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Academic papers in the social sciences were once more essayistic in their form. The carefree launching of concepts and ideas of academic value were the order of the day, all without the security of the present standardized paper format inspired by the natural sciences. This text draws on the most cited paper by the acclaimed scholar Carol Weiss, as an outset to discussing academic writing; why we write as we do and what we may lose by doing so. This means exploring the history of academic writing as well as discussing the complex, yet exciting, relationship between writing, identity, language, and the very process of conducting research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) format is common in scientific writing, it may not currently be as ubiquitous as often thought. We undertook a systematic, corpus-based study of primary section headings in research articles across a range of STEM disciplines to investigate adherence to the IMRAD structure in relation to type of study (computational, empirical, or theoretical) and field. We identified four categories of structure: IMRAD, IMRAD+ (IMRAD with additional sections and/or different order), Nested IMRAD (multi-part studies), and Non-IMRAD. Papers in biology mainly used an IMRAD format, while less than half in engineering or social sciences did so. While empirical papers tended to use IMRAD formats, most computational papers did not. Thus, our findings show that IMRAD is a common but not universal structure for contemporary scientific writing. Awareness of these differences should encourage teachers of scientific and technical writing and scholars of writing studies to pay closer attention to the actual structural forms used in different STEM disciplines and with different methodological types of research studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As per the revised Regulations on Graduate Medical Education 2019, integration of electives in the MBBS program has emerged as a promising strategy to enrich the learning experiences for the students. Electives are allotted at the end of Third year part I MBBS training in two settings: 1)In the basic sciences or research 2) In the clinical sciences or community. Epidemiological and community surveys was offered as an elective to sensitize the students by the Department of Community Medicine. A detailed plan was prepared and implemented ensuring smooth process during the elective period which included a) Framing and finalising the research question, b) Literature review c) Understanding study designs d) Sample size calculation e) Designing the study tool f) Addressing ethical issues g) Data collection process h) Data entry in the master chart i) Analysing the results with discussion and j) Manuscript writing. Through this exercise of electives, students got an opportunity to develop a protocol for estimating the proportion of blindness due to cataract among elderly people in the field practice area of Rural Health and Training Centre, Mandur which is a treatable cause and assessed the social pathology behind cataract induced blindness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines metadiscourse markers across a corpus of Estonian and Lithuanian journal articles in the field of linguistics. We aim to 1) compare the global use of all the metadiscourse markers across the languages and texts, making distinctions between these languages and specific academic journals, and 2) to discern whether similar and/or different patterns can be identified across the languages and whether such patterns also manifest across various academic journals. We find that Estonian writers use self-mentions more frequently in methods sections than Lithuanian counterparts. Comparing journals, the Lithuanian journal Kalbotyra shows more transition markers, code glosses, and endophoric markers, while the Estonian ERÜ aastaraamat relies more on transition markers in results and discussion sections. Despite discipline similarities, variations emerge in specific sections and interpersonal categories across languages and journals. The study provides insights into metadiscourse patterns and their role in different languages and academic contexts, offering potential guidance for future research and practice in non-English academic writing. *** "Metadiskursuse mustrite keeltevaheline võrdlus: valdkondlikud sarnasused ja artikliosade erinevused" Artikkel käsitleb metadiskursuse markereid eesti ja leedu keeleteaduslikes ajakirjades. Meie eesmärk on 1) võrrelda kõigi metadiskursuse markerite üldist kasutust tekstides keeliti, otsides nii keeltes kui ka ajakirjade kaupa ilmnevaid erinevusi, ning 2) leida keeliti võimalikud sarnased ja/või erinevad mustrid ja selgitada välja, kas need mustrid tulevad esile ka eri ajakirjades. Tulemused näitavad, et eesti autorid kasutavad artiklite meetodiosas enesele osutamisi (ingl self mentions) sagedamini kui leedu autorid. Ajakirjade võrdluses leidub leedu ajakirjas Kalbotyra rohkem sidususmarkereid (transition markers), täpsustavaid markereid (code glosses) ja tekstisiseseid viiteid (endophoric markers), samal ajal kui Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu aastaraamatus jäävad sellised lugejat juhatavad markerid rohkem tulemuste ja arutelu osadesse. Vaatamata valdkondlikele sarnasustele ilmneb siiski erinevusi teatud artikliosades ja interpersonaalse metadiskursuse kategooriates nii keeliti kui ka ajakirjade lõikes. Uurimus heidab valgust metadiskursuse kasutusmustritele ja nende rollile eri keeltes ja akadeemilistes kontekstides ning võib olla edaspidi suunanäitajaks mitteingliskeelsete akadeemiliste tekstide uurijatele ja praktikutele.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide scholars with a robust, easy-to-follow structural model for crafting compelling academic publications. Recognizing the diversity of research methodologies and genres, the paper proposes the symmetry of specificity framework as a guide to maintaining coherence, depth and relevance across different sections of an academic paper. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents a theoretical framework – "symmetry of specificity" – through an iterative approach inspired by supervision and examination of theses, writing and reviewing research papers and editorial work. The framework builds upon the established IMRAD model and uses the concept of symmetry to explain the structural elements of academic publications. Its unique contribution lies in elucidating the two-dimensional funneling process that takes place within academic writing, and providing a nuanced understanding of how to maintain balance between different sections. Findings: The symmetry of specificity framework introduces a novel perspective on academic writing, emphasizing the concept of "symmetry in specificity". It shows how maintaining a balance in detail and focus across different sections of a research paper can significantly enhance its coherence and relevance. By elucidating the interaction between theory and data in research writing, it provides valuable insights into the nuances of crafting a compelling academic paper. Research limitations/implications: While the proposed symmetry of specificity framework may not be universally applicable across all types of research, it provides a solid foundation for the development of alternate structures tailored to specific research paradigms. There is ample opportunity for future research to explore adaptations of this model for various types of academic writing, offering a fresh perspective on structuring academic publications and potentially sparking new discussions and innovations in this realm. Practical implications: This framework can aid both novice and experienced scholars in structuring their research papers effectively. By offering a conceptual roadmap, it guides the writer through the complex process of academic writing, from crafting the methodology and analysis sections to articulating compelling conclusions. Thus, it serves as a useful tool in enhancing the quality and impact of research communication. Originality/value: This paper presents a unique approach to structuring academic publications that goes beyond the conventional IMRAD model. By offering a theory-based structural model, it contributes to an underexplored area in academic writing and opens up new avenues for pedagogy and practice in research communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu Aastaraamat is the property of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Uhing (ERU) / Estonian Association for Applied Linguistics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore which structures of academic articles referees would pay more attention to, what specific content referees focus on, and whether the distribution of PRC is related to the citations. Design/methodology/approach: Firstly, utilizing the feature words of section title and hierarchical attention network model (HAN) to identify the academic article structures. Secondly, analyzing the distribution of PRC in different structures according to the position information extracted by rules in PRC. Thirdly, analyzing the distribution of feature words of PRC extracted by the Chi-square test and TF-IDF in different structures. Finally, four correlation analysis methods are used to analyze whether the distribution of PRC in different structures is correlated to the citations. Findings: The count of PRC distributed in Materials and Methods and Results section is significantly more than that in the structure of Introduction and Discussion, indicating that referees pay more attention to the Material and Methods and Results. The distribution of feature words of PRC in different structures is obviously different, which can reflect the content of referees' concern. There is no correlation between the distribution of PRC in different structures and the citations. Research limitations/implications: Due to the differences in the way referees write peer review reports, the rules used to extract position information cannot cover all PRC. Originality/value: The paper finds a pattern in the distribution of PRC in different academic article structures proving the long-term empirical understanding. It also provides insight into academic article writing: researchers should ensure the scientificity of methods and the reliability of results when writing academic article to obtain a high degree of recognition from referees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of preprints in the scientific production and their part in citations have been growing over the past 10 years. In this paper we study preprint citations in several different aspects: the progression of preprint citations over time, their relative frequencies in relation to the IMRaD structure of articles, their distributions over time, per preprint database and per PLOS journal. We have processed the PLOS corpus that covers 7 journals and a total of about 240,000 articles up to January 2021, and produced a dataset of 8460 preprint citation contexts that cite 12 different preprint databases. Our results show that preprint citations are found with the highest frequency in the Method section of articles, though small variations exist with respect to journals. The PLOS Computational Biology journal stands out as it contains more than three times more preprint citations than any other PLOS journal. The relative parts of the different preprint databases are also examined. While ArXiv and bioRxiv are the most frequent citation sources, bioRxiv's disciplinary nature can be observed as it is the source of more than 70% of preprint citations in PLOS Biology, PLOS Genetics and PLOS Pathogens. We have also compared the lexical content of preprint citation contexts to the citation content to peer-reviewed publications. Finally, by performing a lexicometric analysis, we have shown that preprint citation contexts differ significantly from citation contexts of peer-reviewed publications. This confirms that authors make use of different lexical content when citing preprints compared to the rest of citations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many young researchers face extreme difficulties while writing scientific articles, and there is seldom any specific training imparted as a part of under and postgraduate curriculums toward the art of presenting research work in written format. Yet, the publication is considered essential toward career advancement and for obtaining academic qualifications. We herein discuss the basic steps to follow in writing a scientific article using the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion format. The Introduction explains the scope and objective of the study in the light of current knowledge on the subject; the Materials and Methods describes how the study was conducted; the Results section reports what was found in the study; and the Discussion section explains the meaning and significance of the results and provides suggestions for future directions of research. We enumerate the main elements that should appear in these sections, and some pointers for making the overall result attractive and acceptable for publication. We also have placed special emphasis on the methods section (Finer nuances of data collections, Informed consent, steps to seek approval by the Institutional Ethics Committee and authorship directives as per IJCME guidelines), Results (How to highlight the results of the study using illustrations, charts, and legends, and Discussion section (“Structured approach” and the “Divide and rule” approach). A hastily written article with incorrect methodology remains the primary reason for rejection by the journal reviewers, and following the above directives would contribute toward obtaining a fruitful result.

The editorial dwells upon the challenges L2 scientific authors have to rise to. ‘Publish or perish’ policy pursued globally leads to an increased international market of predatory journals in response to persisting university requirements to academics’ publications in international journals. The quality issues of scholarly publications are coming to the fore, with re-focusing on skills and competencies necessary to produce research acceptable to high-tier and well-established journals. Non-Anglophone L2 writers face more barriers to English-language international periodicals than native speakers of English, as they tend to follow distinct cultural patterns of thought. Consequently, rhetorical moves and steps of scholarly texts may substantially differ from those written by Anglophone researchers. The scholarly community has to handle a growing set of problems related to L2 scholarly writing in English to ensure their successful submissions to well-established international journals.

The amount of scientific publications is believed to get doubled every five-years. These publications are stored by citation indexes and digital libraries in the form of complete PDF or/and by extracting terms from these documents. This indexing behavior poses several challenges for the scientific community as well as for digital repositories in terms of handling the advanced requirements of a user. For instance, addressing queries like “Give me those papers that contain the term “Pagerank” in their result section” may not be answered unless the papers are indexed section-wise. This issue has been focused by researchers and international prestigious challenges by top venues in the world like Semantic Publishing Challenge in ESWC. One of the important metadata extraction from research papers is the section information such as IMRAD (Introduction, Methodology, Results, and Discussion). Researchers have presented different approaches to identify and map the section-headings to IMRAD sections. The existing studies have employed parameters like dictionary terms, the template of a paper, and in-text citation frequency to map section-headings onto logical sections. The critical analysis of state-of-the-art revealed that some immensely potential features have been ignored, which might result in accurate mapping. In this study, we propose a novel approach that employs new features along with previously well-known features to map sections-headings to IMRAD. The newly proposed features are: (1) variant of In-text Citation count (2) Figure counts, (3) Table counts, and (4) subheading implicit mapping. The employed data set contains 5000 research papers, collected from CiteSeer. The evaluation of the proposed approach and comparisons with state-of-the-art three approaches revealed an improvement of 18.96%, 21.77%, and 9.50% in average precision with Ding et al, Shahid et al, and Habib et al. respectively. This research has significant implications for citation indexes and digital libraries.

An original scientific article published in a peer-reviewed professional journal of repute provides great personal satisfaction, adds stature and endows professional respectability to contributing authors. Various types of surgical publications that exist nowadays are case report, cohort study, case–control study, randomised controlled trial narrative review, systematic review, Cochrane review, meta-analysis, editorials and leading articles. A study/research protocol is a standardised document, common to all research projects that typically comprise study objectives, study design, selection of participants, study intervention, study evaluations, safety assessments, statistics and participant rights committees. Once the study protocol is completed and reviewed, it is submitted to the local Institutional Review Board/Institutional Ethics Committee for approval. An outline of the levels of evidence and grades of recommendation is available from the Centre for evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford. A standardised, structured template exists for scientific presentations in the field of medicine which is also followed in medical writing and publications Introduction Methods Results And Discussion (IMRAD). Instructions to authors would normally include reference to International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines for good and ethical publication practice. It is strongly advised to follow the recommended guidelines appropriate for the published study.

Many research articles in experimental sciences present a standardized form known as the IMRAD format, an acronym for “Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion”. Each of these sections has a specific purpose (presenting the framework, describing the methodology, reporting the results and then discussing them), but also specific linguistic features. Our goal is to study coreference chains (all the expressions of a text that refer to the same extra-linguistic entity) in a corpus of French IMRAD articles (5 texts, 32,539 words). We show that different types of chains have specific features and that they cannot be studied without distinction. We first categorize chains by the type of their referent and analyze in particular three of these types: author(s), abstract concepts and groups. We then define types of chains by features such as their prominence, their length in the text, the distance between their elements, etc. This dual typology of coreference chains allows us to describe the main types of chains, but also to give a fine-grained analysis of the textual progression in IMRAD articles, especially how and why some referents are present in several sections while others are limited to one section only.

Although a relatively short text, the abstract of a paper summarizes the most important issues raised in the main text. The abstract is, at least initially, the key text on which journal editors, reviewers and eventually readers form their initial judgement on the overall quality of the full manuscript. Therefore, it is essential to execute this step of the writing process well. In this article, we discuss the purpose of an abstract, why it is important, and how to write a good abstract. Increasingly, journal abstracts are structured to follow the IMRAD format (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion). We provide examples of well written and badly written abstracts, with explanatory notes, to help readers understand the key points that need to be addressed and mistakes that should be avoided. Since international abstracts are generally written in English, preparing an abstract can be especially challenging for researchers who are not native speakers of English. We close this article with general linguistic advice, paying particular attention to key terms and word choice than can meaningfully express an author's intention in a concise way. The points raised in this article will help authors improve their scientific writing and enable their findings to be expressed with clarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A research paper or thesis writing is considered hard and very difficult process of intense concentration and brain work. Readers generally are first interested in new results of the paper. Writing results section contains new results from research investigation but is difficult in comparison to writing methods section as the latter section is already written at the proposal writing stage and requires only language change. Results section is heart of the paper and its completion with methods section already written; implies more than 50% of paper or thesis writing work and it become 70% paper writing work with writing of discussion section. Results writing section should be organized into different segments of text and visuals such as tables, figures, algorithms, etc. In order to start writing results section, we make a beginning with data analysis and its presentation of key findings as summarized results to yield an answer to the research question that study attempted. Answers to the questions and interpretations are presented in the discussion section. Data analysis is primarily linked with writing text part of the results and discussion of results. This is a desired sequence to work with in paper writing. The attempt of working in such a sequence provides a convenient approach to young researchers or post graduate/under graduate medical students to gain confidence in writing a research paper or thesis or a research report. While basic knowledge of study design and analysis is needed, the involvement of a qualified bio-statistician is recommended in various stages up to publication. In this communication, we describe the basic approach of data analysis required for initiating writing results and discussion while quoting the required rules for the purpose.

Publishing original research in a peer-reviewed and indexed journal is an important milestone for a scientist or a clinician. It is an important parameter to assess academic achievements. However, technical and language barriers may prevent many enthusiasts from ever publishing. This review highlights the important preparatory steps for creating a good manuscript and the most widely used IMRaD (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion) method for writing a good manuscript. It also provides a brief overview of the submission and review process of a manuscript for publishing in a biomedical journal.

Purpose/Thesis: The article studies the types of citations in research articles published in the journal Zagadnienia Informacji Naukowej -- Studia informacyjne (ZIN). Approach/Methods: The study applied a method of analysis of citations, supplemented by a typology of citations established by B. Peritz. The research set consisted of 34 research articles published in ZIN in 2016--2017. The study required a manual identification and categorization of the citations which featured in the set, and correlating their types with the location in the article and the type of the article. Results and conclusions: The results of the study showed significant variations in the distribution of the citations in the article, depending on the type of the article. A major part of the identified citations featured in the state of the art, and in general discussions. The authors studied often referred to other works to establish a general critical consensus regarding the research problems they analysed, to support their own hypotheses, or to suggest directions for further research. More than a half of the articles studied made no citations of methodological character. Originality/Value: The article analyses the functions of the citations in the rhetoric structure of a research article concerned with information science, and offers a methodological critique of the research processes and tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An original scientific article published in a peer‑reviewed professional journal of repute provides great personal satisfaction, adds stature and endows professional respectability to contributing authors. Various types of surgical publications that exist nowadays are case report, cohort study, case–control study, randomised controlled trial narrative review, systematic review, Cochrane review, meta‑analysis, editorials and leading articles. A study/research protocol is a standardised document, common to all research projects that typically comprise study objectives, study design, selection of participants, study intervention, study evaluations, safety assessments, statistics and participant rights committees. Once the study protocol is completed and reviewed, it is submitted to the local Institutional Review Board/Institutional Ethics Committee for approval. An outline of the levels of evidence and grades of recommendation is available from the Centre for evidence‑based medicine at the University of Oxford. A standardised, structured template exists for scientific presentations in the field of medicine which is also followed in medical writing and publications Introduction Methods Results And Discussion (IMRAD). Instructions to authors would normally include reference to International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines for good and ethical publication practice. It is strongly advised to follow the recommended guidelines appropriate for the published study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reference materials about the “Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion”, which is a commonly used international format for scientific works, have become available for Russian authors nowadays, still lack of knowledge about the format would pop up here or there, especially when we speak about beginners. The faults which would appear regularly in work structuring prompted the present research, the aim of which is to compare the information about the IMRAD format with the specific difficulties beginning authors would often face when preparing their works for publication.The main materials to be studied were sources in Russian and in English published mostly in 2010s and devoted to the problems of structuring works according to the meant above format. Besides, the present research considered the results of plagiarism tests (such tests used to be carried out at the Russia State Library within the period of 2013 – 2015 with the help of software “Automated system of specialized processing of textual documents”). The main methods of our research would remain structural and comparative analysis of texts.As a result, our research revealed the fact of inconsistency of the available information on the IMRAD structure. It would often demand deep thinking and explanations. Different authors of reference editions would as a rule differ one from another in their interpretation of the degree of necessity of this or that composition element, of the amount of details in descriptions, etc. Moreover, the very structure of scientific work looks differently for different authors. More often the structure supposes the integrity of the contents and its form, still sometimes its description would be replaced by outer elements, such as, for example, language clichés. The analysis of the most common faults in text structuring points that authors do not often have a clear idea of how to understand the different demands which are so obscurely described.The research carried out leads to the conclusion that at present the available sources on preparation of publications could only help those beginners who are used to thinking profoundly and taking everything seriously, this including their own research activity.

Scientific writing has a proper format. The anatomical structure or important components of an original article consists of a structured abstract (usually in four sub-headings i.e. objective, methods, results and conclusions with appropriate key words), introduciton, methodology, results and discussion. It is summarized by the acronym IMRAD wherein: I stands for Introduction, M for Methods, R for Results, A for And, D for Discussion. This manuscript describes the information which has to be included in the Introduction and Discussion sections of an original article.

Publishing original research in a peer-reviewed and indexed journal is an important milestone for a scientist or a clinician. It is an important parameter to assess academic achievements. However, technical and language barriers may prevent many enthusiasts from ever publishing. This review highlights the important preparatory steps for creating a good manuscript and the most widely used IMRaD (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion) method for writing a good manuscript. It also provides a brief overview of the submission and review process of a manuscript for publishing in a biomedical journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the full-text corpus of more than 75,000 research articles published by seven PLOS journals, this paper proposes a natural language processing approach for identifying the function of citations. Citation contexts are assigned based on the frequency of n-gram co-occurrences located near the citations. Results show that the most frequent linguistic patterns found in the citation contexts of papers vary according to their location in the IMRaD structure of scientific articles. The presence of negative citations is also dependent on this structure. This methodology offers new perspectives to locate these discursive forms according to the rhetorical structure of scientific articles, and will lead to a better understanding of the use of citations in scientific articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study deals with the undergraduate degree project in teacher training programmes for early childhood education and care in Sweden. For the study we draw on documents and qualitative interviews with teacher educators of different disciplinary backgrounds. The aims of this study were to identify discourses on the degree project in the field of early childhood education and care: (1) in documents; and (2) among teacher educators. Our study points to the tensions between discourses on the degree project as being of primary relevance for the vocational field, or as preparation for research activities. It also shows that varying perceptions on the degree project among teacher educators are largely related to different disciplinary fields. It further emerges that teacher educators have different views about text norms for the degree project, based on different underlying epistemologies to which the student teachers must adapt. We conclude that the multiple and often contradictory requirements of the degree project need critical examination and be reviewed. We also suggest an opening up for new and more creative ways of dealing with the degree project, with greater recognition of professional values and knowledges in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific discourse is characterized by highly normative and strict genre constraints on language use, both on the macro (text) and micro (word) level. The purpose of this article is to study the distribution of the French indefinite pronoun on and its interpretative values across the sections of French-language medical articles (KIAP corpus) in the IMRAD format (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion). The main hypothesis is that the IMRAD structure entails a specific distribution of macro level textual structures (author roles, argumentation, rhetorical functions), and that this is reflected in the distribution of micro level linguistic markers, such as the pronoun on. Previous studies based on a more limited material (Gjesdal, 2008) indicate that the variation in the interpretative values of on seems to be influenced by the IMRAD format, and, furthermore, that the different values seem to correspond to different author roles. Particular emphasis will be put on the influence of the linear sequencing of text imposed by the IMRAD format and the distribution of author roles and speech acts across the text.

The purpose of this case study is to compare five biomedical articles in the field of pathology, having the same topic, namely, renal cell carcinoma. The features under investigation are: structure of the article, names of substances, collocations with the term histological, and any possible inconsistencies from grammatical perspectives. All five articles were processed manually in order to highlight the aspects in which I was particularly interested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a step-by-step guide on how to write a paper for successful publication in a peer-reviewed journal. We propose a ten-step approach to the entire process of paper writing from preparation, manuscript writing, and submission to the stages of peer-review and revision. The steps include defining paper objectives, authorship, journal selection, writing routines, requirements of manuscript sections, editing and proof-reading as well as how to communicate successfully in submission and review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a deconstructive reading of scientific discourse, undertaken through a particular scientific publication titled, "Arthropod 'Rain' into Tropical Streams: the Importance of Intact Riparian Forest and Influences on Fish Diet" (2008, 59, 653-660), which exhibits all the standard features of the genre. One of these features we call, IMRAD, acronym for introduction, methods, results, and discussion. Arguably, IMRAD is a narrative device which inscribes phenomena as a reading. My paper, therefore, may be described as a theorization of this most iconic of scientific genres, the research article. I demonstrate how scientific writing, notwithstanding its outward imperviousness to notions such as textuality, closure, and différance, is still susceptible to them. This is because, in the end, scientific discourse is still writing, that spatio-temporally differed structure Derrida speaks of. Scientific writing cannot escape the constitutive metaphoricity of writing. One particular trope I examine thematically is scope. I argue further that in the research article what we encounter is not facts but their representations. Writing functions as a phenomenology. The theoretical tools I mobilize for my reading are organized broadly around Derrida, Knorr-Cetina, Greg Meyers, Latour and Woolgar and so forth. We have an imperative to understand scientific writing, which is a particular form of that much larger formation, academic writing. Most of our attempts are narrowly pragmatic, not 'literary.' The inter-disciplinary nature of the paper embraces a number of key areas of the conference: literature, literary studies; language, linguistics; teaching and learning; science, environment and the humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an outline to organize your writing project can help keep you on a straight path and avoid wandering into wastelands of irrelevance. There are various formats - the classic hierarchal model, the IMRAD system used for research reports, the disease description arrangement often found in clinical reviews, and various types of lists and categories. All help you organise your data and present it in a structured, coherent manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of West African Journal of Medicine is the property of West African Journal of Medicine and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Background: Writing a scientific manuscript is an important component of academic medicine. For most novice writers, this task may seem quite formidable. Discussion: This article will review the basic processes of writing a manuscript, with emphasis on the proper structure and organization of the article. The likelihood of a manuscript being accepted is highly dependent on its content and structure. A structured outline is the cornerstone of a successful manuscript. Conclusion: The current article presents the tools necessary for writing a successful manuscript. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since the abstracts of original papers are one of their most frequently read and most easily accessible elements, they should be as informative and accurate as possible. It is therefore worrying that 18–68% of 264 abstracts from six major general medical journals, were shown to contain data that were either inconsistent with or absent from the main body of the article. This paper provides an overview of published structures for writing an abstract of an original study or review and quality criteria to assess such abstracts. Guidelines for structured abstracts were first proposed in 1987 and have been under continuous review since. Today, nearly all journals request authors to prepare a structured abstract before peer review, preferably in accordance with the IMRAD format (i.e. Introduction, Methods, Results And Discussion) or the ‘eight-heading’ format (i.e. Objective, Design, Setting, Patients and participants, Intervention(s), Main outcome measures, Results, and Conclusions). In addition, guidelines for structured abstracts for review studies are available. Quality criteria to assess abstracts have been available since 1993. Their use has been associated with decreased discrepancy between the abstract and the main report. Editorial boards of journals are recommended to provide instructions on the components of structured abstracts. Authors should provide accurate data, including the notion if these are preliminary or final. Reviewers should pay increased attention to the quality of the abstract, while readers must retain a cautious and critical reading attitude at all times. Copyright © 2007 FEND [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study described in this article is to examine the lexical characteristics of medical research articles in English. The article describes the results obtained from the analysis of a corpus of medical texts in which the use of verbs is studied in the different sections of the medical research article. After selecting a corpus of 30 texts and tagging them with a POS Tagger, concordances of verbs were obtained. The verbs were then classified according to their meaning in lexical domains. Results show that the lexical domains are distributed differently in each section of the article, reinforcing the rhetorical functions of each section. A proposal is also made for using these results in a more practical manner, for example to enrich an electronic manual, with information that could assist professionals and translators with the writing and translation of medical research articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Globally, the role of universities as providers of research education in addition to leading in main - stream research is gaining more importance with demand for evidence based practices. This paper describes the effect of various students and faculty authoring partnerships on the use of the IMRAD style of writing for a university student journal. Findings This was an audit of the Makerere University Students' Journal publications over an 18-year period. Details of the authors' affiliation, year of publication, composition of the authoring teams and use of IMRAD formatting were noted. Data analysis gave results summarised as frequencies and, effect sizes from correlations and the non parametric test. There were 209 articles found with the earliest from 1990 to latest in 2007 of which 48.3% were authored by faculty only teams, 41.1% were authored by student only teams, 6.2% were authored by students and faculty teams, and 4.3% had no contribution from the above mentioned teams. There were significant correlations between the different teams and the years of the publication (rs = -0.338 p < 0.01 one tailed). Use of the IMRAD formatting was significantly affected by the composition of the teams (Χ2 (2df) = 25.621, p < 0.01) especially when comparing the student only teams to the faculty only teams. (U = 3165 r = - 0.289). There was a significant trend towards student only teams over the years sampled. (z = -4.764, r = -0.34). Conclusions In the surveyed publications, there was evidence of reduced faculty student authoring teams as evidenced by the trends towards students only authoring teams and reduced use of IMRAD formatting in articles published in the students' journal. Since the university is expected to lead in teaching of research, there is need for increased support for undergraduate research, as a starting point for research education.

Scientific writing has a proper format. The anatomical structure or important components of an original article consists of a structured abstract (usually in four sub-headings i.e. objective, methods, results and conclusions with appropriate key words), introduciton, methodology, results and discussion. It is summarized by the acronym IMRAD wherein: I stands for Introduction, M for Methods, R for Results, A for And, D for Discussion. This manuscript describes the information which has to be included in the Introduction and Discussion sections of an original article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]