Writing for The Citizen Scientist

Forrest M. Mims III

Are you a practicing amateur scientist or a science fair student? Do you make observations? Build and use instruments? Conduct experiments? Propose and test hypotheses? Analyze data? Take photographs with a science connection?

The Citizen Scientist is looking for quality feature articles these and other aspects of amateur science. Shawn Carlson and I are especially interested in project articles that provide instructions on how to make observations, build an instrument design a circuit, acquire data, conduct an experiment, and so forth. We are also looking for outstanding or unusual photographs for our "Gallery" department.

Maybe you know or know about an amateur scientist who has made important observations or discoveries or who just happens to be very dedicated. Chances are that readers of The Citizen Scientist would like to learn about this person also. Age is not an issue. Indeed, science fair students vastly outnumber older amateur scientists in terms of written reports.

We are also interested in reviews of books and web sites about amateur science and interesting news stories about the world of citizen science.

And we are interested in receiving thoughtful comments about our articles and other topics of interest to citizen scientists for publication in our "Backscatter" department.

Remember that our focus is amateur, not professional, science. So while we may publish news stories about professional science, they must always have an amateur science connection. For example, the Mars robots Spirit and Opportunity are playing a vital role in motivating students to become interested in robotics and space exploration. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is allowing many amateurs to discover comets that have been missed by professionals.

If you are looking for good project ideas that could become articles in The Citizen Scientist (TCS), one of the best places on the web to get article ideas is Ralph Coppola's "Wanderings" column in TCS. Ralph is constantly on the lookout for good sites related to amateur science, and back issues of his columns are a rich repository of article and project ideas from across the web.

Before submitting your article, send a brief description of what you propose here. Be sure to mention any possible illustrations, especially if they involve animation. If your idea looks good, I'll get back to you as soon as possible. If I'm not on the road, you will usually get a reply within a day or so or when e-mail is available.

Tips for Writing Great Articles for The Citizen Scientist

If your idea looks good, here are some tips for improving your article and saving editing time:

1. Review some past issues of The Citizen Scientist to see how articles are written and images are displayed. Note how figure captions are displayed. Note that figures are usually referred to by their number (as in "Figure 2"), not by their position on the page. This is done to allow readers to comment about specific figures.

2. Organize your article to hold the attention of readers from the very beginning. Otherwise, your article will quickly experience a fatal mouse click.

3. Use subheads to break your article into organized sections.

4. If you submit your article in HTML, Word or Word Perfect, all fonts should be the same size. Titles and subheads should be in bold.

5. Length is up to you. Just remember that most people do not like to read endless streams of text on a computer monitor. So be sure what you have to say is worth reading. And avoid long sentences and endless paragraphs. Ruthlessly edit out unnecessary words.

6. Illustrations are always a plus. Photographs and other art are best submitted as JPEGs no more than 800 pixels wide. Photographs should be sharp and properly exposed.

7. Avoid inventive punctuation by following the basic punctuation rules. Semicolons should be used sparingly. Punctuation is almost always inside, not outside, quotation marks. (Correct: He said, "Sirius is the brightest star in the sky." Incorrect: He said, "Sirius is the brightest star in the sky".)

8. Do not capitalize all nouns. This is done in German, not English. (Correct: There is an oxygen absorption line at about 762 nm. Incorrect: There is an Oxygen absorption line at about 762 nm.)

9. When possible, always include the Latin name of plants and animals in parentheses after the common name. Common names should be lower case. (For example: The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) lays its eggs on the leaves of milkweed plants (genus Asclepias).)

10. Insert URLs for relevant web sites. We will convert these to hyperlinks.

Author's Submission Checklist

After you prepare your article, here is a submission checklist that will greatly simplify its processing.

1. Submit your article as a text file in an e-mail or in Word, WordPerfect or basic HTML. Use one of the latter methods if your article includes subscripts and superscripts. Please do not send a fancy HTML layout, since it must be disassembled so our webmaster can prepare your article using the TCS format.

2. Use a spell checker to check the spelling in your article.

3. Figures must be submitted separately with consecutively numbered file names, even if they are also embedded in the text. This is very important to avoid errors in production and layout.

4. Figures must be accompanied by a consecutively numbered list of captions beginning with "Figure 1." The article must refer to the figures by their figure number, not by their position on the page. (Correct: Figure 3 is a close up view of the instrument. Incorrect: A close up view is shown below.)

5. Always provide a credit line for any figures you did not personally photograph or draw. Generally, we cannot use someone else's figures unless you have received permission. Some web sites and many government agencies, non-profit organizations and corporations permit their figures to be used with a credit line. But you need to provide us with details in such cases.

6. Don't forget to insert your name! We receive many articles with only a first name or no name at all. A letter to "Backscatter" with no first or last name arrived as this was being typed.

7. Before sending us your article, sleep on it. Then read it again the next day. Chances are you will make changes that will improve it. You might also want to ask a friend or family member to review your article for grammar, style and punctuation.

8. Finally, send your completed article and any relevant figures and figure captions here. If I am not traveling, your article will be acknowledged by e-mail within a day. If I am away, it will be acknowledged as soon as e-mail is available. It will then be placed in line in one of the various category folders (Features, Projects, News, Gallery, etc.).