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KM Ajith’s first research paper, which he co-authored with his supervisor in 2005, was about mathematical physics, where he worked on quantum field theory. The UK journal to which the paper was submitted had no hesitation in acknowledging the quality of the work, yet the review was scathing.
“The reviewer pointed out grammatical errors, including punctuation errors, and asked us to rewrite the paper,” says Mr. Ajith, now a professor at the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka.
The authors knew quantum mechanics but did not know how to write concisely. They sought help from friends who were doing research but whose English was better than theirs. Part of the difficulty was rewriting technical terms. Yet they managed to avoid jargon as much as possible to make it into the journal.
Mr Ajith studied in a Malayalam medium school and had little exposure to English at that time. After twenty years of research and publishing, Mr Ajith now talks about why budding researchers must also be good writers.
India ranks third after China and the US in terms of the number of research papers published, says a research paper titled, Academic Writing in India: A Research Scholar’s PerspectiveBut in the same paper, the authors have also said that the rejection rate of Indian research papers is high, the reason for which is not poor research but poor language and grammar.
In a 2019 public notice, the UGC said that writing programmes should be organised in research institutes to address this skill gap.
“Regardless of the curriculum, Indian students have difficulty writing,” says Somdatta Karak, head of science communication and public outreach at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology. She is concerned about the intensity and accessibility of writing workshops and outlines.
“When I go to tier-II cities and take workshops on science communication, the students there have neither heard nor thought about these things,” says Ms Karak.
According to Kanika Singh, director of the writing program at Ashoka University, there is no special emphasis on writing in the higher education system in India. “If writing is institutionalized as part of your curriculum and you write in different ways every day, your science thesis will be better,” says Ms. Singh.
Even students joining top-level research institutes are trained in a way that gives little importance to writing, says Eldho Mathews, programme officer (internationalisation of higher education), Kerala State Council of Higher Education.
“At the screening level (for admission to research institutes), it is important to evaluate the level of language skills. By incorporating this factor in the testing systems, the government and institutes can effectively motivate students to develop their writing skills right from the beginning,” he said.
Why writing should be taught as a core skill
Asha Channakar, a researcher at the Bengaluru-based Institute of Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (InStem), had a similar experience as Mr Ajith with her first paper. “When I first wrote, it took me a lot of time to understand how to write.”
Ms Channakar says when she started writing, she read a lot of papers, and tried to connect writing and presentation to what she wanted to express. This was when she was a project assistant at the National Brain Research Centre in 2019. Later, she took research writing classes at the National Centre for Biological Sciences as part of her PhD in inSTEM.
“They taught us how to write scientific manuscripts, and we were also given assignments to write for the non-scientific community,” says Ms Channakar. She has now become the first author of a paper recently published in inStem.
“Our researchers struggle more with the flow of ideas than with language,” says Ranjana Sharma, who has a PhD in biochemistry from Montana State University.
Unlike Mr. Ajith and Ms. Channakar, Ms. Sarma had the benefit of the American research ecosystem. When she first wrote the review paper, the feedback was, “Ranjana doesn’t know English.”
“Coming from India, that was very ego-crushing,” says Ms. Sarma, who consistently scored high in English in her home country.
In 2004, she was enrolled in a course offered by Penn State University, where she was taught not only writing, but also presentation and peer review. In the US, she learnt that writing should be simple and easy to read, with short sentences. The writing classes Ms Sarma took influenced her to not only write, but also think and pay attention to what she reads.
“Language seems to be a challenge for most researchers as they write in a heavy, academic style. Despite English being the language of science in India, most researchers find it difficult to express themselves in simple and natural English,” says Subhra Priyadarshini, Editor-in-Chief, Nature Portfolio, Globally Supported Projects.
Can AI help?
Recently, students use software such as Grammarly to correct language and grammar. Although Mr. Ajit appreciates such software, he also says that these tools will not help students think critically while writing. “Grammarly is not writing a paper for you; it only checks the grammar of what you have already written,” says Ananya Dasgupta, associate professor of literature and arts at Krea University in Andhra Pradesh.
Ms Dasgupta, now director of the Centre for Writing and Teaching at Crea University, began working in writing as a course coordinator while doing her PhD at Rutgers University in the US. According to Ms Dasgupta, to improve the quality of writing, more people should be trained to teach writing.
Pooja Sagar, who teaches writing for research and analysis at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru, says teaching writing also involves teaching how to think about questions and formulate arguments.
Can AI help? Almost all established researchers said it can help to some extent. But at the level of research papers, a lot of critical thinking is required which AI cannot do. They also warned about AI providing incorrect information.
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