在英文科技论文中经常出现有强调首次发现和首次提出的“for the first time”“first”字样，或者表示从前未见类似研究报道的”to the best of our knowledge, there is no report on ...“等字样，我理解文章作者是想强调自己所做研究的原创性。但是从科学溯源的严谨性考虑，不建议使用类似的表达。那么该用什么词强调自己研究的独特性呢？我认为hardly是一个可用的词。

参考下这个词在牛津字典中的含义和例句【1】，如下：

1. almost no ; almost not 几乎没有；几乎不：

   There's hardly any coal left. 几乎没有煤了．

2. only just ; scarcely 刚刚；仅仅

   I hardly know her．我不怎么认识她．

   
   

所以是不是可以这样说：

There is hardly any similar report on ... 

The investigation on ... has hardly been reported till now.

事实上我也确实在科技论文中查到了类似的使用：

1. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found.【2】

2. This situation has hardly been studied in computer vision research, even though it occurs frequently。【3】

3.  Hardly anything is known about the physiological function of FMR1 and the pathological mechanisms leading to these symptoms. Therefore, we designed a knockout model for the fragile X syndrome in mice. 【4】

【1】牛津高阶英汉双解词典，第四版。p679。

【2】Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., Vohs, K.D. Review of General Psychology. 2001；

5(4), pp. 323-370.

【3】Lampert, C.H., Nickisch, H., Harmeling, S. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. 2014；36(3), 6571196, pp. 453-465.

【4】The Dutch-Belgian Fragile X Consorthium, Bakker, C.E., Verheij, C., (...), Darby, J.K., Willems, P.J. Cell

 1994；78(1), pp. 23-33.