A paper should be equal to:

My colleagues disagree dramatically on what a scientific paper should be. Every time I request feedback on a draft, I am astonished by the contradictions in their notes.

I am not talking about their opinions about the ideal paper’s structure (the role of a title, the placement of the related-work section), nor am I talking about stylistic opinions (whether humor is appropriate, how equations should be formatted). No—what I am talking about is their fundamental beliefs about the role and purpose of scientific papers. Are papers arguments meant to persuade reviewers, and, ultimately, readers? Are papers announcements of new data, theorems, and other new results? Or are papers meant to document results for posterity in the scientific record? Are papers prizes for doing good work? Are papers tutorials written to teach the reader a new idea or way of thinking? Are papers advertisements?

Of course, these answers vary by discipline and venue, and they change over time, as the nature of “publishing” itself changes. But I think they also reflect how individuals orient around the time horizon at which scientific communication occurs. If you believe scientific communication is for your peers in the here and now, you might take the “announcement” or “advertisement” position. If you believe scientific communication occurs across decades, you might take the “document” or “argument” or “tutorial” position.

I am thinking this evening of Archibald MacLeish’s poem Ars Poetica. I memorized and recited it for an assignment in high school, I think in my AP English Literature class, simply because I loved how it sounded when I mouthed it to myself. “A poem should be equal to:” writes MacLeish—leaving a conspicuous space that commands time and breath—“Not true.”

I think I take a radical position on what a paper is. I have come to believe that a paper is simply a postcard to a friend. “Here I am,” it says, “I made it at last to a place we always dreamed of visiting.” And then: “I wish you were here. Send my love to the kids.” A trace of a scientist’s mind in a moment, containing within it images of the scientific communities it belongs to, expressed well and faithfully, and, held for the future as if in amber.

Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

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A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

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A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.