1 Hyland, K. &Salager-Meyer, F. (2008). Science writing. In Cronin, B. (ed) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. Vol 42: 297-338 Scientific Writing Ken Hyland, University of London Françoise Salager-Meyer, Universidad de Los Andes 1. Why is scientific writing so interesting? Writing is a key element in the formation of social realities, institutions and personal identities in almost every domain of professional life, and the sciences are no exception. While often regarded as simply a conventional means of conveying the results of laboratory experiments or armchair cogitation, scientific writing has come to be seen as socially constitutive of the disciplines, of individual status and authority and of knowledge itself. In research articles, monographs, textbooks, scientific letters and popularisations, the ways writers present their topics, signal their allegiances, and stake their claims displays their professional competence in discipline-approved practices. It is these practices, and not abstract and disengaged beliefs and theories, that principally define what disciplines are and how knowledge is agreed and codified (e.g., Bazerman, 1988; Hyland, 2000a & 2006; Myers, 1990). Successful academic writing depends on the individual writer’s projection of a shared professional context. Writers seek to embed their writing in a particular social world which they reflect and conjure up through approved discourses. As a result, the genres of the academy have attracted increasing attention as they offer a rich source of information about the social practices of academics. Kress (1989, p. 7), for example, argues that discourses are “systematically- organised sets of statements which give expression to the meanings and values of an institution”. Texts, in other words, are socially produced in particular communities and depend on them for