Writing a Scientific Paper
Writing a scientific paper may seem daunting, but it’s not when you realize that your paper is essentially a story. Your paper is a story because it tells the reader about your research—what you studied before you conducted your research and the steps you took to carry out your research. Your scientific research paper is also a recipe, because it describes to the readers, step-by-step the method you used to carry out your research. The premise is that your reader, if they are also a scientist, can replicate your research by following your method. Therefore, your purpose in writing a scientific research paper is two-fold, to tell a story and to write a recipe or describe in detail how you did your research.
Before you write the final, formatted version of your paper, write it down as if you are telling a friend what you did. Write down the titles of the books or journals you read when you did your research and describe what you found during your study that helped you to better understand your subject. Then write down, in detail what you did during your actual research. For example, how did you choose your subjects or the control group versus the study group? You can describe what you measured and how much. You can describe what statistical measurements you used. Finally, describe your results and the recommendations you would make for research in the future. After you have written your research paper all out in a simple, straight forward style, then you can use that as your first draft. The next step will be to edit your research paper in a more scientific style and format. In order to know how to do that, you need to read what others have written. You can observe their style and the words they used talk about their research.
Before you write a scientific paper read some scientific papers that have been written in the format of the paper you plan to use. In addition to the science, pay attention to the writing style and format. The following are the sections in the research paper. First is the abstract.
Abstract: An abstract is a succinct (one paragraph) summary of the entire paper. The abstract should briefly describe the hypothesis in the paper, the methods used to address this hypothesis, the results obtained, and the conclusions. The reader should be able to determine the major points of a paper by reading the abstract. It is located at the beginning of the paper and is usually 350 words to 500 words in length. It is better to write the abstract after the paper is finished.
Introduction: The Introduction should (i) describe the hypothesis tested by the experiments described in the paper, (ii) explain why this is important and (iii) describe the approach used in detail to a reader who is not familiar with the technique.
Materials and Methods: The Materials and Methods section describes what was actually done. It should include a description of the techniques used so someone could figure out what experiments were actually done. A common or published protocol does not need to be reproduced entirely in the manuscript but a reference should be cited. If you make any changes from the published protocol, this should be noted.
Results: Each paragraph should start with an opening sentence that informs the reader of the hypothesis that is being tested in the experiments described in that paragraph. Write the opening sentence in bold font for emphasis. The results should be summarized in the accompanying text. When referring to a particular table or figure, they should be capitalized. The text of the Results section should be succinct but should provide the reader with a summary of the results of each table or figure.
Not all results require a table or figure. If the results are only a few or a simple conclusion can describe the results, it should be written in the text, not illustrated in a table or figure.
Your paper should focus on what worked only. In other words, what you did in the course of your research that was not successful should not be mentioned. However, if your unsuccessful or incomplete attempt was a usual method or protocol that other researchers have done and published then you should mention it.
Tables and Figures: All tables and figures should be arranged in a linear framework in the text. A table of tissues used should appear in the Materials and Methods section, and a table of results should appear in the Results section. Tables and figures should be designed in such a way as to be easily discernable to the reader. The reader should be able to figure out the meaning of a Table or Figure without reading the text. Tables and figures should not used to display large amounts of raw data. Their purpose is to summarize results numerically so the reader can easily look at them as a group and arrive at a conclusion. When the reader is looking at the table or figure, he or she should be able to easily discern the statistical significance of the numbers presented.
Tables and figures should be numbered, with a title appearing above the table. If specific descriptions are required to interpret the table, they should appear in a legend below the table.
Tables and figures may be integrated into the paper; however, make sure that there is not a page break in the middle of a table or figure. Text should not wrap around a title or figure as they sometimes appear in the final, printed version of a magazine.
Discussion: Do not restate the results. In the Discussion section, you must explain your results and their significance. You can answer the following question: Were the results expected ? What predictions can be made from the results?
Citations: It is very important to give credit to the research that has come before yours by citing the published papers for work that you discussed in your manuscript.
There are a variety of ways of citing references in the text. The journal policy will state the style for you to use. In text citations should refer to your list of references. Do not write out the title of the references in the text. Usually, it is just the authors name and the publication date separated by a comma.
Reference lists: There are several different reference formats used by journals. Look at a paper published by the journal to which you are submitting, and check the reference style.
Tense: When you describe the results from published papers, use the present tense. The future tense is only used to describe experiments that you plan to do in the future.
What point of view should you use? The third person or the first person? Usually the third person however it is fine to use first person sparingly for things that you want to emphasize that you did. Most of the manuscript should be written in the third person so it will not sound like an autobiographical account.
Inanimate objects (like genes, antibodies, etc) should be described in third person, not using the possessive (e.g., instead of saying “its chain”, say “the chain”).
Be specific. If several expressions modify the same word, the sentence order should indicate which word they modify. Writers often use a pronoun, “it” or “they” to refer to a concept from the prior sentence. Using pronouns this way is appropriate if there is only one concept for which “it” or “they” refers. If there are more concepts or theories or samples, the reader can become easily confused about the use of the pronoun. Just repeat the concept, theory or sample again, even if you feel it may be redundant.
Proofreading: Spellcheck and proofread your paper, carefully.
