Common Macrostructure of an Original Research Paper

The following is from a handout that I give to students who are embarking on writing their first paper. There is no hard rule that says one must follow this structure, but if you are feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing, and what to write where, this might be a helpful place to start. Of course, you should always check the author guidelines for your target journal, as many have specific macrostructure requirements. Furthermore, look at several papers published in your target journal, and see what sort of length and structure they have, and then aim to mimic this as closely as you can with your own paper. However, that said, if you follow the macrostructure below, your paper should be relatively adaptable to the specific structural requirements of any journal.

Title

A straight-forward statement that communicates the main finding, or topic, of your paper (For more details, see my post about titles).

Abstract

A summary, or “road map,” of your paper. The following is a common abstract “recipe” for a scientific paper:

  1. Background, what is known (~1 sentence)
  2. Gap, unknown, problem (~1 sentence)
  3. Study aim (~1 sentence)
  4. Study system and approach (~1-2 sentences)
  5. Key results (~1-3 sentences)
  6. Conclusion, answer the question, fill the gap (~1 sentence)
  7. Broader implications, meaning, recommendation (~1 sentence)

For more details, see my post about abstracts.

Keywords

Important terms pertaining to the major topics/themes of your paper that are not in your title or abstract.

Introduction

What does my audience need to know in order to understand and care about my study?2

  1. Background
  • Why is this topic important? What is already known about this topic?
  • Summarize previous research at a high level, don’t get bogged down in unnecessary details.
  1. Knowledge gap
  • What do we not know yet, and why do we need to know this?
  • Narrow in towards your specific study question.
  1. Study system
  • Justify your choice of study system.
  • Summarize the necessary background (what is already known) about this topic in your study system.
  • Outline the knowledge gap with respect to your study system.
  1. This study
  • Broadly summarize your study’s objective/question, your hypotheses/predictions, and approach.
  • Give a brief overview of the experimental design, observational set-up, and/or analytical/statistical approach.

Methods

What does my audience need to know in order to trust and replicate my study?

  • You need to:
    • Demonstrate that you used a scientifically valid method.
    • Give all info that would be required for somebody to redo your study.
  • This is the most ‘specialized’ part of your paper – be very specific!
  • Break it into logical/meaningful subsections.

Results

What does my audience need to know in order to trust the conclusions of my study?

  • Plainly describe what your data and statistical tests show. Put the biology up front, and the stats and technical details afterwards.
  • Use figures and tables as the focal points, build the text around these.
  • Break into subsections, e.g., one per major result or overarching question.

Discussion

What does my audience need to know in order to understand the meaning and implications of my results?

  1. Fill the knowledge gap
  • Broadly summarize your major results.
  • Explicitly state how your result(s) fill (partly or in full) the knowledge gap presented in your introduction.
  • This part should be understandable to somebody who hasn’t read the methods and results, but rather has skipped straight here after reading the last paragraph of your intro.
  1. Explain each major result
  • For each result (or group of related results), explain why this result was what it was, using evidence from the literature.
  • Does this result agree with, or differ from, previous similar studies? What does this agreement or difference mean?
  • What can be extrapolated from other studies to better understand this result?
  1. Address limitations & caveats
  • To what extent are your results not generalizable?
  • How might the limitations of your study have influence the results you found?
  1. Implications & take-home message
  • Sum it all up by distilling your main results to their logical conclusion.
  • Answer the overarching question, or fill the knowledge gap, that you presented in your intro.
  • Outline the broader implications of your findings.
  • Finish by addressing the broad topic where your intro started.

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  1. If you are writing a thesis that is like one big paper (e.g., master’s or bachelor’s thesis), the introduction may also serves as a more extensive literature review, wherein you prove to your professor/committee that you’ve done your background research and that you have a deep understanding of this topic. In this case, your intro would likely be longer than a regular peer-reviewed journal paper, and you might even break your intro down into subsections - each subsection could, for example, address the background and knowledge gap of one aspect of your topic, then a subsection to give an extensive overview of your study system and the background and knowledge gaps with respect to your study system, then a more extensive outline of your study, including detailed hypotheses and predictions. It’s a good idea to discuss with your supervisor ahead of time about what their expectations are for your thesis, and how extensive they would like the background lit review (i.e., the intro) to be - some supervisors will want you to write it like a peer-review journal article (straight to the point), whereas others will want a more extensive lit review and proof that you’ve done your research and know this topic inside and out. Remember, in the case of a thesis, your main audience is whoever is grading it, and you probably know these people! So you can directly ask them what they are looking for!↩︎