Guidelines for writing research papers

✍ Scribed by Perry A. Frey

• Publisher: The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 49 KB
• Volume: 31
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1470-8175
• DOI: 10.1002/bmb.2003.494031040241

✦ Synopsis

The preparation of reports is as important a part of doing research as the actual execution of the research itself. Until the work is written up in an informative paper, the research is not complete. Among the reasons for this are that research has little intrinsic value before it is disseminated to the scientific community, and researchers, at least good researchers, often subject their findings to the most critical analysis at the time they are writing them up in research papers. Unfortunately perfectly capable researchers frequently find it difficult to write up their work. This is often all too obvious to their readers, and when a researcher's problem with writing leads to a poorly written paper that is difficult to read or understand, the effect is to diminish the impact of the research itself.

It is not possible in guidelines such as these to solve all writing problems that may be encountered. Skill in such things as writing style, grammar, punctuation, sentence and paragraph structure, and so forth can be acquired only through extensive practice and attentive reading. One purpose of these guidelines is to help smooth the way to such practice by discussing and perhaps eliminating the first hurdle that confronts anyone who undertakes to write a research report, the problem of organization. What information goes where? This question always arises. Another purpose is to give some guidance on the writing process.