What is the key message of your paper? Be able to articulate it in one sentence, because it's a sentence you'll come back to a few times throughout the paper. Think of your paper as a press release: what would the subhead be? If you can't articulate the key discovery or accomplishment in a single sentence, then you're not ready to write a paper.
The vision statement should guide your next important decision: where are you submitting? Every journal has a different style and ordering of sections. Making this decision before you write a single word will save you a lot of time later on. Once you choose a journal, check the website for requirements with regards to formatting, length limits, and figures.
In a few journals, results and discussion are separate sections. However, the trend is to merge these two sections. This section should form the bulk of your paper-by storyboarding your figures, you already have an outline! Hot on the heels of the introduction comes the methods section (alternatively known as materials and methods). As the name implies here you’ll describe how you performed your research. Which tools did you use? What organisms did you study? Where? When? For how long? After your noted your observations, which statistics did you use to analyze them? The idea here is that anyone reading should be able to reproduce exactly what you did if they were to have access to the same facilities and tools.The anatomy of a scientific paper
The first thing anyone and everyone sees of a paper in a scientific journal is the abstract. This summary — usually between 250 and 350 words — is your ‘elevator pitch’ to your readers, and it’s the only thing that isn’t hidden by a paywall in non-open access journals. In other words, it’s the one thing everybody reads. So, you should try to condense the entire paper here.
How? An easy way is to divide the abstract into three small paragraphs (50–100 words each, give or take a few). The first is your question. Which unanswered question did you try to answer? How does it ‘fit’ within the rest of the field?
The second is your method for tackling the question. What did you do and how did you do it?
Finally comes the answer. What did you find and how does it contribute to the current knowledge withing your field? If there’s room for it, briefly mention possible broader implications/applications.
Oddly enough this very first part of your paper is the one you’ll probably write last (unless you’ve already had to write it for a scientific conference).
Now that you’ve composed your paper, it’s time to think about finding a journal with the right ‘fit’. (This will also give you further guidelines for the formatting, which can differ among journals. Think page and line numbers, fonts, image resolution, title page, etc.) Description: the solution to a problem is presented as necessary.General writing advice
Keep in mind that reading, like watching a movie, is not a fully conscious process. To be receptive to the ideas conveyed by your writing, you want to keep your reader in a state of flow. Linear storytelling is a common strategy to realize this, using temporal or logical connectives to stitch paragraphs one after the other. This point is well explained in the short talk How to Write Papers So People Can Read Them by Derek Dreyer.
Active or passive voice
There is a bit of debate surrounding this question, as it certainly boils down to a personal choice of writing style. Some scientists argue that, the objective of scientific papers being the communication of facts and observations, scientists themselves should be grammatically excluded as subjects. Neither "
However, passive-voice sentences are a slippery path: they use more words, and have a tendency to produce more complex and vague sentence structures. Vagueness is the main matter of concern here, the nemesis of scientific writers. For this reason, unless there is a clear motivation to use the passive voice (to emphasize the action over its actor, to describe actions from anonymous actors, . ), try to use the active voice whenever possible.
Thesaurus and dictionary
Two advices especially targetted to non-native speakers like me:
- Beware of false friends: whenever unsure, check the definition in a dictionary.
- Use a thesaurus to avoid repetitions, and to improve your phrasing by selecting words that express best what you want to say.
6 Tips to Write an Academic Research Paper for Peer-review Journals
Following are the 6 key points that I recommend, researchers, to focus on while writing an article for its publication into journals:
Any kind of communication that is all over the map is not very effective. It is very important for authors to make sure they talk about science and stick to the point with valid citations rather than beating the bush around. While writing a journal article, or anything for that matter, it is crucial to set a focal point for the article. And to properly understand that focal point as well to keep the article going in the same direction. It not only helps the article avoid going astray but it also makes it way more useful for the intended readership that largely consists of experts, researchers, and people who are closely linked to the field. Therefore, communicating your thoughts, results and discussion with valid citations and consistency is rather important when it comes to writing a journal article.
Brevity is always appreciated
Therefore, the writer should take the appropriate time that is needed to properly introduce these things to the readership. Even though the readers predominantly are going to be the people who are somewhat already familiar with the subject, it is still important to explain the jargon and acronyms and other such things when they are being used in the journal article.
Clarity is essential for all sorts of communication, whether written or otherwise. While writing a journal article it becomes all more important to be as much clear and precise as possible about the ideas, results, and material being communicated in the article. Using the language that is understandable to the majority of people is always a good thing. Informal language should be avoided as much as possible. However, when it is being used, suitable explanations should be provided along with it as well.
Furthermore, structuring the journal article also plays a crucial part when it comes to clarity. A good article should be properly structured so that the ideas are communicated to the readers in their logical sequence. The article structure should be given which is also known as an outline of research paper
#4 Be aware of the other literature in your field (and reference it)
A literature review is one of the essential steps while writing a good article. Making references to the relevant data available in the field helps make a journal article more helpful to the readers. It is important to inform readers about how your article is linked with the other literature
Furthermore, demonstrating how your research article takes the previous pieces of work and develops it further
#5 Make your references current and relevant
While making use of the relevant literature in your journal article, it is important to fully comprehend its relevance and utility to your work and how it corresponds with the research article you are writing. As a rule of thumb, when making citations, it is always useful to mention the year as well as other important details about the source material briefly. Every journal has its own specific citation styles that can be adopted while formatting the references. The authors can take advantage of endnote or Mendeley citation Softwares to give proper journal-specific citation styling to the writings.
Furthermore, it is advisable to cite current developments and researches in the field rather than referencing older ones. Nonetheless, an older piece of work can sometimes be proved to be relevant and helpful as well that adds value to the article being written. In such instances, it is very important to cite the age of the work in citation format as well. For instance, a reference to a study carried out decades ago should not be dubbed as a “recent study”. It must be noted that
References and citations are although a very important part of academic writing, however, your journal article is not supposed to be a compilation of all the material published before somewhere. The idea that the article deals with may not be new
Communicating your ideas effectively and making strong and convincing arguments is what is most likely going to make your article succeed. Backing it up with the relevant data and research and making appropriate references is the key but it should not dominate the originality of your work either. Therefore, finding the right balance is very important.
Developing an understanding of the journal you are looking to get your article published in is a good step to start. You must read the scope of the journal’