Using this web
site
Writing Research Papers
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until
drops of blood form on your forehead. --- Gene Fowler
A major goal of this course is the development of effective technical writing
skills. To help you become an accomplished writer, you will prepare several
research papers based upon the studies completed in lab. Note that research
papers are not typical "lab reports." The latter tend to be informal internal
reports, or in a teaching lab, answers to a set of questions.
Guidelines for writing papers
Before preparing your first paper on the flagellar regeneration study, please
consult all of the following resources, in order to gain the most benefit from
the experience.
Reference materials to help you polish up your writing include the
following.
Make the most of instructor feedback to help you critique your own work.
Use the McMillan reference - these web pages cannot cover
the specifics of good writing in as much detail as can an entire book. You alone
are responsible for the effectiveness of your writing. If you notice any
inconsistencies between the reference and these guidelines, please call them to
my attention.
The same policies reported on this page apply to future courses, as can be
seen by examining the guidelines
for the protein purification lab paper (Bios 311). Instructions for authors
from the Journal of Biological Chemistry editorial board may be helpful as well.
Their statement of editorial
policies and practices may give you an idea of how material makes its way
into the scientific literature.
General form of a research paper
An objective of organizing a research paper is to allow people to read your
work selectively. When I research a topic, I may be interested in just the
methods, a specific result, the interpretation, or perhaps I just want to see a
summary of the paper to determine if it is relevant to my study. To this end,
many journals require the following sections, submitted in the order listed,
each section to start on a new page. There are variations of course. Some
journals call for a combined results and discussion, for example, or include
materials and methods after the body of the paper. The well known journal
Science does away with separate sections altogether, except for the
abstract.
Your papers are to adhere to the form and style required for the Journal of
Biological Chemistry, requirements that are shared by many journals in the life
sciences.
General style
To make a paper readable
- Print or type using a 12 point standard font, such as Times, Geneva,
Bookman, Helvetica, etc.
- Text should be double spaced on 8 1/2" x 11" paper with 1 inch margins,
single sided
- Number pages consecutively
- Start each new section on a new page
- Adhere to recommended page limits
Mistakes to avoid
- Placing a heading at the bottom of a page with the following text on the
next page (insert a page break!)
- Dividing a table or figure - confine each figure/table to a single page
- Submitting a paper with pages out of order
In all sections of your paper
- Stay focused on the research topic of the paper
- Use paragraphs to separate each important point (except for the abstract)
- Present your points in logical order
- Use present tense to report well accepted facts - for example, 'the grass
is green'
- Use past tense to describe specific results - for example, 'When weed
killer was applied, the grass was brown'
- Avoid informal wording, addressing the reader directly, and jargon or
slang terms
- Avoid use of superfluous pictures - include only those figures necessary
to presenting results
Title Page
Select an informative title as illustrated in the examples.
Include the name(s) and address(es) of all authors, and date submitted.
Abstract
The summary should be two hundred words or
less. See the example.
General intent
An abstract is a concise single paragraph summary of completed work or work
in progress. In a minute or less a reader can learn the rationale behind the
study, general approach to the problem, pertinent results, and important
conclusions or new questions.
Writing an abstract
Write your summary after the rest of the paper is completed. After all, how
can you summarize something that is not yet written? Economy of words is
important throughout any paper, but especially in an abstract. However, use
complete sentences and do not sacrifice readability for brevity. You can keep it
concise by wording sentences so that they serve more than one purpose. For
example, "In order to learn the role of protein synthesis in early development
of the sea urchin, newly fertilized embryos were pulse-labeled with tritiated
leucine, to provide a time course of changes in synthetic rate, as measured by
total counts per minute (cpm)." This sentence provides the overall question,
methods, and type of analysis, all in one sentence. The writer can now go
directly to summarizing the results.
Summarize the study, including the following elements in any abstract. Try to
keep the first two items to no more than one sentence each.
- Purpose of the study - hypothesis, overall question, objective
- Model organism or system and brief description of the experiment
- Results, including specific data - preferably quantitative if that
is the form taken by the data; results of any statistical analysis shoud be
reported
- Important conclusions or questions that follow from the experiment(s)
Style:
- Single paragraph, and concise
- As a summary of work done, it is always written in past tense
- An abstract should stand on its own, and not refer to any other part of
the paper such as a figure or table
- Focus on summarizing results - limit background information to a sentence
or two, if absolutely necessary
- What you report in an abstract must be consistent with what you reported
in the paper
- Corrrect spelling, clarity of sentences and phrases, and proper reporting
of quantities (proper units, significant figures) are just as important in an
abstract as they are anywhere else
Introduction
Your introductions should not exceed two
pages (double spaced, typed). See the example.
General intent
The purpose of an introduction is to aquaint the reader with the rationale
behind the work, with the intention of defending it. It places your work in a
theoretical context, and enables the reader to understand and appreciate your
objectives.
Writing an introduction
The abstract is the only text in a research paper to be written without using
paragraphs in order to separate major points. Here is the minimum information
that should be included in a successful introduction.
- Describe the importance (significance) of the study - why was this worth
doing in the first place? Provide a broad context.
- Defend the model - why use this particular organism or system? What are
its advantages? You might comment on its suitability from a theoretical point
of view as well as indicate practical reasons for using it.
- Provide a rationale. State your specific hypothesis(es) or objective(s),
and describe the reasoning that led you to select them.
- Very briefy describe the experimental design and how it will accomplish
the stated objectives.
Style:
- Use past tense except when referring to established facts. After all, the
paper will be submitted after all of the work is completed.
- Organize your ideas, making one major point with each paragraph. If you
make the four points listed above, you will need a minimum of four paragraphs.
- Present background information only as needed in order support a position.
The reader does not want to read everything you know about a subject.
- State the hypothesis/objective precisely - do not oversimplify.
- As always, pay attention to spelling, clarity and appropriatness of
sentences and phrases.
Materials and Methods
There is no specific page
limit, but a key concept is to keep this section as concise as you possibly can.
People will want to read this selectively. The reader may only be interested in
one formula or part of a procedure. Materials and methods may be reported under
separate subheadings within this section or can be incorporated together.
General intent
This should be the easiest section to write, but many students misunderstand
the purpose. The objective is to document all specialized materials and general
procedures, so that another individual could use the information to plan his/her
study, or determine whether or not your methods were appropriate. It is not to
be a step by step description of everything you did, nor is this a set of
instructions. By the way, your notebook should contain all of the information
that you need for this section
Writing a materials and methods section
Materials:
- Include specialized chemicals, biological materials, and any equipment or
supplies that are not commonly found in laboratories.
- Do not include commonly found supplies such as test tubes, pipet tips,
beakers, etc., or standard lab equipment such as centrifuges,
spectrophotometers, pipettors, etc.
- If use of a specific type of equipment, a specific enzyme, or a culture
from a particular supplier is critical to the success of the experiment, then
it and the source should be singled out, otherwise no.
- Materials may be reported in a separate paragraph or else they may be
identified along with your procedures.
- In biosciences we frequently work with solutions - refer to them by name
and describe completely, including concentrations of all reagents, and pH of
aqueous solutions, solvent if non-aqueous.
Methods:
- See the examples
- Report the methodology (not details of each procedure that employed the
same methodology)
- Describe the mehodology completely, including such specifics as
temperatures, incubation times, etc.
- To be concise, present methods under headings devoted to specific
procedures or groups of procedures
- Generalize - report how procedures were done, not how they were
specifically performed on a particular day. For example, report "samples were
diluted to a final concentration of 2 mg/ml protein;" don't report that "135
microliters of sample one was diluted with 330 microliters of buffer to make
the protein concentration 2 mg/ml." Always think about what would be relevant
to an investigator at another institution, working on his/her own project.
- If well documented procedures were used, report the procedure by name,
perhaps with reference, and that's all. For example, the Bradford assay is
well known. You need not report the procedure in full - just that you used a
Bradford assay to estimate protein concentration, and identify what you used
as a standard. The same is true for the SDS-PAGE method, and many other well
known procedures in biology and biochemistry.
Style:
- It is awkward or impossible to use active voice when documenting methods
without using first person, which would focus the reader's attention on the
investigator rather than the work. Therefore when writing up the methods most
authors use third person passive voice.
- Use normal prose in this and in every other section of the paper - avoid
informal lists, and use complete sentences.
What to avoid
- Materials and methods are not a set of instructions.
- Omit all explanatory information and background - save it for the
discussion.
- Omit information that is irrelevant to a third party, such as what color
ice bucket you used, or which individual logged in the data
Results
The page length of this section is set by
the amount and types of data to be reported. Continue to be concise, using
figures and tables, if appropriate, to present results most effectively. See
recommendations for content, below.
General intent
The purpose of a results section is to present and illustrate your findings.
Make this section a completely objective report of the results, and save all
interpretation for the discussion.
Writing a results section
IMPORTANT: You must clearly distinguish material that would normally be
included in a research article from any raw data or other appendix material that
would not be published. In fact, such material should not be submitted at all
unless requested by the instructor.
Content
- Summarize your findings in text and illustrate them, if appropriate, with
figures and tables.
- In text, describe each of your results, pointing the reader to
observations that are most relevant.
- Describe results of control experiments and include observations that are
not presented in a formal figure or table, if appropriate.
- Analyze your data, then prepare the analyzed (converted) data in the form
of a figure (graph), table, or in text form.
What to avoid
- Do not discuss or interpret your results, report background information,
or attempt to explain anything.
- Never include raw data or intermediate calculations in a research paper.
- Do not present the same data more than once.
- Please do not confuse figures with tables - there is a difference.
Style
- As always, use past tense when you refer to your results, and put
everything in a logical order.
- In text, refer to each figure as "figure 1," "figure 2," etc. ; number
your tables as well (see the reference text for details)
- Place figures and tables, properly numbered, in order at the end of the
report (clearly distinguish them from any other material such as raw data,
standard curves, etc.)
- If you prefer, you may place your figures and tables appropriately within
the text of your results section.
Figures and tables
- Either place figures and tables within the text of the result, or include
them in the back of the report (following Literature Cited) - do one or the
other
- If you place figures and tables at the end of the report, make sure they
are clearly distinguished from any attached appendix materials, such as raw
data
- Regardless of placement, each figure must be numbered consecutively and
complete with caption
- Regardless of placement, each table must be numbered consecutively and
complete with heading
- Each figure and table must be sufficiently complete that it could stand on
its own, separate from text
Discussion
Journal guidelines vary. Space is so
valuable in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, that authors are asked to
restrict discussions to four pages or less, double spaced, typed. That works out
to one printed page. While you are learning to write effectively, the limit will
be extended to five typed pages. If you practice economy of words, that should
be plenty of space within which to say all that you need to say.
General intent
The objective here is to provide an interpretation of your results and
support for all of your conclusions, using evidence from your experiment and
generally accepted knowledge, if appropriate.
Writing a discussion
Interpret your data in the discussion in appropriate depth. This
means that when you explain a phenomenon you must explain mechanisms. If your
results differ from your expectations, explain why that may have happened. If
your results agree, then describe the theory that the evidence supported. It is
never appropriate to simply state that the data agreed with expectations, and
let it drop at that.
- Decide if each hypothesis is supported, rejected, or if you cannot make a
decision with confidence. Do not simply dismiss a study or part of a study as
"inconclusive."
- Make what conclusions you can, then suggest how the experiment might be
modified, if necessary, in order to properly test the hypothesis(es) or
accomplish the objective(s).
- Explain all of your observations as much as possible, focusing on
mechanisms.
- Decide if the experimental design adequately addressed the hypothesis, and
whether or not it was properly controlled.
- Try to offer alternative explanations if reasonable alternatives exist.
- One experiment will not answer an overall question, so keeping the big
picture in mind, where do you go next? The best studies open up new avenues of
research. What questions remain?
- Be creative, and don't be afraid to speculate. Individual report
guidelines will provide suggestions.
Style:
- When you refer to information, distinguish data generated by your own
studies from published information or from information obtained from other
students (verb tense is an important tool for doing that).
- Refer to work done by specific individuals (including yourself) in past
tense.
- Refer to generally accepted facts and principles in present tense. For
example, "Doofus, in a 1989 survey, found that anemia in basset
hounds was correlated with advanced age. Anemia is a
condition in which there is insufficient hemoglobin in the blood."
The biggest mistake that students make in discussions is to present a
superficial interpretation that more or less re-states the results. It is
necessary to suggest why results came out as they did, focusing on the
mechanisms behind the observations.
Literature Cited
Please note that in the introductory laboratory course, you will not be
required to properly document sources of all of your information. One reason is
that your major source of information is this website, and websites are
inappropriate as primary sources. Second, it is problematic to provide a hundred
students with equal access to potential reference materials. You may
nevertheless find outside sources, and you should cite any articles that the
instructor provides or that you find for yourself.
List all literature cited in your report, in alphabetical order, by first
author. In a proper research paper, only primary literature is used (original
research articles authored by the original investigators). Never include a web
site as a reference - anyone can put just about anything on a web site, and you
have no way of knowing if it is truth or fiction. If you are citing an on line
journal, use the journal citation (name, volume, year, page numbers). Some of
your reports may not require references, and if that is the case simply state
that "no references were consulted."
Copyright and Intended
Use
Created by David R. Caprette (caprette@rice.edu), Rice University 25
Aug 1995
Updated 24 Jul 03
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bioslabs/tools/report/reportform.html