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Scientific manuscript writing: IMRAD, citation styles (APA/AMA/Vancouver/IEEE), figures/tables, reporting guidelines (CONSORT/STROBE/PRISMA/ARRIVE), writing principles (clarity/conciseness/accuracy), venue-specific style. For LaTeX see companion assets.
Passed 21 of 23 test cases with the skill, and 20 of 23 without it.
1 fixed20 passed either way2 still failing0 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
A test case the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
In our Results section, we wrote: 'Group A had significantly higher mean recovery scores than Group B (p < 0.05).' How should this sentence be revised to meet standard rigorous scientific reporting guidelines?
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| Advises reporting exact p-values rather than inequality statements. | Passed | Passed |
| Advises reporting effect sizes with confidence intervals. | Missed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
Scientific manuscript writing is the discipline of communicating research findings with precision, clarity, and reproducibility. This knowhow covers the complete lifecycle of manuscript preparation: from planning and structuring a paper using IMRAD format, through applying correct citation styles and designing effective figures, to ensuring compliance with study-specific reporting guidelines. It applies across biomedical, social science, engineering, and computational fields.
This entry consolidates writing principles, manuscript structure, citation systems, figure/table design, and reporting standards into a unified reference for producing publication-ready scientific documents.
The three pillars of scientific writing govern all manuscript text:
Additional principles include objectivity (present results without bias, acknowledge conflicting evidence), consistency (same term for same concept, uniform notation), and logical organization (clear "red thread" connecting sections). See references/writing_principles_style.md for detailed guidance with examples.
IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, And Discussion) is the standard organizational structure for original research articles, adopted across most scientific disciplines since the 1970s. It mirrors the scientific method:
| Section | Question Answered | Primary Tense | Typical Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title | What is this about? | N/A | 10-15 words |
| Abstract | Complete summary | Mixed | 100-250 words |
| Introduction | Why did you study this? | Present/past | 4-5 paragraphs |
| Methods | How did you do it? | Past | 2-4 pages |
| Results | What did you find? | Past | 2-4 pages |
| Discussion | What does it mean? | Past/present | 3-5 pages |
| Conclusion | Take-home message | Present | 1-2 paragraphs |
The Introduction follows a funnel structure: broad context, narrowing literature review, gap identification, and study objectives. Methods must provide sufficient detail for replication. Results present findings objectively without interpretation. Discussion interprets findings, compares with prior work, acknowledges limitations, and proposes future directions.
Venue variations: Nature/Science use modified IMRAD with methods in supplement. ML conferences (NeurIPS/ICML) use Introduction-Method-Experiments-Conclusion with numbered contributions and ablation studies. See references/manuscript_structure.md for section-by-section guidance.
test cases passed, vs 20 / 23 without
More skills from the same source and nearby in the registry, with their headline benchmark lift.