English 5390: Writing for Publication Weekly Blog Post - Outline

Question: Develop an outline for your scholarly article. What are the major headings? Does your outline logically and clearly present topics and highlight what your paper will contribute or add to the literature?

Outlining isn't one of those activities to which I have devoted large amounts of time in recent years. Unless the outline was part of the assignment, I just didn't do it because I compose primarily in my head and usually sit down with a good idea of what needs to go where and which sources I want to cite when. I do, however, draw on the outline when I get stuck or have no desire to actually write the paper. Then, the outline acts like a stepping stone to make me move through the paper and get it done.

The paper that I am revising is available under the scholarly article tab in the side bar. The original outline flowed like this:

• Introduction
• Methods
• Results and Discussion
  • 1880s
  • 1920s
  • 1960s
  • 2000s
• Conclusions

My modification to the paper is not complete, but at this point, I am working on increasing my sample size from 4 papers in each decade to 10 papers in each and refocusing on the concept of disinterestedness and author ethos and how those concepts are presented in each stage of the 4 selected decades to get a view on how scientific writing has changed over these many years. Of course, I may change my mind again before I am done. But the new outline stands as follows:

• Introduction
• Methods
• Disinterestedness
  • Personal Pronouns
    
  • Personal Experience
    
  • Reaction to Others in the Field
    
• Ethos
  
  • Graphics/Supporting Data
    
  • Document Layout
  • Reference List Length
  • Hedging
    
• Conclusions

The new outline displays the topics that will be discussed in the revised version of the work. Is it the final version? Not likely. I reserve the right to change my mind, reorganize, reorder, and even reverse the order or revert to the old one. Since disinterestedness is considered to be part of the scientific ethos, it may be that I decide to put the whole thing under ethos.

I suspect that my paper can be part of the discussion on how scientists, in this case chemists, write that I looked at in my blog post on exemplars and conversant, and I feel that the historical context of tracing the way scientific writing has changed over time is interesting. However, I cannot guarantee that it will be accepted as part of the conversation or even recognized as making a contribution. My interest in this area does not guarantee universal interest, and we are only guessing at what our audience will think using our own filters and viewpoints on the field.