of the researchers who must migrate as authors to other models adapted to a society that demands new criteria of scientific visibility. Brevity, standardization, and capacity of synthesis are characteristics of the scientific productions in article format looking for visibility.
In this new post of «School of authors» of “Comunicar” we want to contribute with four necessary keys to a good state of the issue, this theoretical foundation that will give to our article the distinction that deserves, the context that gives meaning and the intrinsic motivation that will take the reader to the end of the text:
- 1. Ability to argue. It is a requirement that is as old as the Aristotelian rhetoric just as necessary as the eloquence to the Sophists. To know how to make a well argumented speech that gives passage to our research or contribution will be the first key to success in a good state of the issue. What are we talking about; what sense it has for whomever reads it, which significance it provides to the context that surrounds, what motives exist in the context of the action for the author to bring scientific knowledge, in what point it is the question based on the work of other well-known colleagues in the discipline that we address.
- 2. Support in primary sources. This requirement is based on the quality of the references. The post Quality of the references by Angel Torres Toukoumidis exposes brilliantly the guidelines to achieve this desired quality. A bibliographic dive that involves being updated, reviewing exhaustively in scientific magazines, interesting in other authors work, who address the issue, consulting primary sources, and of course, referencing international authors that give a global vision to our theoretical foundation.
- 3. Scientific writing and appropriate style. The third key comes from the two exposed. It is important to give our ideas and arguments the right outfit: Let us take pride in our academic backgrounds, in the formation that provides support to our research and, let us use an elegant style, non-cumbersome, stylish, fluent, and understandable. Let us be real transmitters of knowledge, and we do not hide behind a pernicious scientific prose that nobody will want to read, since communication is fundamental to transmit and understand in this process is essential. It is neither convenient to move to the extreme of simplicity, confusing the synthesis and brevity with lack of care and stylistic neglect as it is argued in this same blog Scientific writing: accuracy, clarity and brevity.
- 4. Connection with the present and significance. Without any doubt this key, needed in our state of affairs, is based on Ausubel’s meaningful learning: the need to connect with relevant concepts of cognitive structure of our readers. It is the moment in which emerges the connection that links us to the reader, that magical state that occurs when the reader finds the intrinsic motivation to continue reading, their cognitive schemes are stimulated and prepared to transform what it is read in new learning. The importance of reading is added to this key as fundamental imperative; in his post Read: The first task, Luis Miguel Romero Rodriguez illustrates this necessary task that should be taken as a habit.
A good state of affairs speaks of its authors; we must not forget that we are trying the means of communication for the scientific diffusion through which we are known as researchers and recognized by our quality. As Socrates said in a context where orality was the means to discover and transmit knowledge: «Speak so you get known»; thus, in our digital context, «Write so you get known».
