I also teach academic writing in various disciplines, and the use of I does vary between them. 

The difference can be explained in terms of whose story is being told. For example, in experimental life science, the person doing the experiment does not matter. It could be anyone, assuming the work is done with sufficient care. Readers should be paying attention to the objects and processes, not the agent: “Slides were washed”, never “Mary washed the slides”. At the same time, in some disciplines, say in social sciences, the researcher is important. For example, a participant observation piece of research would be exceedingly strange without an “I”.

“We” has another story, and there is some history here. Look back at academic articles 60-70 years ago, and we is used a lot, in the sense “We, the Academy”. People felt they could speak for all educated people in their field. This dies out in humanities in the 70s, and in social science in the 80s, and elsewhere in the 90s-00s. I’m not suggesting there aren’t holdouts, but the realisation that this type of regularity doesn’t actually exist seems to have penetrated.

  
Linda McPhee
www.lindamcpheeconsulting.com



On 21 Sep 2015, at 16:35, Auli Ek <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Anne, Christian, et al.,

I teach writing in several disciplines and I agree with Christian that it depends on the discipline and genre whether to use I/we or the passive voice.

In business-related writing, for instance, using the passive voice would seem very odd; also in literary analysis.

In "hard" sciences, however, using the passive voice is most often a must. And also in most technical writing.

Thank you for raising this interesting question, Anne, and allowing us this exchange of ideas and practices.

Auli

Quoting Christian Brösamle <[log in to unmask]>:

> Hello Anne,
> 
> This is an interesting topic and I regularly get this asked in my seminars as well. I don't think there is right or wrong here.
> 
> I usually answer by explaining, that the two positions (passive voice vs. we/I) reflect two ways to look at science. One is the idealistic, theoretical view that science is a purely logical, intellectual endeavour, where all insights should be independent of the experimentator and/or observer. Hence, everything personal should be left out (-> passive voice). The other view is, that science is a deeply human endeavour and therefore necessarily requires and reflects individual human properties such as creativity and interpretation (and also fallibilities). Therefore personal pronouns and active voice should be used.
> 
> I then encourage the students to contemplate which parts of their work tend more towards the first and which towards the second view and find a balance in their writing (e.g. experimental protocol -> passive voice, hypothesis development ->active voice). I also ask them to consider the place where their work will be published (is it an oral presentation, a thesis, is there a style guide for the journal?).
> 
> I could imagine that the approach to that question varies somewhat between disciplines. I teach mostly in the field of Biomedicine. Can anyone from other disciplines confirm that?
> 
> I also observe that inexperienced students tend to prefer passive voice, perhaps to take themselves out of the line of fire, whereas more experienced scientists seem to feel more comfortable using active voice.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Christian Brösamle
> 
> Am 21.09.15 um 15:05 schrieb Anne Wegner:
>> Dear colleagues
>> Two questions for you. I teach academic writing, mainly to PhD students from difference scientific areas at various German universities. One of the things I teach is that it is generally ok to use ?we/I? in academic texts, while pointing out that its use does slightly depend on the area in which one is working or the journal for which one is writing. However, my daughter said that during her recent Bachelor studies (Durham University, political sciences), she was mainly writing, and being expected to write, in the passive voice, avoiding we/I. I have two main questions related to this:
>> 
>> 1)	Am I the only one getting my workshop participants to use we/I in an English academic text? If so, I'd better stop!
>> 2)	What do academic texts in other European languages generally contain -  we/I or passive voice? In a German academic text, the use of we/I is generally frowned upon.
>> 
>> I would appreciate any comments and am happy to put together a summary of any answers I receive.
>> 
>> Many thanks
>> Anne Wegner
>> 
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 
> 
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> Dr. sc. nat. Christian Brösamle
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-- 
Dr. Auli Ek
Continuing Lecturer
Writing Program
University of California, Santa Barbara