Editorial
pubs.acs.org/acscatalysis
Superlative Scientific Writing
P ublication in peer-reviewed journals serves to disseminate
scientific findings, while certifying them (via peer-review)
and archiving them for future use.1 It also documents authors’
claims for the precedence of their ideas and provides crucial
recognition that advances their careers. In 2014, there were
over 34 000 peer-reviewed academic journals.1 Nevertheless,
the demand for space, particularly in the leading journals of
each field, has become intense: the number of individual
authors vying for this space worldwide is increasing at a rate of
about 3% per year. The total number of published research
articles (as recorded by Scopus) is growing even faster: over 6%
per year, based on the increase from 1.3 million to 2.4 million
in the decade from 2003 to 2013.2 To manage the deluge, many
selective journals, including ACS Catalysis, have adopted an
editorial triage process to identify papers that are likely to fare
well in their peer-review process. Referees are then asked to
assess the novelty or potential impact, in addition to the
scientific soundness, of the work that is selected for review. In
this hypercompetitive environment, how are authors to increase
their chances of having their papers reviewed and eventually
published?
The explicit goals of scientific writing have always been, and
should be, clarity and conciseness,3 while still providing enough
descriptive information to ensure that others can reproduce the
work.4 Journal articles are restricted to a set of immutable
headings (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and
Discussion), leaving little latitude for creative structures,
personal anecdotes, or humorous asides. These constraints
can result in uninspiring academic prose that is dense, arcane,
and turgid, even when the findings themselves are quite
interesting. On the other hand, authors may intentionally try to
disguise routine work by linking it to current hot topics, or by
using esoteric words to make the results appear more important
than they likely are.5
Another disturbing trend is making its way into the archival
scientific literature: exaggerating the significance of one’s results
through use of adjectives such as excellent, remarkable,
extraordinary. These words are acceptable in nonscientific
writing but have little or no quantifiable meaning in research.
For example, all research is novel (or else it would not qualify
to be called research), yet use of the word “novel” has increased
25-fold in the abstracts of medical papers since 1975,6 so that it
appeared in 8.5% of such papers in 2014. The phenomenon is
not limited to the health fields; it is now rampant in all areas of
science and engineering. A recent study of the evolution of
word frequency in PubMed abstracts revealed that the top 25
positive words were used 880% more frequently in 2014
relative to 1974; whereas negative word frequency increased
much more modestly (257%), and neutral words were
unchanged.7 In high-impact journals, many of which already
ban words like “first” and “novel” from their titles, the increased
frequency of positive words was lower, but still a distressing
674%. The absolute frequency of the four most overused words
(robust, novel, innovative, unprecedented) rose by 15 000% over
the four-decade period. In a humorous extrapolation, the
© 2017 American Chemical Society
authors predicted that the word “novel” should be found in
every scientific paper’s abstract by the year 2123.
Such dramatic changes in word frequency seem to confirm
the emergence of a research culture that encourages hyperbolic
claims.7 The increasingly competitive nature of academic
research, combined with the audit culture of its institutions
and major funding agencies, has resulted in a heavy reliance on
impact factors, citation statistics, and rankings that each
generation of researchers must try to outperform. As Biagioli
observed, any metric chosen to evaluate science rapidly ceases
to function effectively in that role because practitioners start to
game it.8 This inadvertent creation of incentives is familiar to
economists, who know it as Goodhart’s Law. In recent years,
we have noticed a distinct shift in the writing style of articles
submitted to ACS Catalysis, which often describe the
performance of new catalysts as excellent or unprecedented.
Claims of having created a “better catalyst”, presumably in
order to market the paper more persuasively to editors and
reviewers, are now so pervasive that some authors report it
multiple times each year for the same type of material or
catalytic reaction. How ever popular this practice may be with
funding agencies and academic evaluation committees, the
unseemly self-promotion is diminishing our ability to build
catalysis science on a solid intellectual foundation, and it will
eventually erode the credibility of our field.
Interestingly, the blame for both distortion and hype in
science has long been unfairly aimed at journalists writing for
audiences of nonexperts, rather than at scientists themselves.9
This view has been debunked by several recent studies,
including a recent analysis of press releases issued by U.K.
universities in 2011. Statements were found to be exaggerated
in 33−40% of the institution’s announcements, compared to
the corresponding peer-reviewed journal articles on which they
were based.10 The inflated claims were then reflected
reasonably accurately in news stories written about the research
based on these announcements. Since some of the press
releases would have been for scientific articles whose claims
were themselves hyped in order to appeal to journal reviewers,
the statistics undoubtedly underestimate the overall frequency
of exaggeration, which appears to be caused largely by the
researchers and their academic press agents.
It is even more disturbing to realize that the use of
unscientific superlatives may be autocatalytic. Although the
English language now dominates scientific publishing, the
fraction of authors from non-English-speaking countries has
risen dramatically in recent years. The PubMed abstract study
described above showed that authors from institutions in non-
English-speaking countries used positive words to describe their
research more often than authors writing in English-speaking
countries.7 These authors may model their writing on recently
published English language abstracts, reinforcing the impression
that such practices are widely accepted. Such authors may also
be under even greater pressure to demonstrate the impact of
Published: February 22, 2017
2218 DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.7b00566
ACS Catal. 2017, 7, 2218−2219
ACS Catalysis Editorial

their work to the research institutions and funding agencies in (4) Bligaard, T.; Bullock, R. M.; Campbell, C. T.; Chen, J. G.; Gates,
their countries. B. C.; Gorte, R. J.; Jones, C. W.; Jones, W. D.; Kitchin, J. R.; Scott, S.
While enthusiasm and optimistic extrapolation are natural, it L. ACS Catal. 2016, 6, 2590−2602.
is time to acknowledge that the misrepresentation of research (5) Pinker, S. Chronicle of Higher Education: Chronicle Review,
September 2014.
findings through exaggeration or hype is a grave matter for (6) Goodman, N. W. Eur. Sci. Ed. 2015, 41, 31−35.
scientific integrity. Misleading statements, irresponsible claims, (7) Vinkers, C. H.; Tijdink, J. K.; Otte, W. M. BMJ. [Br. Med. J.]
and credulity create unrealistic expectations, waste valuable 2015, 351, h6467.
research funds, and impede scientific progress.11 External (8) Biagioli, M. Nature 2016, 535, 201.
pressures to simplify, to entertain, and to market cannot be (9) Bubela, T.; Nisbet, M. C.; Borchelt, R.; Brunger, F.; Critchley, C.;
allowed to override our primary goal of describing physical and Einsiedel, E.; Geller, G.; Gupta, A.; Hampel, J.; Hyde-Lay, R.; Jandciu,
chemical complexity accurately.12 In catalysis, as in many E. W.; Jones, S. A.; Kolopack, P.; Lane, S.; Lougheed, T.; Nerlich, B.;
science fields, comparative adjectives are almost always more Ogbogu, U.; O’Riordan, K.; Ouellette, C.; Spear, M.; Strauss, S.;
appropriate than superlatives: authors should describe precisely Thavaratnam, T.; Willemse, L.; Caulfield, T. Nat. Biotechnol. 2009, 27,
514−518.
how their catalysts behave relative to established benchmarks
(10) Sumner, P.; Vivian-Griffiths, S.; Boivin, J.; Williams, A.; Venetis,
under carefully controlled conditions4 and let readers draw C. A.; Davies, A.; Ogden, J.; Whelan, L.; Hughes, B.; Dalton, B.; Boy,
their own conclusions about how remarkable the results are. F.; Chambers, C. D. BMJ. [Br. Med. J.] 2014, 349, g7015.
The high quality of the work and the insight it generates, (11) Caulfield, T.; Sipp, D.; Murry, C. E.; Daley, G. Q.; Kimmelman,
expressed clearly without excessive spin or hype, is what should J. Science 2016, 352, 776−777.
impress editors, reviewers, and fellow researchers. (12) Gopen, G.; Swan, J. Am. Sci. 1990, 78, 550−558.
At ACS Catalysis, we prescreen all manuscript submissions (13) Describing specific achievements “for the first time” is
for a list of keywords, including new/novel, whose use is not acceptable in the author’s cover letter, to highlight the potential
allowed in titles and abstracts, as well as for descriptive words importance of the work. This is an effective way to communicate
such as outstanding, excellent, unprecedented, exceptional, novelty and impact to the editor. However, as stated in this editorial,
“first time” claims in the manuscript should be minimized, or used with
sustainable, green, and related adjectives. These words are appropriately cautious modifiers such as “to the best of our knowledge,
flagged by the journal, so that the editor handling the this is the first time....”.
manuscript can evaluate the appropriateness of their use in
the paper on the basis of his/her interpretation of the results, as
well as the comments of the referees. The editor may then
require removal or revision of some or all of these words prior
to publication. Papers that contain a large number of
inappropriate words are often triaged by the editor prior to
external peer review, if the findings are perceived to be
oversold. Finally, we note that claims of “for the first time”
should be made very cautiously in submitted manuscripts,
because authors have no way of knowing what other work will
precede their publication. When they appear in the abstract,
these claims are also flagged by the journal for review by the
handling editor. In general, such claims are strongly
discouraged.13
Susannah L. Scott*
University of California, Santa Barbara
Christopher W. Jones
Georgia Institute of Technology

■
ORCID
AUTHOR INFORMATION

Susannah L. Scott: 0000-0003-1161-0499

Christopher W. Jones: 0000-0003-3255-5791
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and
not necessarily the views of the ACS.

■ REFERENCES
(1) Ware, M.; Mabe, M. The STM Report: An Overview of Scientific
and Scholarly Journal Publishing; 4th ed.; International Association of
Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers: The Hague, The
Netherlands, 2015.
(2) Plume, A.; van Weijen, D. Res. Trends Issue 38, September 2014.
(3) Coghill, A. M.; Garson, L. R. The ACS Style Guide: Effective
Communication of Scientific Information; American Chemical Society:
Washington, DC, 2006.

2219 DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.7b00566

ACS Catal. 2017, 7, 2218−2219