Interlude: Outlines, AI Detectives, and Literature Alerts

Time and again, I meet researchers and other professional writers who do not use outlines in their writing process. They tell me that they sit at their computers and "just start writing."

Although this approach can be helpful when you need to do a brain dump or write a zero draft, it is not a helpful strategy in the long run.

An outline creates a roadmap for writing the first draft. A "writemap" if you will.

When you are cruising along in a car and reach an intersection, you can look at the map to see where you need to go next. Then you can make the turn and start cruising again.

When you are in the flow of writing and reach a new paragraph, you can look at the "writemap" to see where you need to go next. Then you can make the turn and get back in the flow of writing.

With a "writemap", your writing will have a better structure from the start, require less editing in later drafts, and save you time and energy in the overall writing process.

Do you use outlines before you start writing?

Now onto this week's round-up...

💌 Round-up

💻 From My Desk

How to Find Problems in Your Draft with a Reverse Outline​
Have you already written a draft and it's too late to start with an outline? You can create a reverse outline to pinpoint problems with the structure, organization, and flow.

👓 Reading

The great detectives: humans versus AI detectors in catching large language model-generated medical writing​
“Our study found that Originiality.ai and ZeroGPT accurately detected AI-generated texts, regardless of whether they were rephrased or not. Additionally, Turnitin did not misclassify human-written articles. While professorial reviewers were generally able to discern AI-rephrased articles from human-written ones, they might misinterpret some human-written articles as AI-generated due to incoherent content and varied vocabulary.”

​Guidelines for academics aim to lessen ethical pitfalls in generative-AI use
​"…they launched a ten-month project to develop guidelines for researchers and university ethics committees. . . the project has three main objectives: to address the lack of expertise in identifying privacy risks caused by using genAI in research; to address data-management requirements in UK research, many of which don’t account for the growing use of genAI; and to address the legal risks for institutions that are using genAI to analyse or process participant data.”

🧰 Tools

Pubcrawler
I've used PubCrawler since my days in graduate school (I'm not going to admit how long ago that was. ) This free service scans daily updates to the PubMed and GenBank databases and will send you email alerts based on the search terms you set up in the platform. It's a great way to stay current on recent literature in your field. Warning: the first query will pull a very long list of results, but the following queries will be much better.

💭 Thoughts

Using an outline to write is like using a roadmap to drive.

When driving with a roadmap, you can more easily navigate the journey from the start of your location to the finish of your destination.

When writing with an outline, you can more easily navigate the journey from the start of your idea to the finish of your first draft.

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal