Came across a software called SWAN - Scientific Writing Assistant, which was created to help writers with the content of scientific writing. Eventually I downloaded it and tried it out. This is how it work:
1. Go to this website to download a zipped folder http://cs.uef.fi/swan/download.html
4. This is how the welcome message looks like during the 1st launch, you can choose to disable it.
5. There are tree options, I've chosen "Quick start" for my trial. You simply click on the one you preferred for your evaluation and it will bring you to the next step.
6. Now, open the file where you keep your manuscript. In my case, I opened a Microsoft Word document. Then all you need to do is simply copy and past the content of your manuscript into the respective column in SWAN.
For "Quick start" option, you only needed the "Title", "Abstract", "Introduction", and "Conclusion" sections.
7. Then click the "Start Evaluation" button.
A small window will pops out which shows you the evaluation progress.
8. In the evaluation results, it gives comments on each of the four sections. The Green (+) sign denotes positive comments, whereas the Red (-) sign indicates areas you 'may' want to take a look and reconsider about your text.
It also provide some statistic about the length and the voice of your sentences. It'll warn you when a passive sentence is found.
It'll also highlights your words with different colours, to indicate the different word categories found in your text, e.g. imprecise words, judgemental words, transition words, and words in the passive sentences.
In general, I am quite happy with the guidelines given - It'll remind you what are the good things to include in your text and what to avoid. However, a software is still a software, it have advised me to include 'future work' in the conclusion section when the last sentence of my conclusion says 'In addition, further work is required..." - It failed to perceive the meaning of the sentence when different word is used to convey the same message.
1. Go to this website to download a zipped folder http://cs.uef.fi/swan/download.html
2. After the download, extract it and these are the content:
3. For window users, double click the "Launch_SWAN_(Windows).bat" file and a DOS window (below) will pop open which indicates that your window is launching theSWAN
For "Quick start" option, you only needed the "Title", "Abstract", "Introduction", and "Conclusion" sections.
It also provide some statistic about the length and the voice of your sentences. It'll warn you when a passive sentence is found.
2 comments:
Than you for your review of the tool. Yes indeed, SWAN is still a work in progress as you rightly point out. But there are not many free tools out there designed to help scientists review their papers :)
Do try the full evaluation mode which allows the writer to see whether the structure of the paper (headings and subheadings) is supportive of the contribution. And enjoy the manual fluidity evaluation based on the work of Professor George Gopen of Duke University. There is no other easy way to identify fluidity problems in your paragraphs! The designer of the tool, Jean Luc Lebrun, is available for suggestion on ways to improve the tool :)
As you rightly point out, SWAN has not yet reached the nirvana of perfection - yet it is one of the rare free software tools allowing a scientist to semi-automatically evaluate a paper prior to publication. I recommend the use of the full evaluation instead of the quick start. Through the full evaluation, the structure of the paper is assessed (headings and subheadings) and comments are given to improve it so that it really strongly supports the contribution of the author. ANother great tool of SWAN is the manual fluidity evaluation. It is based on the work of Duke Professor George Gopen and allows the writer to see whether his sentences meet reader expectations.
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