How to write a Research paper ?

1. How to write a Research paper ? Mohamed M. Elgayar 5th year student at Faculty of Medicine-Menoufiya University.Dr.elgayar@yahoo.com

2. Ransom's Rules for Technical and Scientific Writing • Keep your writing clear, concise, and correct • Know your audience; know your subject; know your purpose • If it can be interpreted in more than one way, it's wrong (From Davis, Scientific Papers and Presentations, 1997)

3. Good writing is beautiful, elegant and stylish 

4. Components of a paper • Title • Authors/Contacts • Abstract • Key words • Introduction • Aim • Method/Experimental procedure/Data processing • Results • Discussion • Conclusions, recommendations and limitations • References • Acknowledgements • Conflict of interest

5. The Title • First reviewed by Journal Editors before abstract • Short (10-20 words). • Specific, Relevant, Descriptive • Write last—your findings and conclusions may alter your title • Include a verb (‘reduces’, ‘increases’, etc.) which gives it direction

6. Titles do not normally include numbers, abbreviations or punctuation • The title should be appropriate for the intended audience. The title should tell your audience whether or not they should read your paper. • It Can be a question ?!

7. Authorship • Who comes where? • Agree BEFORE starting • Remember to be consistent

8. Authors should meet ALL three criteria • Contribute to research design. Analysis or interpretation of data • Writing and revising it critically • Approval of the final version

9. The Abstract • First Look –First Impression • Sometimes, it is the only available part • Summarizes the main points : –Background(only hint) –Objective/ Aim –Study design, method –summarize the main results (the direction) –Principal conclusions, implications

10. The Abstract SHOULD NOT contain: • lengthy background information or references to other literature • abbreviations or terms that may be confusing to readers • any sort of illustration, figure, or table, or references to them • The structured abstract differs from the conventional abstract by having a heading for each section. • The abstract should be written in the past tense(you have already done the experiments!)

11. The Introduction • Tell a story and build interest • Should be funnel down from abroad Cummins RO: Learning to write: Can books help? J Med Educ 1981;56:128–132

12. The Methods Contains but not limited to.. • Study design or analysis type and period of study • Details of sample (number, recruiting methods) • Interventions, outcome measures, statistical analyses • Include the locations and times that data were collected • Give enough information to test the reliability

13. The Results • Present results of statistical analysis • Present important data in figures and tables • The results section always begins with text, reporting the key results and referring to your figures and tables as you proceed.

14. Some results require a table ! • Mean translational movements in the X (left to right), Y (back to front) and Z (bottom to top) head directions were 0.10 ± 0.11 mm, 0.16 ± 0.03 mm, and 0.65 ± 0.58 mm, respectively. Mean rotational movements about the three axes were 0.44 ± 0.42 degrees, 0.24 ± 0.26 degrees, and 0.18 ± 0.17 degrees, respectively. Movement was not significantly correlated with age for translation in the X (r = -0.09; p = 0.69), Y (r = 0.21; p = 0.35) or Z (r = -1.02; p = 0.64) directions. Movement was not significantly correlated with age for rotation in the X (r = 0.15; p = 0.51), Y (r = -0.20; p = 0.35) or Z (r = 0.02; p = 0.94) directions.

15. It is important that both the tables and text should be capable of standing alone. • Report negative results - they are important!

16. “ One picture is worth 1000 words”..

17. The Discussion • Summarize major findings • Explain how your findings relate to those of others? • Clinical relevance of the findings? • Limitations and how this influenced your study? –How will you overcome these in the next studies? • Explain the implications of findings • What would be the next step in your study, e.g., what experiments would you do next? Horton R: The hidden research paper. JAMA 2002;2775_2778

18. Discussion • Avoid Superficiality • The purpose of a discussion is to interpret the results, not to simply state them in a different way.

19. the Conclusion • Show that your assumptions have been met (or unmet !) • Results is what happened. –In elections, candidate “A” got more voices than “B” • Conclusion is what this means (Author Opinion). –“A” is more popular than “B”

20. Conflict of interest • Make it clear if the work has been supported by the company whose product is being tested.

21. Acknowledgement (a) contributions that do not justify authorship such as general support by a department chair, (b) acknowledgements of technical help, (c) acknowledgements of financial and material support. • Naming people in this way assumes that they agree with the contents, so you must have their written permission.

22. References • Follow style of journal • Usually not more than 30 • Use proper format: Author. Title. Journal Year; Volume: page range. Adam MH, Barry HC et al. Importance of good writing. Nature 2009; 43:421-5.

23. Two major systems • VANCOUVER Reference • HARVARD Reference

24. Citation References

25. paraphrasing • The expressing the work or ideas of other researchers using your own set of words

26. Quoting • Transferring an idea written in exact words of its original author to your text in quotation marks

27. PLAGIARISM The act of presenting another work or ideas in your own

28. Take care not to fall into PLAGIARISM

29. “if it wasn’t published, it wasn’t done” in E.H. Miller 1993 Some journal have only 5 % acceptance rate

30. References • http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWtoc.html • http://classweb.gmu.edu/biologyresources/writingguide/ScientificPaper.htm • How to write an article? ppt. Al-Zifzaf, Dina • http://www.medicine.uiowa.edu/esr/education/Buettner-Writingsem.pdf • http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume2/v2i5/howto.htm • http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html • Style Guide • http://standards.ieee.org/guides/style/Figures • http://www.visionlearning.com/library/module_viewer.php?mid=109&l=&c3= • http://www.eviltutor.com/

31. Thank you