3/6/15 Writing for Science

Scientific Journals

• social and collaborative nature
• peer reviewed
• to ensure that other scientists can "follow, assess, and replicate" presented findings
• professional standard of validity
• types of journals/research articles
• empirical/experimental
• methodological
• theoretical
• review
• case study
• IMRAD
• Introduction
• framework for research
• background, significance
• specific purpose
• primary results and conclusions
• Methods/Materials
• straightforward
• complete/precise/detailed
• design, instruments, techniques, procedures, measurement
• Results
• most important part, but shortest part
• can permit use of visuals
• graphs, photos, tables
•  "hourglass or egg timer"
• broader beginning and end funneling toward specific data in middle
• and 
• Discussion
• freer hand than previous sections
• brief reminder of important findings
• move toward progressively more generalized statements, relationships and connections
• major patterns
• compare to other previous or current work
• unresolved issues, discrepancies
• predictions, future research
• solution to posed problem
• implications

• abstract also follows IMRAD model but with summarizing paper
• Ethics
• authorship credit
• originality of research
• multiple publication
• treatment of sources
• intentionally misrepresented data