Simple present in scientific articles

Question

I'm editing a medicine article and in the introduction the author writes

We report this case of a 25-year-old female with cholestatic hepatitis

Isn't this simple present strange here? Shouldn't it be

we are going to report

or

this article reports?

Answer 1

In scientific writing it is quite common to use the simple present to describe the actions of the paper and its contents or the intentions of the authors in writing the paper.

For example:

The authors propose a new standard method for data analysis.

The figure illustrates the stimulus pattern.

The results contradict previous studies.

I believe this is a common practice because those actions are happening in the reader's present each time the article is read. The simple present is preferred over the progressive, e.g. "the results are indicating", because the actions occur repeatedly, each time a new reader looks at the article. (This is just like how "the bus stops here" is for the repeated actions while "the bus is stopping here" describes the current situation.)

Sometimes the past tense is used to describe methods and results (since those happened prior to publication), but the intended impact of the publication is usually still in present tense.

Future tense, e.g. "we will report", is usually reserved for actions that will occur after the article is printed. "Future collaborations will expand on these results." (Also note that future constructions with "will" are more formal than constructions with "going to".)

As for "this article reports" vs "we report", both of those choices use simple present. Some authors choose to avoid using 1st person pronouns ("I" and "we"), but that choice is not unanimous and differs across various domains.

Answer 2

The present continuous is rarely used in this context. Mostly this is just the convention of that kind of writing; but it is also a convention of present-tense narrative.

If the writer of a paper used a continuous form (We are investigating) it would be taken to mean that, separately from whatever this paper is about the writers are currently pursuing that investigation. This might be about a larger research project of which the findings in this paper are a part; or some investigation only tangentially related to the paper.