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manuscript

Before you begin writing

A good research paper begins long before you start writing. Giving some deep thought as to the topic you
are researching, the question you are answering and the study design, as well as ensuring you follow
appropriate research laws and regulations, all contribute to making a publishable paper.

Identifying your research question

Making informed decisions about what to study, and defining your research question, even within a
predetermined field, is critical to a successful research career, and can be one of the hardest challenges for
a scientist.

Being knowledgeable about the state of your field and up-to-date with recent developments can help you:

 Make decisions about what to study within niche research areas

 Identify top researchers in your field whose work you can follow and potentially collaborate
with
 Find important journals to read regularly and publish in
 Explain to others why your work is important by being able to recount the bigger picture

How can you identify a research question?

Reading regularly is the most common way of identifying a good research question. This enables you to
keep up to date with recent advancements and identify certain issues or unsolved problems that keep
appearing. Begin by searching for and reading literature in your field. Start with general interest journals,
but don’t limit yourself to journal publications only; you can also look for clues in the news or on research
blogs. Once you have identified a few interesting topics, you should be reading the table of contents of
journals and the abstracts of most articles in that subject area. Papers that are directly related to your
research you should read in their entirety.

Study design

You must have a good study design to get publishable results. When designing an experiment you will
need to decide:

 What is your hypothesis or research question?

 What are the aim(s) of your study?
 What are the best methods for achieving your aims?
 Do you have the necessary resources to carry out your methods?
 Which positive and negative controls will you use?
 Do you have the required ethics and regulatory permissions?
 Will your experiment have enough statistical power to give useful results? Is your sample size
large enough to draw valid conclusions? Which statistical tests will you use for your analysis? If
you are not sure, consult a statistician; they can provide you with expert advice that may save
you a lot of time.

Structuring your manuscript

Once you have completed your experiments it is time write it up into a coherent and concise paper which
tells the story of your research. Researchers are busy people and so it is imperative that research articles
are quick and easy to read. For this reason papers generally follow a standard structure which allows
readers to easily find the information they are looking for. In the next part of the course we will discuss
the standard structure and what to include in each section.

 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion and Conclusions

This standard structure:

 Gives a logical flow to the content

 Makes journal manuscripts consistent and easy to read
 Provides a “map” so that readers can quickly find content of interest in any manuscript
 Reminds authors what content should be included in an article

Provides all content needed for the work to be replicated and reproduced
Although the sections of the journal manuscript are published in the order: Title, Abstract, Introduction,
Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion, this is not the best order for writing the
sections of a manuscript. One recommended strategy is to write your manuscript in the following order:
1. Materials and Methods / 2. Results
These can be written first, as you are doing your experiments and collecting the results.
3. Introduction / 4. Discussion / 5. Conclusion
Write these sections next, once you have had a chance to analyse your results, have a sense of their impact
and have decided on the journal you think best suits the work
6. Title / 7. Abstract.
Write your Title and Abstract last as these are based on all the other sections.
Use the different sections of a manuscript to ‘tell a story’ about your research and its implications.

TITLE
The title of your manuscript is usually the first introduction readers (and reviewers) have to your
work. Therefore, you must select a title that grabs attention, accurately describes the contents of
your manuscript, and makes people want to read further. An effective title should:
- Convey the main topics of the study
- Highlight the importance of the research
- Be concise
- Attract readers
Abstract and Keywords

ABSTRACT (often 250 words, no citation)

- A summary of the content of the journal manuscript
- A time-saving shortcut for busy researchers
- A guide to the most important parts of your manuscript’s written content

Many readers will only read the Abstract of your manuscript. Therefore, it has to be able to stand alone.
In most cases the abstract is the only part of your article that appears in indexing databases such as Web of
Science or PubMed and so will be the most accessed part of your article; making a good impression will
encourage researchers to read your full paper.
A well written abstract can also help speed up the peer-review process. During peer review, referees are
usually only sent the abstract when invited to review the paper. Therefore, the abstract needs to contain
enough information about the paper to allow referees to make a judgement as to whether they have enough
expertise to review the paper and be engaging enough for them to want to review it.
Your Abstract should answer these questions about your manuscript:
- What was done?
- Why did you do it?
- What did you find?
- Why are these findings useful and important?

KEYWORDS
- Effective keywords must be chosen carefully. They should represent the content of your manuscript and
be specific to your field or sub-field

INTRODUCTION

The Introduction should provide readers with the background information needed to understand your
study, and the reasons why you conducted your experiments. The Introduction should answer the
question: what question/problem was studied?
While writing the background, make sure your citations are:
- Well balanced: If experiments have found conflicting results on a question, have you cited studies with
both kinds of results?
- Current: Aim to cite references that are not more than 10 years old if possible. Although be sure to cite
the first discovery or mention in the literature even if it older than 10 years.
- Relevant: The studies you cite should be strongly related to your research question.

- Do not write a literature review in your Introduction, but do cite reviews where readers can find more
information if they want it.

Once you have provided background material and stated the problem or question for your study, tell the
reader the purpose of your study. Usually the reason is to fill a gap in the knowledge or to answer a
previously unanswered question.
The final thing to include at the end of your Introduction is a clear and exact statement of your study
aims. You might also explain in a sentence or two how you conducted the study.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This section provides the reader with all the details of how you conducted your study. You should:
- Use subheadings to separate different methodologies
- Describe what you did in the past tense
- Describe new methods in enough detail that another researcher can reproduce your experiment
- Describe established methods briefly, and simply cite a reference where readers can find more detail
- State all statistical tests and parameters

TIP: Check the ‘Instructions for Authors’ for your target journal to see how manuscripts should present
the Materials and Methods. Also, as another guide, look at previously published papers in the journal or
sample reports on the journal website.
RESULTS

In the Results section, simply state what you found, but do not interpret the results or discuss their
implications.
- As in the Materials and Methods section, use subheadings to separate the results of different
experiments.
- Results should be presented in a logical order. In general this will be in order of importance, not
necessarily the order in which the experiments were performed. Use the past tense to describe your
results; however, refer to figures and tables in the present tense.
- Do not duplicate data among figures, tables, and text. Use the text to summarize what the reader will
find in the table, or mention one or two of the most important data points. It is usually much easier to read
data in a table than in the text.
- Include the results of statistical analyses in the text, usually by providing p values wherever
statistically significant differences are described.

Discussion and Conclusions

Your Discussion and Conclusions sections should answer the question: What do your results mean?
The Discussion and Conclusions sections should be an interpretation of your results. You should:
- Discuss your conclusions in order of most to least important.

- Compare your results with those from other studies: Are they consistent? If not, discuss possible reasons
for the difference.
- Mention any inconclusive results and explain them as best you can. You may suggest additional
experiments needed to clarify your results.
- Briefly describe the limitations of your study to show reviewers and readers that you have considered
your experiment’s weaknesses. Many researchers are hesitant to do this as they feel it highlights the
weaknesses in their research to the editor and reviewer. However doing this actually makes a positive
impression of your paper as it makes it clear that you have an in depth understanding of your topic and can
think objectively of your research.
- Discuss what your results may mean for researchers in the same field as you, researchers in other
fields, and the general public. How could your findings be applied?
- State how your results extend the findings of previous studies.
- If your findings are preliminary, suggest future studies that need to be carried out.
- At the end of your Discussion and Conclusions sections, state your main conclusions once again.

REFERENCES
As references have an important role in many parts of a manuscript, failure to sufficiently cite other work
can reduce your chances of being published. Every statement of fact or description of previous findings
requires a supporting reference.

TIP: Be sure to cite publications whose results disagree with yours. Not citing conflicting work will make
readers wonder whether you are really familiar with the research literature. Citing conflicting work is
also a chance to explain why you think your results are different.

It is also important to be concise. You need to meet all the above needs without overwhelming the reader
with too many references—only the most relevant and recent articles need to be cited. There is no correct
number of references for a manuscript, but be sure to check the journal’s guidelines to see whether it has
limits on numbers of references.
You should reference other work to:
- Establish the origin of ideas
When you refer to an idea or theory, it is important to let your readers know which researcher(s) came up
with the idea. By citing publications that have influenced your own work, you give credit to the authors
and help others evaluate the importance of particular publications. Acknowledging others’ contributions is
also an important ethical principle.
- Justify claims
In a scientific manuscript, all statements must be supported with evidence. This evidence can come from
the results of the current research, common knowledge, or from previous publications. A citation after a
claim makes it clear which previous study supports the claim.
- Provide a context for your work
By highlighting related works, citations help show how a manuscript fits into the bigger picture of
scientific research. When readers understand what previous studies found and what puzzles or
controversies your study relates to, they will better understand the meaning of your work.
- Show there is interest your field of research

Citations show that other researchers are performing work similar to your own. Having current citations
will help journal editors see that there is a potential audience for your manuscript.