The passive voice in scientific writing. The current norm in science journals

Abstract

In contrast to past consensus, many authors now feel that the passive voice compromises the quality of scientific writing. However, studies involving scientific articles are rare. Using a corpus of 60 scientific research articles from six journals, this study examined the proportion of passives used, and the contexts and forms in which they occurred. The results revealed that about 30% of all clauses were passive clauses. The canonical form was most pervasive, followed by the bare passive; together, they constituted more than a quarter of all clauses analyzed. Passives were typically used in main clauses, followed by relative and adverbial clauses. Roughly 29% of all passives were located in the methodology section. Based on the results, the proportion of passives in scientific writing may stabilize at about 30%. It is unlikely to dramatically drop any further since the trend suggests that passives are still widely used in the methodology section. KEYWORDS: Scholarly publishing, science writing 1 Context and objectivesA cursory glance at the numerous writing guides available, both on the Internet and in printed form, reveals a clear shift in consensus regarding the use of the passive voice in scientific writing. While the prevalent use of the passive voice was characteristic of scientific discourse in the major part of the 20th century [1,2], the situation today is rather different. Many writing guides favor the use of the active voice for reasons of clarity and conciseness [3]. In their writing guide for scientific English, Day and Sakaduski [4] state this preference even more directly -"the passive voice should be avoided".Yet, as Ding [1] has shown in his work involving corpora from the 18th century to the end of the 19th century, early scientific discourse actually favored the active voice. The move towards the passive voice in the 20th century arose as a result of the increasing demands for scientific discourse to be objective, in the sense that the writing should ideally represent the world "in terms of objects, things, and materials" [1] rather than humans. As a consequence, scientific writing took on a decidedly object-or thing-oriented character [5,6]. With the preference for the active voice in present-day scientific writing, we appear to have come full circle.Indications from an informal survey among postgraduates at a Singaporean university, however, suggest that not many may be aware of this current preference. In fact, 90 of JCOM 13(01)(2014)A03

Un análisis crítico del uso de pasivas y cláusulas de relativo en los artículos de investigación en "Freshwater Ecology"

“…On the one hand, the predominant use of the passive voice by non-Anglophone authors was consistent with the study by Pérez-Llantada et al (2011), which extracted the opinion that there was a predilection for a heavy use of the passive among Spanish authors. Similarly, the present research has corroborated the conclusion by Alvin (2014) that the basic form would be the most common type of passive. But this study had contradicted the assertion by Hyland & Jiang (2017) that the scientific writing context would be dominated by conventions of formality with no influences of gender, status and other social features.…”

“…On the temporal perspective, results from this study aligned with other studies (Seoane, 2013;Alvin, 2014;Hyland & Jiang, 2017) in finding a peak in the use of passives in scientific discourse by the end of the 20 th century. The present research confirmed the conclusions of those previous investigations, corroborating the theory that scientific texts would be turning to the active voice and impersonalisation and that this could be a sign of what Seoane (2013) defined as "the democratisation of the scientific discourse".…”

“…On the comparative use of passives among languages, Livnat (2010) analysed the use of these impersonal constructions in 30 scientific articles in Hebrew. Using a corpus of 60 scientific RAs from six journals on several disciplines (chemistry, biology, psychology), Alvin (2014) studied the proportion of passives, the contexts and forms, and the use of passives in the past and present century. Tarone et al (1998) examined the frequency of the active and passive forms in two astrophysics RAs.…”

Passive voice, first person pronouns and mental process verbs in the physical sciences reseach article

“…Hundt et al claim that "academic style is more impersonal and thus more likely to make extensive use of agentless passives than fiction writing or newspaper language" (Hundt et al, 2016, 32). Others (Rodman, 1981;Halliday, 1988;Banks, 2008aBanks, , 2008bLeong Ping, 2014) have claimed that thematic structure is the basis of the use of the passive. The scientific writer, wishing to highlight the experiment or the object of study, places this in thematic, and therefore initial, position in the clause, where it will typically function as subject.…”

A Corpus-Based Study on the Use of Reporting Verbs in Applied Linguistics Articles

“…Especially in writing a manuscript that is expected to be reviewed by publication, writers would be forced to deliberate their language more carefully in order to pass the evaluation (Silva, 2007). Moreover, studies have suggested that academic researchers employ specific uses of language at all levels including words (Coxhead, 2000), sentence structures (Alvin, 2014), and rhetorical moves (Swale, 2004). Therefore, it is not an easy task to complete an academic paper that is acceptable for journal publication.…”