Writing Book Chapters Broadens the Scientific Experience

MIXED REVIEW: David Gordon, a science writer and biologist, calls chapter writing "a wonderful and awful experience." Scientists are, by necessity, writers. Academic scientists write exams, grant applications, and research papers; their industrial counterparts compose company reports and patent applications. Chapter writing offers a breather from these higher-pressure literary demands, whether it is for a published version of a symposium talk, a chapter for a textbook, or an analysis of a specific research area. Penning a chapter can be an intellectually invigorating experience, say those who've done it, with side benefits. "Writing book chapters is a marvelous way to prompt us to organize our thoughts on a particular topic," says Joseph Falkinham, a professor of biology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg who has contributed to 17 microbiology books. His chapter writing has led to valuable collaborations and invitations to speak in interesting places, and it has enabled him to identify unexplored research areas that could attract funding, he adds. Although chapter writing allows more creative leeway than other types of scientific communication, it has problems--from delays, to uncooperative coauthors, to overambitious editors. This combination of challenge and frustration prompted David Gordon, a science writer and biologist with the Washington Sea Grant Program at the University of Washington in Seattle, to call chapter writing "a wonderful and awful experience." A chapter based on a talk is usually solicited before the meeting, enabling the contributor to organize spoken words in a way that translates easily into written words. Other forays into the chapter-writing experience begin more casually, such as the "can't say no" situation. "I was completing my doctorate and my advisor asked me to contribute to the chapter," reports Cecelia Fox, an assistant professor of biology at College Misericordia in Dallas, Pa. The chapter appeared in Neuroprotective Signal Transduction (M. Mattson, ed., Totowa, N.J., Humana Press, 1998). Similarly, James Langeland, a professor of biology at Kalamazoo College, was a postdoc when the head of his laboratory asked him to help write a chapter for Embryology: Constructing the Organism (S. Gilbert, A. Raunio, eds., Sunderland, Mass., Sinauer Associates, 1997). "It was a lot of work but a good experience," he says. Friendship led John Alcock, Regents professor of biology at Arizona State University in Tempe, into chapter writing. "One very common way that people become involved in writing a chapter is that they have a pal who wants to collect a bunch of chapters and produce a book with relatively little effort--or so they think." When W.J. Bailey asked Alcock and a colleague to contribute a chapter on insect reproduction to Reproductive Behavior of Insects (W.J. Bailey, J. Ridsdill-Smith, eds., London, Chapman and Hall, 1991), he couldn't refuse. "But no harm was done," adds Alcock, who enjoyed the effort. Getting started is easier for the contributor than the person running the show. Lee Silver, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton University and author of Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World (London, Avon/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), is currently assembling the four-volume, 3,000-page Encyclopedia of Genetics for Academic Press. "I had about 100 topics, which I divided among about 50 contributors. I picked people I knew well in some cases, or people who had written papers or books that I liked. When I couldn't think of someone for a particular topic, I called friends, and they gave suggestions," he relates. Photo: Mary Levin RARE GLIMPSE: Charles Simenstad says chapter writers seldom see other contributors' work before publication. Just as an instrument in an orchestra must blend with the whole, so must the chapters of a book. "From a structural point of view, contributors are asked by the publisher to keep the style the same. From a scientific point of view, though, the result can be highly variable. In some cases where the book is out of a symposium, scientific editors often do very little to modify the presentations. The result is a hodgepodge in style and content," says F.M. Anne McNabb, a professor of biology at Virginia Tech. The editors of a book that she recently contributed to (J. Matthias-Starck, R.E. Ricklefs, eds., Avian Growth and Development: Evolution Within the Altricial-precocial Spectrum, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) avoided this problem by planning the book before the conference. But consistency isn't a high priority in many projects. Daniel Klionsky, a professor of microbiology at the University of California at Davis, had a typical experience when contributing a chapter based on a talk for V-ATPases (W.R. Jarvey, N. Nelson, eds., Cambridge, England, The Company of Biologists Ltd., 1992). "Directions were minimal. The speakers were given wide latitude with regard to the content and style of the chapter." Adds Charles Simenstad, coordinator of the wetland ecosystem team school of fisheries at the University of Washington in Seattle, "if there isn't a lot of exchange of draft chapters from the other authors, it only amounts to binding a bunch of poorly related papers together." He has contributed chapters to eight books, most based on symposia. But seeing the other chapters is a rarity. A more intellectual challenge in contributing a chapter is taking a broad look at a subject that a scientist is accustomed to scrutinizing in exquisite detail. Langeland, for example, was told specifically not to focus on molecular biology when writing his embryology chapter. "A research paper is in an area that you are involved in on a day-to-day basis. But this required me to write about areas I hadn't thought about before, like classical experiments," he says. Scientists have a freer hand in writing chapters compared to journal articles, says Klionsky. "Papers for peer-reviewed journals have very specific guidelines and are extensively reviewed for content. There is not a lot of opportunity for speculation. With a chapter, you essentially know that what you write will be published. The chapters are reviewed for general accuracy, but with much less stringency than is the case for journal articles. It was nice to have the opportunity to write in a less constrained manner," he says. Nor is an infusion of fresh data required. "Chapters are not new information; [they] try to say something that is semi-novel, and [something] that reviews or summarizes material," says Alcock. VARIED COLLECTION: F.M. Anne McNabb says the scientific viewpoints can vary widely in a book with many contributors. Writing chapters is also easier than writing entire books. Says McNabb, "The difference in writing a chapter is the level of responsibility. When you are writing a book yourself, you have to research all kinds of things that are not in your immediate specialty. For a chapter, a contributor is usually asked to focus on the area of expertise." But the level of satisfaction is higher when an author goes it alone, says Alcock. "I like being the sole author better because I have more control over the situation. Writing a chapter is something of a duty, but writing my own book is a pleasure," he adds. Agreeing to write a chapter brings out the procrastinator in even the most diligent scientist. Says Mary Powelson, a professor of plant pathology at Oregon State University in Corvallis, "The worst part wasn't the editing, but getting everyone to get chapters in. Even though we set deadlines, in academia, people seem to ignore them." But to be fair, when students are lined up for help, experiments are running, and grant deadlines approaching, penning a chapter may understandably fall to the bottom of the "to do" list. Langeland describes the typical timetable for writing a chapter. "It took me about nine months, but most of that was procrastination. It took about two months to actually grind it out. But then there was a huge wait," says Langeland. And sometimes that wait can stretch ... and stretch. This is what happened with Advances in Potato Pest Biology and Management, edited by G.W. Zehnder, M.L. Powelson, R.K. Jansson, and R.V. Raman, and published by the American Phytopathological Society in St. Paul, Minn. "The International Conference on Potato Pest Management was held in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in October 1991, and the book came out in 1994," says Powelson. Gordon encountered many of the glitches of chapter writing when doing the introduction to a book on marine sanctuaries that he'd rather not name. Gordon has an undergraduate degree in marine science, but as a science writer who has published 11 trade books, he was paid for this effort, which is not typical for practicing scientists. He was given a content outline and a "terrible first draft" for guidance. "I submitted a first draft, then never heard back. I'd expected to get feedback about how I could make it in sync with the other chapters. A year later I saw the book, and a lot of my chapter had been rewritten," he recalls. For a life scientist interested in writing a chapter on a topic of interest, but without many of the hassles usually encountered with such efforts, a stint at the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study in Colorado Springs, Colo., may be rewarding. BSCS is a nonprofit organization that develops life science curricula and educational materials for all grades. It also produces university-level textbooks that are then marketed by commercial publishers, as well as learning modules on specific topics, such as the human genome project. Founded with an NSF grant in 1958, the organization's in-house professional staff of scientists and science educators once swelled to 110, but plummeted when President Ronald Reagan cut the budget. Since 1958, more than 10,000 scientists and science educators from outside have participated in BSCS projects by advising, writing, or evaluating materials. Today the in-house staff consists of only eight scientists and six science educators, but researchers can visit for two-week sessions to help develop or write chapters. A visiting expert at BSCS might brainstorm new topics, provide input on material that should be included in a particular module, suggest ways that a student can actively learn the subject matter, or actually draft a chapter. "The role is to distill the primary literature into a format that teachers can understand. Biology is advancing at such a pace that there is no chance that a teacher of biology at the high school or even college level can keep up," says Michael Dougherty, assistant director of BSCS. For more information, contact Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, Pikes Peak Research Park, 5415 Mark Dabling Blvd., Colorado Springs, CO 80918-3842. Telephone: 719-531-5167; FAX: 719-531-9104 DEADLINES, OR NOT: Ruth Schmitter warns that some editors will give writers early deadlines and less-than-firm word requirements. Scientists unfamiliar with the publishing process may be surprised to learn that deadlines sometimes aren't really deadlines-- editors typically request a manuscript a few days or weeks before it will be edited, to allow for unforeseen delays. And assigned word lengths aren't written in stone, either. For example, Ruth Schmitter, chair of biology at Albion College in Albion, Mich., submitted a chapter to one book and was surprised when the editor told her she could have written more, or handed it in a few days late. Despite the difficulties of being part of a literary whole, scientists who have contributed chapters generally regard the experience as positive. Perhaps the most satisfying type of chapter contribution is one that reaches beyond the scientific community. This happened to J. Whitfield Gibbons, a professor of ecology at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in Aiken, S.C., and veteran of many book projects. Gibbons wrote a chapter for Alligators: Prehistoric Presence in the American Landscape (M. Strawn, ed., Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). "The essay was based on my research experiences, as well as my assessments of public attitudes about the species. The gratifying aspect of writing this chapter was that it required adherence to strict facts about the biology of alligators, but reached a broad general audience that could be educated and influenced about the importance of the species in southern ecosystems." Most important of all, contributing a chapter may be a wonderful opportunity to stop and smell the proverbial roses--to evaluate, appreciate, and explain one's science. Ricki Lewis has written entire books, parts of books, and chapters. She prefers writing articles for The Scientist. She can be reached online at rickilewis@nasw.org.

Writing Book Chapters Broadens the Scientific Experience

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