Tag: Geology (and other Earth Sciences)

Glaucophane Schist. Glaucophane Schist. Generally the papers I have seen have not been finished enough! People
seem to think if they google 6 references that mention their mineral
they’re done: far from it! I want *everything*, summarized and wrapped
up. That’s why you were given such rare minerals. Other problems:

1) Titles. Titles must be descriptive! "Fubarite" is not an acceptable
title. Since it’s now been so overused "Fubarite of the barites" is now
also *not allowed*. "Fubarite, a Ba-rich mixed sulfate-silicate mineral
used in barium enemas" would be acceptable or "Fubarite, a dense glassy
pseudomineral".

2) Write concisely, no filler! Example: Figures and tables must serve a
purpose. "Table 2 shows a list of diffraction lines for fubarite" with
no further discussion will get you BIG minus points. A table has to be
there for a reason and say something useful about the mineral to be
included.

2a) Don’t use linguistic filler either: "The structure or construction of
minerals and mineral-like substances is concerned with the placement of
ions within a crystal lattice whose which may be on the order of a few
angstroms across, as determined by x-ray diffraction or a number of
similar methods, in the case of fubarite (ref ref ref). The question as
to whether the structure of fubarite…" yadda yadda yadda. Very bad.

I can spin this stuff out all day way better than you can, and I can
spot it a mile away too. You were warned.

2b) No direct quotes allowed ever. No exceptions.

3) Citations are not the subject of a sentence unless there is a good
reason. "Fubarene is orthorhombic F2/mmm (Smith, 1987)" is good. "Joseph
Smith in 1887 found that fubarene is an orthorhombic mineral with space
group F2/mmm": BAD. Avoid this style of citation altogether.

3a) Use multiple sources: "Snafulite is often found associated with
fubarite and tarfulite (Kilroy, 1972; Riley, et al., 1986; Murphy 2011)
is good. Sometimes it’s not possible, but this is a summary paper, if
you can source a statement multiple places they should all be there.

3b) Write about related compositions, structures and occurrences. If all
your sources are about your mineral, you haven’t done your homework. "Of
this group Tarfulite, the tantalum endmember (Jones, 1989) is notable
for its…"

4) Use a narrative. E.g.: start from general aspects of the structure:
crystal system, placement of ions, changes in structure due to
composition effects, related structures (each cited), with figures to
show how it all works. This is *hard* but it’s what I expect. I should
be able to read it and understand your explanation (of the structure in
this case).

The opposite of good is the "random bunch-o-facts" style of writing:
"Fubarite is orthorhombic (Smith 1005). Its space group is F222 (Smith
2005). Its lattice parameters are a=1.05A; b=2.32A; c=3.45A (Smith
2005)." Very bad.

4a) Use scientific language. Look at the terms and sentence structures
used in your source papers. "FUBARITE!!! It’s Foo!! It’s BAR!! Foobar
fun for the whole family in a single mineral!": not funny. Where there’s
a truly humorous angle, the drier the joke is, the better. "Despite the
military understanding of the term ‘FUBAR’, fubarite itself, far from
having a ‘messed up’ structure, is typically found in well-developed
idiomorphic crystals (Murphy, 1985)." would be OK.

5) If you use fancy terms, explain them! Rule of thumb: if it’s in Nesse
you don’t have to explain it, otherwise you must. If I see jargon I
don’t understand it’s bad, so don’t write jargon *you* don’t understand.
Explain it. You might need a new source or two. "Distinguishing fubarite
from snafulite in rocks typically requires the use of SY-mXRFS. This is
use of focused high energy synchrotron X-rays to excite x-ray emission
in micron-scale domains of a sample (ref; ref). Numerous such studies on
fubarite-bearing rocks (refs) have shown…"

6) Do not include the details of analytical instruments or methods
(brand names, procedures, etc) unless there is a really good reason. so
far I haven’t seen a single such mention that made any sense.

7) In the literature search section I want to see the *number* of
citations the highest cited reference had, and the most recent relevant
article.

8) If you find that your paper is still thin, write more about the
context of the mineral, it’s history, geologic occurrence, compositional
variations and related minerals. See #3b above, theyre’s always a
context *around* the mineral you can write more about.

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Glaucophane Schist

Glaucophane Schist