Guide­lines for Writ­ing Sci­en­tific Works in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems

2024 • IX • 3

A sci­en­tific (writ­ten) work should always be scru­ti­nized in terms of both con­tent and form. In its orig­i­nal ver­sion, the author is respon­si­ble for both. Herein, I can not—and do not intend to—help you regard­ing con­tent. You must know what you are report­ing, and, hope­fully, the sci­en­tific work you present will be rig­or­ous and rel­e­vant. But maybe I can be of some assis­tance regard­ing form...

Between con­tent and form, con­tent is always the most impor­tant. How­ever, form is not neg­li­gi­ble. Poor-for­mat­ting can impair the read­ing and under­stand­ing of the con­tent. Ulti­mately, the mean­ing and intent of the sci­en­tific work may not be grasped.

Indeed, recall­ing Robert Bringhurst’s maxim: “Typog­ra­phy exists to honor con­tent.” After super­vis­ing, exam­in­ing, and review­ing dozens of sci­en­tific works in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, I have seen many care­less, sloppy, and igno­rant for­mat­ting deci­sions (let us leave aside any con­sid­er­a­tions regard­ing the value of the con­tent of those works).

What fol­lows is a col­lec­tion of typo­graph­i­cal guide­lines to keep in mind when writ­ing sci­en­tific works in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. Most of these guide­lines are likely applic­a­ble across many research domains. Note that some of the guide­lines may be debat­able, but bear in mind that the guide­lines are pro­vided accord­ing to gen­eral (clas­si­cal) typo­graph­i­cal prac­tices, with some being informed by Por­tuguese typo­graph­i­cal tra­di­tion. This set of guide­lines will not pre­vent sloppy or care­less works, but it may help you make bet­ter for­mat-related deci­sions.

Regard­less of what you read here, always check the typo­graph­i­cal guide­lines (or should I wrote “rules”?) of the insti­tu­ition where you are devel­op­ing your work or where you are going to pub­lish your work. You should com­ply with those guide­lines (rules)—do not get you into unnec­es­sary trou­ble, even though some of those guide­lines (rules) might be com­plete non­sense from a typo­graph­i­cal point of view (believe me, I have had my share of annoy­ances with imposed, idi­otic for­mat­ting rules).

Actu­ally, the main audi­ence for this mate­r­ial are my MSc and PhD stu­dents. Super­vi­sors are the ones who “suf­fer” most while read­ing stu­dents’ poorly for­mat­ted works. So I hope my stu­dents pay close atten­tion to the fol­low­ing guide­lines (a check­list, indeed), and reflect them in the writ­ing of their sci­en­tific works. I will ben­e­fit from this dili­gence, just as they will, since I will be able to review the work more quickly and to focus more intensely on its con­tent, with­out stum­bling, here and there, in sub­stan­dard for­mat­ting. If the fol­low­ing check­list helps oth­ers as well, even bet­ter.

1. Do not write in the first per­son. The doc­u­ments we are deal­ing with are of a tech­ni­cal-sci­en­tific nature. Restrict the dis­course to the third per­son sin­gu­lar.

2. If you include indexes, con­sider the fol­low­ing, in the order pre­sented: Table of Con­tents, List of Fig­ures, List of Tables, List of Graph­ics, List of Abbre­vi­a­tions.

3. Ensure con­sis­tent num­ber­ing for chap­ters, sec­tions, sub­sec­tions, fig­ures, tables, etc.. Dou­ble-check that they match any indexes.

4. If you have a List of Abbre­vi­a­tions, make sure it is pre­sented in alpha­bet­i­cal order of abbre­vi­a­tion.

5. Hav­ing abbre­vi­a­tions, make sure you define them in their first use in the body of the doc­u­ment, even if you pro­vided in the begin­ning of the doc­u­ment a List of Abbre­vi­a­tions. For instance, if I want to use the abbre­vi­a­tion IS for the expres­sion “Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems”, I would do the fol­low­ing in the first appear­ance of the expres­sion in the text: " Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (IS) ...”

6. If using abbre­vi­a­tions, be sure to observe the num­ber in the def­i­n­i­tion in the List of Abbre­vi­a­tions and on the def­i­n­i­tion of the abbre­vi­a­tion. If the abbre­vi­a­tion IS is asso­ci­ated to the expres­sion “Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems”, I could write, after its def­i­n­i­tion, a state­mente like “IS are fun­da­men­tal to the suc­cess of enter­prises”, but I should not write “IS is a pro­jec­tion of an enter­prise regard­ing its infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion activ­i­ties”.

7. Let the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents (para­graphs, fig­ures, tables, etc.) of your doc­u­ment breathe. Using ade­quate and suf­fi­cient spac­ing is absolutely crit­i­cal.

8. Although spac­ing is crtit­i­cal (some say it is the most dif­fi­cult com­pe­tency to mas­ter in com­po­si­tion), avoid white space in pages—if needed, move floats (fig­ures, tables, graph­ics, etc.) or pull sub­se­quent text to fill the white space.

9. Make the para­graphs rec­og­niz­able. Indent the first line of the para­graph or increase the spac­ing between para­graphs com­pared to the spac­ing between lines within a sin­gle para­graph. Accord­ing to cer­tain typo­graph­i­cal tra­di­tions, if you indent the first line of para­graphs, that first line should not be indented if it is the first para­graph of a chap­ter, sec­tion, or sub­sec­tion, and, in cer­tain cases, after the pre­sen­ta­tion of a float.

10. If you have floats make sure all of them have a sen­si­ble label and are num­bered. For instance, “Fig­ure 1: View of the Premises”, “Table 2: Demo­graph­ics of Respon­dents”. Note that the num­ber­ing is asso­ci­ated to each type of float (you will have Fig­ure 1, Fig­ure 2, ..., Table 1, Table 2, ..., etc.).

11. Place the labels of fig­ures and graph­ics below the fig­ures and graph­ics and the labels of tables above the tables. Make sure the labels of all floats are attached to the respec­tive floats (do not allow them to sep­a­rate over pages).

12. Hav­ing floats, make sure you men­tion each and every­one of them in the text.

13. If a table does not fit on one page, be care­ful how you split it.

14. In tables, check the align­ment of each col­umn. Pay atten­tion to the align­ment of the col­umn labels. Be spe­cially care­full with columns con­tain­ing num­bers with dec­i­mal points or thou­sands sep­a­ra­tors.

15. If you include fig­ures in your doc­u­ment, check their qual­ity. Any text, forms, and col­ors should work well together, facil­i­tat­ing the assim­i­la­tion of the mes­sage. Be par­tic­u­larly care­ful with export and import oper­a­tions from other appli­ca­tions. Favor vec­tor graph­ics over raster graph­ics.

16. When includ­ing floats, observe the mar­gins of the page. Do not exceed them!

17. If your doc­u­ment has por­trait ori­ented pages, if you need to put a com­po­nent (e.g., a fig­ure or a table) in land­scape ori­en­ta­tion, make sure the header and the footer of the page, if any, keep their por­trait ori­en­ta­tion (i.e., rotate only the float).

18. Usu­ally, at its most com­plex form, a doc­u­ment is orga­nized in vol­umes, num­bers, parts, chap­ters, sec­tions, and sub­sec­tions, from the largest unit to the small­est unit of con­tent orga­ni­za­tion. There are no such things as “sub­chap­ters”. There is only one level of sec­tions. If a sec­tion needs to be orga­nized in com­po­nents, they are called sub­sec­tions. If a sub­sec­tion needs to be orga­nized in com­po­nents, its parts are also called sub­sec­tions (inside sub­sec­tions there can only be sub­sec­tions).

19. Ensure that no sec­tion or sub­sec­tion stands alone with­out at least one peer of the same hier­ar­chi­cal level. If you can­not ensure this, incor­po­rate the sin­gle sec­tion or sub­sec­tion into its par­ent unit.

20. If your doc­u­ment dis­tin­guishes between front and back pages, con­sider begin­ning each new chap­ter on a front page with an odd-num­bered folio (page num­ber).

21. Con­sider labelling chap­ters, sec­tions, sub­sec­tions, fig­ures, tables, graph­ics, etc., with expres­sions whose words begin with a cap­i­tal let­ter, except for link­ing words. A few exam­ples: “The Role of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems in Con­tem­po­rary Orga­ni­za­tions”, “Bar­ri­ers to Dig­i­tal Tran­si­tion”, “Edi­tors-in-chief and Man­ag­ing Edi­tors: Duties and Respon­si­bil­i­ties”, and “Answers to All the Exer­cises”.

22. If you are writ­ing inte­ger num­bers out­side a math­e­mat­i­cal con­text, the rule of thumb is to write the num­ber in full up to nine. From 10 onwards, it is writ­ten with numer­als. So, one would write: “There were 33 appli­ca­tions, three of which were excluded, nine were accepted con­di­tion­ally, and the reamin­ing 21 advanced to the next stage.”

23. There are hyphens (-), en-dashes (–), and em-dashes (—).

    Exam­ples of the use of hyphens: one-way, up-or-out, sev­enty-four, mid-March, X-ray, self-con­fi­dent.

    Exam­ples of the use of en-dashes:
    John von Neu­mann (1903–1957) was one of the ‘‘Five Mar­tians’’.
    The paper spans pages 679–707.
    FC Porto defeated Bay­ern München 2–1 on the 1987 Euro­pean Cup final.
    The Oporto–Lis­bon trip by train takes almost three hours.

    Exam­ples of the use of em-dashes:
    Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky—the Russ­ian nov­el­ist—spent four years in a Siber­ian prison camp.
    In Spain, there are mul­ti­ple lan­guages—Castil­ian, Cata­lan, Gali­cian, Basque, Aranese, Astur-Leonese, Aragonese, and Fala.
    Quot­ing Mark Twain: “I didn’t have time to write a short let­ter—so I wrote a long one instead.”
    (note that in Por­tuguese a space is always inserted after the em-dash and before the em-dash, unless the em-dash is at the begin­ning of the phrase)

24. If you are using words of a dif­fer­ent lan­guage in your doc­u­ment, think twice (unless you are writ­ing a doc­u­ment in the field of philol­ogy). Are you sure there is no word in the lan­guage you are writ­ing with the mean­ing attached to the for­eigner expres­sion you are try­ing to use? An exam­ple if you were writ­ing in Por­tuguese: do not use the Eng­lish word “per­for­mance”—con­sider the Por­tuguese words “desem­penho” or “actu­ação”. If unavoid­able, put the word in ital­ics (a foot­note could be required to explain the reader the mean­ing of the for­eigner word).

25. If you use fig­ures or tables from other authors, besides the ade­quate cita­tion (“Source:” or “Adapted from” fol­lowed by the cita­tion, below the label of the fig­ure or table, but not being part of the label), check the lan­guage of the orig­i­nal. Usu­ally, you will need to trans­late for­eigner lan­guage fig­ures/tables to the lan­guage you are writ­ing your doc­u­ment. In this case, the used fig­ure/table will always be an adap­ta­tion (use “Adapted from” below the label).

26. If your doc­u­ment has appen­dices or annexes, make sure you refer to each one of them in the body of the doc­u­ment. In the begin­ning of each appen­dix/annex pro­vide one to three para­graphs pre­sent­ing its con­tents and mak­ing any con­sid­er­a­tions required for the reader to bet­ter under­stand it.

27. Use an appro­pri­ate cita­tion and ref­er­enc­ing style. Ensure uni­for­mity in the appli­ca­tion of the style.

28. Make sure all cita­tions in the doc­u­ment have cor­re­spond­ing ref­er­ences. Make sure that the list of ref­er­ences does not con­tain entries that are not cited in the doc­u­ment.

29. If you are writ­ing in Por­tuguese, bear in mind:

    Ordi­nal numer­als pre­sented in the form of num­bers are graphed as fol­lows: 1.º, 1.ª, 2.º, 2.ª, 3.º, 3.ª, ...

    Do not con­fuse method­ol­ogy with method. Method­olody comes from the Greek “metho­dos” (pur­suit, way of inquiry) + “logia” (study of, dis­course about). Hence, method­ol­ogy is the study of meth­ods, while method is a sys­tem­atic way of doing some­thing. In Por­tuguese metodolo­gia and método.

    If you need to trans­late the Eng­lish word con­sis­tent to Por­tuguese, prob­a­bly, the cor­rect word will be coer­ente (and not con­sis­tente).

30. Think twice about ital­i­ciz­ing lit­eral quo­ta­tions, whether inline or not. Gen­er­ally, there is no rea­son to do so. There are even fewer rea­sons to under­line text.

31. Be spar­ing with adjec­tives. With very rare excep­tions, it is best not to use them at all.

32. Pay atten­tion to translin­eation con­ven­tions of the lan­guage you are writ­ing in.

33. Take care of “wid­ows” (last line of a para­graph that ends on the first line of a page) and “orphans” (first line of a para­graph that begins on the last line of a page).

When doing the final check of a doc­u­ment, do it on the for­mat the reader will use. Do not place your trust in WYSI­WYG (What You See Is What You Get) inter­me­di­ate for­mats.

If you got this far, you have eas­ily con­cluded that the pro­vided guide­lines are very basic. If you want to know the rea­sons, alter­na­tive styles and more advanced guide­lines, I leave below a set of solid ref­er­ences that you can use (I have included ref­er­ences on typog­ra­phy and dig­i­tal com­po­si­tion, but I have left out ref­er­ences on type­faces and design of books and other more elab­o­rate doc­u­ments). From the ones listed, you will eas­ily find the spe­cialty ref­er­ences whose con­sul­ta­tion you will real­ize you need.

• Bringhurst, R. (2013). The Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style. Fourth ed. Point Roberts: Hart­ley & Marks.

  McLean, R. (1980). The Thames and Hud­son Man­ual of Typog­ra­phy. Lon­don: Thames and Hud­son.

  Knuth, D. E. (1986). The TeX­book. Read­ing, Mass­a­chu­setts: Addi­son-Wes­ley Pub­lish­ing Com­pany.

  Lam­port, L. (1994). LaTeX—A Doc­u­ment Prepa­ra­tion Sys­tem. Read­ing, Mass­a­chu­setts: Addi­son-Wes­ley Pub­lish­ing Com­pany.

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