Review a paper of mine ( topic is chemistry, btw )

[Zopperoni]

Try to write shorter sentences. You have sentences that run for five or six lines, which makes reading them more complicated. Here's one example:

The general logic of the Abzyme approach is that if antibodies have a biological function to capture and attach themselves to certain molecular structures, that attachment is favoured thermodynamically, and thus, if vaccination occurs with a molecule that has similar steric and electronic properties to the transition state of the rate-determining state of a reaction, the result will be an enzyme that will be able to lower the energy of the transition state of said reaction, and thus will be an effective catalyst.

Try to limit yourself to sentences that have max. ~15 words. This will improve readability considerably.


I haven't truly read the whole thing, because I wouldn't understand it anyway but I spotted two things:
1) It is always better to avoid contractions, so write out "does not" instead of writing "doesn't"
2) "dependant" --> "dependent" (last sentence of the conclusion)


Finally, fix your references. They are not represented in a consistent fashion. Some have first name first and last name second, and some vice versa. Others do not have a date of publication mentioned.

[Zopperoni]

Ingrid and I picked the same sentence!

[Az]

Write "it is", would not" etc, never "it's"

It it's not "it's" like "it is", it's "it's", and that's it.

The general logic of the Abzyme approach is that if antibodies have a biological function to capture and attach themselves to certain molecular structures, that attachment is favoured thermodynamically, and thus, if vaccination occurs with a molecule that has similar steric and electronic properties to the transition state of the rate-determining state of a reaction, the result will be an enzyme that will be able to lower the energy of the transition state of said reaction, and thus will be an effective catalyst.

great sentence, innit?

[Combat Ingrid]

Another thing: as there is only one author of this paper, avoid sentences like "As we described in part II"

[Zopperoni]

Pluralis Maiestatis

[JohnT]

I. Introduction
With the ever-increasing importance of carbohydrates in general, and oligosaccharides, in particular, in biopharmaceuptical and biotechnological solutions, a constant demand for new synthetic tools that deal with oligosaccharides is created, particularly tools with various selective properties. Due to their inherent exquisite catalytical properties, enzymes have been explored, and have been successfully utilized in many cases(1). However, enzyme catalysis faces the constant problem of a lack of diversity in naturally occuring specimens. This paper will propose a solution to the topic using the natural diversity of antibodies and the power of the vaccination selection mechanism, while concentrating on a simple reaction to showcase both the possibilities and the challenges that such an approach faces.

Read better as:

I. Introduction

The ever-increasing importance of oligosaccharides in biopharmaceuptical solutions creates a constant demand for new synthetic tools that deal with them, particularly tools with various selective properties. Enzymes, due to their inherent catalytical properties, have been explored and successfully utilized in many cases(1). However, enzyme catalysis faces the constant problem of a lack of diversity in naturally occuring specimens. This paper proposes a solution to the topic using antibodies and the vaccination selection mechanism, while concentrating on a simple reaction to showcase the possibilities and the challenges that such an approach faces.

In the above paragraph you might want to change "simple" to "single" if you are just showing one reaction.

The First Rule of Editing: Second draft=First Draft - 10%. The first is an unwieldy 115 words, the second is a tighter 94.

The easiest way to lop off that 10% is to drop the descriptive phrases, the non-essential adjectives and adverbs.

Active voice! Have confidence in what you're saying! Is you're paper "proposing a solution" or are you just hoping that it "will propose a solution" ? A lot of academics nowadays seem to think that passive voice is good, but **** them - you're in the business of getting your ideas across and if you don't sound confident of what you're proposing, why should we be confident of what we're reading? Get rid of "whiles", "possible", and other wimpy words.

[JohnT]

Also, since you are writing a professional paper to an audience of other professionals, don't waste time defining common terms, unless they bear directly on the paper. In part two, assume your audience knows what "somatic recombination" is. You would only define somatic recombination if your paper deals largely with variations or alternatives to somatic recombination. Since it doesn't... remove it.

Here's what I came up with:

The catalytic antibody, or 'abzyme' approach, shows great promise due to the nature of somatic recombination and has the ability to synthesize antibodies that we can control through the vaccination process. This paper will include a short schematic explanation of the function of the antibody, and the logic and technique leading to it's application as a catalyst.

The general logic of the Abzyme approach is that if antibodies have a biological function to capture and attach themselves to certain molecular structures, the attachment is favoured thermodynamically: if vaccination occurs with a molecule that has similar steric and electronic properties to the transition state of the rate-determining state of a reaction, the result will be an enzyme that will be able to lower the energy of the transition state of said reaction, and thus will be an effective catalyst.

From 208 to 138 words - 1/3 of the wordiness, removed. And, as far as I can tell, it says the same thing.

However... that last sentence is a tongue and brain-twister, but I left it uncorrected as I really don't understand what you're saying (in chemistry terms at least) and don't want to break the chain of logic.

[Az]

You don't want to sound too confident if you're saying something really stupid.

[Datajack Franit]

And I thought what I study was boring

[JohnT]

Yeah you do. You're trying to sell your ideas. A stupid idea is a stupid idea - to put it out there with the added disability of showing the audience that the author doesn't even believe what s/he is saying does nobody any good.

[Az]

And I thought what I study was boring

stfu, it's actually very interesting!

Yeah you do. You're trying to sell your ideas. A stupid idea is a stupid idea - to put it out there with the added disability of showing the audience that the author doesn't even believe what s/he is saying does nobody any good.

Oh, I believe what I am saying. "maybe it will work.".

but I get what you're saying.

[JohnT]

Oh, and print it out and read it. Perhaps it is a personal thing, but I find far more mistakes on paper than I do on a computer screen.

[Datajack Franit]

This is a good idea for a new thread. The "post your uni-paper" thread.

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by JohnT
You're trying to sell your ideas.

That's one of the reasons I hate the retarded research community. No matter how insignificant their finding is, people will still often describe it as "a new paradigm" in their papers. Good luck finding a paper that doesn't include the phrase "for the first time". It's just ridiculous, like you would state that "we have discovered for the fifth time that...". I have even seen "for the first time, to the knowledge of the present authors"
Come on, you're writing a scientific paper, not some f*cking Abflex 2000 commercial

I need a cold drink.

[JohnT]

Oh, bull. I'm not saying he's writing a commercial, I'm saying that he's selling the worthiness of his ideas to other people. By qualifying everything with "while" and "possible" and "to the best of my knowledge" he shows himself as a milquetoast and demonstrates that he doesn't really believe what he is saying.

Because some people go too far in the other direction doesn't make my point less valid: passive voice sucks and is for little girls and politicians.