The Scientific Style Manual: A Reliable Guide to Practice?    

Is the scientific style manual a reliable guide with regard to the organization and content of the typical scientific article? The answer is, yes and no. Style manuals do provide much sound advice based on their authors' personal experience. However, they also pass on some advice at odds with recently published literature regarding how scientists actually conduct research and write up their findings. This article presents a revised model for the scientific article, a model base don information in recently published research on communication in science.

Harmon, Joseph E. and Alan G. Gross. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Style Guides>Scientific Communication