“I” versus “the author”: The power of first-person voice when writing about science

I remember the moment when I began losing faith in the editorial fairness of peer-reviewed science literature. It happened as I struggled to publish a paper in a well-respected agricultural journal. In the article, I told a story about an important sampling mistake that I and other researchers have made and suggested solutions. Stories are a great way to communicate science, and it made sense to write my article in the first person. Normally, I celebrate when my papers are accepted, but not this time. This paper frustrated me because my article was accepted only after I reluctantly changed my writing from first person (“I”) to third person (“the author”). This change introduced false modesty, took away my agency, and made many sentences difficult to read and imprecise (which author—me, or one of the 77 authors I cited?). The third-person voice also inserted unnecessary barriers between me and readers.

Writing in the first person can help make research papers easier to read and understand, not to mention more concise, impactful, and accessible. Image credit: Author.

I share my cautionary tale not to denigrate the service of well-meaning editors, but to highlight the value of the personal voice in science writing. Writing in the first person can help make our articles easier to read and understand, not to mention more concise, impactful, and accessible. I think that’s something most scientists want.

“I” versus “the Author”

How many articles have been rejected because of first-person voice? I knew mine was not the first when I found Webb’s paper (1) in a medical journal from 32 years ago. It began with “this paper arises from recent experiences of papers being rejected by refereed journals because they were written in the first person.” Concerns about first person in science papers revolve around the notion that first person is immodest and is less scientific and objective than third person, but this view has been rejected (1–7). For example, Webb said, “Writing in the third person is…a form of deception in which the thinking of scientists does not appear, and they are obliterated as active agents in the construction of knowledge.” Furthermore, while the use of first person is less common in the hard sciences (i.e., biology, physics, engineering) compared to other fields (marketing, applied linguistics, philosophy), Hyland argued that “first person pronouns and self-citation are not just stylistic optional extras but significant ingredients for promoting a competent scholarly identity and gaining accreditation for research claims” (8).

In the first decision letter on my paper, an editor said that my use of first-person singular voice and storytelling were not appropriate. This puzzled me. I had read many sole-authored articles in the journal where authors used first person and storytelling (including by past presidents of the professional society that published the journal). In a subsequent rejection letter, editors cited the journal’s guidelines to support their objection to first-person voice. However, the author guidelines of that journal—guidelines used by more than 10 agricultural journals published by three large professional societies in the United States—say nothing about voice other than to use active voice. Furthermore, those guidelines are largely based on the publication manual of the American Psychological Association (9)—a well-recognized authoritative guide to scholarly writing—that encourages first person and says: “do not refer to yourself or your coauthors in the third person as 'the author(s)' or 'the researcher(s).'”

Changing Voices

To explore changes in personal voice in the agricultural journal where my paper was eventually accepted, I searched for first-person pronouns (I, my, we, our) used by authors to self-mention in articles and notes in the first issues each year from 1923, 1943, 1963, 1983, 2003, and 2023 (excluding acknowledgments). This included 143 articles with at least 26 annually, except for in 1923 and 1943, which had 4 and 9 articles, respectively. My results show a decrease in single-authored articles from 100% to 78% to 30% to 18% to 4% to 6%, and an increase in articles in first-person voice from 0% to 11% to 20% to 50% to 85% to 88% for 1923, 1943, 1963, 1983, 2003, and 2023, respectively. This correlates with increases in first person in biology papers over time (10).

It’s time for scientists to embrace first-person pronouns and move beyond outdated notions that those powerful, short, gender-neutral, easy-to-read words are somehow inappropriate in science writing.

To understand the current use of first-person singular and plural versus third person (“the author(s)”), I searched the first 154 articles published in 2023 in the same agricultural journal. Most articles (152 of 154) were multiple-authored, and 137 articles used first-person plural pronouns (we, our) when the authors self-mentioned. In contrast, the one single-authored article that self-mentioned used “the author.” Overall, this analysis shows that first-person plural self-mentions have increased over the past century and are now common in the journal. My success publishing articles since 1998 using first-person plural in several agricultural disciplines is representative of this trend.

No, Not “I”

A primary reason I resisted using the third person in my article is because of my commitment to effective science communication. For decades, I have been learning and having fun experimenting with unorthodox ways (such as by making do-it-yourself videos for YouTube) to communicate my research—for example, by singing (11), storytelling (12), and drawing cartoons (13). This has radically increased the impact of my research, as I was able to reach a much broader audience. During this journey, I have mentored undergraduate students in science communication, published papers on the subject (14, 15), and given invited presentations on science communication. So, it was hard for me to accept the editors’ requirement that I change the voice in my paper. Doing so contradicted everything I knew about effective science communication and was trying to model.

Another reason for my reluctance to embrace third person: my struggles with learning to read as a child. I don’t want to be a scientist who writes difficult-to-read articles. I’m looking to write sentences that grab readers. Consider this first-person opening sentence in one of my science communication articles (14): “When I go camping with my family, I often joke that our oatmeal smells like bacon.” Now for the third-person version of that sentence: “When the present author goes camping with his family, he often jokes that his family’s oatmeal smells like bacon.” Based on the Flesch Reading Ease score (16), the readability in first person is 29% higher than in third person. Most readers would find the first-person version easier to read, more impactful, and likely to hook and hold their attention. Better science writing boosts reader understanding (17), and, as humanities professor Helen Sword wrote in her book Stylish Academic Writing, “the most engaging writers are almost invariably those who pay the closest attention to the real people—specialists and nonspecialists, colleagues and strangers—in whose ears their own words will echo” (2). However, unfortunately, the readability of scientific articles has decreased over time (18).

The editors of my agriculture research article kindly encouraged and allowed me to resubmit my article twice. But after several months of struggling with them over my use of first person, I became tired of trying to change their minds. So in my second resubmission, I left the narrative structure in my paper alone and only changed the first-person pronouns (I, my) to the third person (the author, he, his) over 40 times. I was shocked when that simple change got my paper accepted. It shows the incredible sway of the third person. I went along with the editors—even in the third person, I figured the best chance of my research having an impact was in the journal where the editors were opposed to my use of first person.

A Modest Proposal

Perhaps one reason why some readers and editors are uncomfortable with the first-person singular voice is because so few single-authored papers are published. However, it seems irrational and unfair to allow first-person plural, but not singular. In fact, I doubt that the struggle over voice with my article would have occurred if I had coauthors and the paper was written in the first-person plural. To address this issue going forward, I believe that author guidelines of journals should state that first person (singular or plural) is allowed and encouraged. Consider, for example, the following addition to author guidelines:

Authors often need to refer to themselves in their articles. Using the first person (I, my, we, our) is the clearest and most concise way to do this. Referring to yourself as 'the author(s)' is imprecise unless this is qualified with 'author(s) of the present paper' or the 'present author(s)', but this construction is verbose. Authors should use a writing style that they believe allows them to best communicate their message and connect with the reader.

A past agricultural journal editor wrote from his soapbox that “the editor is not the arbiter of the writing style of manuscripts, although actuality may seem the opposite at times” and that “author and editor must serve the readers, not annoy or frustrate them” (19). Forcing authors to write in third person does not serve the needs of current readers in the digital age of the “attention economy,” where we are competing for readers’ limited bandwidth (20). That outdated impersonal voice harkens back 50 years or more. Thankfully, science has evolved with increased diversity and equity (21), better visual communication tools like colorful slides and videos (15), and open access. But the language we use in our articles must also evolve to be more engaging and accessible. Unfortunately, my story shows that writing in the first-person singular can still be risky and lead to article rejection. As Sword (7) asks in her spirited, academic writing manifesto, “who among us can afford to watch our unconventionally dressed research article, with its funky cowboy boots and purple hair, get rejected by a major peer-reviewed journal when we know that its sensibly shod, short-top-and-sides sibling would have been a shoo-in?”

It’s time for scientists to embrace first-person pronouns and move beyond outdated notions that those powerful, short, gender-neutral, easy-to-read words are somehow inappropriate in science writing. Perhaps some of us more senior scientists have forgotten that a similar plea came decades ago, in early editions of the classic book How to Write & Publish a Scientific Paper (22), when we were young and starting to find our scientific writing “voice” but were too afraid to raise it. Those privileged to work as scientists must strive to write research articles in more engaging, creative, and interesting ways that serve readers. Using first-person pronouns can help.