This new, fully revised edition aims to serve as a guide for agricultural research scientists and other practitioners in writing papers for publication. It also looks to provide a resource manual for training courses in scientific writing. There are three new chapters on reporting statistical results, communicating science to non-scientific audiences and electronic publishing. In addition, the original chapters have all been rewritten to reflect current developments and to make the content more complete and easily comprehensible.

This report contains a collection of papers from a workshopâ€"Strengthening Science-Based Decision-Making for Sustainable Management of Scarce Water Resources for Agricultural Production, held in Tunisia. Participants, including scientists, decision makers, representatives of non-profit organizations, and a farmer, came from the United States and several countries in North Africa and the Middle East. The papers examined constraints to agricultural production as it relates to water scarcity; focusing on 1) the state of the science regarding water management for agricultural purposes in the Middle East and North Africa 2) how science can be applied to better manage existing water supplies to optimize the domestic production of food and fiber. The cross-cutting themes of the workshop were the elements or principles of science-based decision making, the role of the scientific community in ensuring that science is an integral part of the decision making process, and ways to improve communications between scientists and decision makers.