Communicating Science/Different Formats

Academic research papers in STEM disciplines typically follow a well-defined I-M-R-A-D structure: Introduction, Methods, Results And Discussion (Wu, 2011). Although not included in the IMRAD name, these papers often include a Conclusion.

Writing Journal Style Atricles

Writing Journal-Style Articles (and Lab Reports)

The I-M-R-A-D structure provides a framework for you to use in organizing content, and – more so than for any other format – you can write science journal-style articles and lab reports by focusing on the different sections as if they are discrete, mini reports.

Introduction

The Introduction typically provides everything your reader needs to know in order to understand the scope and purpose of your research. This section should provide:

Context for your research (for example, the nature and scope of your topic)
A summary of how relevant scholars have approached your research topic to date, and a description of how your research makes a contribution to the scholarly conversation
An argument or hypothesis that relates to the scholarly conversation
A brief explanation of your methodological approach and a justification for this approach (in other words, a brief discussion of how you gather your data and why this is an appropriate choice for your contribution)
The main conclusions of your paper (or the “so what”)
A roadmap, or a brief description of how the rest of your paper proceeds

Methods

The Methods section describes exactly what you did to gather the data that you use in your paper. This should expand on the brief methodology discussion in the introduction and provide readers with enough detail to, if necessary, reproduce your experiment, design, or method for obtaining data; it should also help readers to anticipate your results. The more specific, the better! These details might include:

An overview of the methodology at the beginning of the section
A chronological description of what you did in the order you did it
Descriptions of the materials used, the time taken, and the precise step-by-step process you followed
An explanation of software used for statistical calculations (if necessary)
Justifications for any choices or decisions made when designing your methods

Because the methods section describes what was done to gather data, there are two things to consider when writing. First, this section is usually written in the past tense (for example, we poured 250ml of distilled water into the 1000ml glass beaker). Second, this section should not be written as a set of instructions or commands but as descriptions of actions taken. This usually involves writing in the active voice (for example, we poured 250ml of distilled water into the 1000ml glass beaker), but some readers prefer the passive voice (for example, 250ml of distilled water was poured into the 1000ml beaker). It’s important to consider the audience when making this choice, so be sure to ask your instructor which they prefer.

Results

The Results section outlines the data gathered through the methods described above and explains what the data show. This usually involves a combination of tables and/or figures and prose. In other words, the results section gives your reader context for interpreting the data. The results section usually includes:

A presentation of the data obtained through the means described in the methods section in the form of tables and/or figures
Statements that summarize or explain what the data show
Highlights of the most important results

Tables should be as succinct as possible, including only vital information (often summarized) and figures should be easy to interpret and be visually engaging. When adding your written explanation to accompany these visual aids, try to refer your readers to these in such a way that they provide an additional descriptive element, rather than simply telling people to look at them. This can be especially helpful for readers who find it hard to see patterns in data.

Discussion

The Discussion section explains why the results described in the previous section are meaningful in relation to previous scholarly work and the specific research question your paper explores. This section usually includes:

Engagement with sources that are relevant to your work (you should compare and contrast your results to those of similar researchers)
An explanation of the results that you found, and why these results are important and/or interesting

Some papers have separate Results and Discussion sections, while others combine them into one section, Results and Discussion. There are benefits to both. By presenting these as separate sections, you’re able to discuss all of your results before moving onto the implications. By presenting these as one section, you’re able to discuss specific results and move onto their significance before introducing another set of results.

Additional Tips: Tense Consistency

Try not to confuse your readers by mixing tenses in the same sentences. It can often be easy to do this when writing about science in this format, because you are talking about your experiment (which has already happened), and then linking it to theory, which is still evolving (happening now, and continuing to happen in the future).

To help, try to refer to your experiment in the past tense and then mention its link to other work in the present or future tenses – but do this in different sentences. The Methods and Results sections should be written entirely in the past tense because these things have already happened (you have conducted your experiment and you have gathered your results).

Writing Science Essays

The main aim when writing science essays is to synthesize information (mostly from primary sources in the literature) to support the position that you are taking; by this, we mean that you should clearly set out what you are going to say and how you are going to say it, before summarizing reliable sources to provide reasons and evidence to justify your position (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Essay Writing Framework

The Thesis Statement and Development Statements

The opening to your essay should have a strong, clear, and specific thesis statement and one or more development statements. The thesis statement is the claim of the argument presented in the essay. Without this, the reader would not know what to expect the rest of the essay to develop.

The development statement(s) are also crucial as they tell a reader which points will be used to support the argument, and also which order they will be presented in. If some of these points are not listed – or presented in a different order to the one stated – the reader might fail to understand your intent, or even discount the steps used to support the argument. This logical progression is vital to make sure your readers follow the same line of thought as you did.

You can write a development statement at the start of each new paragraph to form something of a signpost for your readers.

Handy hints:

Although using a thesis statement and clear development statements to open your essay will mean you do so in an organized way, do not be afraid to split these up around other conversational sentences within your opening paragraph
It is also fine to make personal, stylistic choices in the way that you present your development statements and link them to your thesis statement, to prevent your introduction from sounding too choppy and formulaic (e.g. you do not have to write: “I will support ‘a’ with ‘b’, ‘c’ and ‘d’.” You can instead write: “’b’, ‘c’ and ‘d’ all suggest that ‘a’ is true in most environments...”).

Examples

Write: “Reintroducing wolves as additional predators into Yellowstone National Park has had a positive effect on plant biodiversity,” rather than: “Reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone National Park has benefited lots of plants.”

Then, write: “Changes in the number of plant species and the relative dominance of each species demonstrates this, as does the biomass of experimental plots that were surveyed before and after the reintroduction,” rather than: “This essay will consider lots of different ways in which plant biodiversity has improved.”

The Main Body

In the main body of the essay, each of the points presented in the introduction should be presented and discussed. Examples and references (citations) are generally included in these paragraphs, but it is important to note that each paragraph should contain only one main idea with examples or references that justify it. This main idea should be presented in a topic sentence at or near the beginning of the paragraph; these topic sentences act as signposts throughout the main body of the essay (and can be mini development statements).

Try to pay an appropriate amount of attention to each point as you develop the essay; if you are going to write more about one point than others, try to make it clear why you are doing this because otherwise your reader might wonder why other points have received less comprehensive treatment.

The Summary

The summary/conclusion of the essay is your final opportunity to synthesize your argument and finish with a convincing bang. Here, you should review your main argument and, depending on the length of your essay, your supporting points. (A short essay will not require this.) Most importantly, you need to show your readers how these ideas fit together and why they are important – you are giving them closure and tying up any loose ends. No new information should be added to the essay at this point.

Additional Tips: Peer Review and Creating and Using Writing Outlines

Before you start to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you should produce a writing outline. Although it can seem like wasted time, you will find that producing a detailed ‘roadmap’ will help you organize your writing much more efficiently. It will almost certainly save you time in the long run, and will also help you compartmentalize the different tasks associated with your essay, making them seem more manageable.

Once you have written your essay by using the outline, you can start to edit it and add in transitions to make each sentence flow smoothly into the next one. Although the content is the most important part, you should not underestimate the importance of transitional words and phrases in helping to develop a smooth, logical development.

Scientific communication often relies on a rigorous peer review process, in which scientists in similar fields read and then critique each other’s written work, before allowing the original author(s) to respond and alter their work to improve it.

Whether you are writing a journal-style article/lab report, an essay, or a blog post, it is always a valuable exercise to ask someone to review your work before submitting it; this is especially true for essays, because your aim is to produce a convincing, logical argument, but it can be hard to be objective about your own work and so what seems to make perfect sense to you might not be clear to someone else. Often, it is only when someone reads your work and provides you with feedback that you see some holes in your logical development.

With this in mind, we advise you to ask a peer tutor or friend to read your work before you submit it; if they follow your argument and seem convinced at the end, you have probably done a good job! Either way, their feedback as readers will be helpful for you as you revise and take your work to the next level.

Writing Journalistic Articles and Blog Posts

Writing Journalistic Articles and Blog Posts

Writing journalistic articles and blog posts requires very different skills than the other two formats we have considered because your target audience is very different. Think about the last science-based news article you read in the newspaper or online and consider how much more accessible it was than a journal article. Specific detail is important in journal-style articles; however, informal, even quirky, writing without too many details (like those found in a science journal article’s methods section) is more likely to capture the imagination of the casual reader.

There are many different ways of attempting to structure a journalistic article or blog post. One such approach is to try to include ‘The 5 W’s’ (the who, what, where, when, why) in the first two paragraphs of an article/post. Journalists sometimes refer to this as ‘the lead’. In the interest of creating an engaging opening to your story, you should aim to do this in no more than 50 words.

Example

Write: “Professor Gareth Bennett of Trinity College Dublin has found a way to make aircraft quieter while using less fuel, paving the way for a ‘greener’ future. Professor Bennett yesterday signed an agreement with leading aircraft manufacturers, which will see these planes in action by 2018.”

In the above example, readers have learned all about the important news in just 45 words. The story could now be developed with more specific information and quotations throughout the rest of the story by working down the ‘inverted pyramid’ of information (Figure 2). The key here is to add to the story by including content of increasing depth and decreasing breadth as you work your way into the news.

Figure 2: The inverted pyramid of information. Try to work down it by adding more specific detail as you go.

Including quotations from relevant sources will make the story more interesting and add a personal touch as well as credibility, but make sure these quotations say something useful. Try to ensure they add something to the story (they don’t just repeat information already paraphrased beforehand) and make sure they are interesting and easy to understand; there is no point including a quote from someone whose opinion is irrelevant or inappropriate, or if it fails to ignite an interest in the story. Be careful that you are not using a quote out of context and that you include any background information readers might need to understand it properly.

Examples

Write: “Professor Bennett said: “I’ve been flying high ever since we signed the contract; this has been the culmination of some serious work as it has been my dream for the last decade to reduce the carbon footprint we leave as frequent flyers,” rather than: “Professor Bennett said: “These new planes will make less noise and use less fuel.”’

Write: “London Heathrow Airport Traffic Controller, Stuart Richards, said ‘Noise pollution has been a growing concern for 20 years, so this truly is a ground-breaking development,’” rather than: “Toby Hamilton, who flies at least 20 times a year on business, said ‘I’m looking forward to getting on board as soon as the new planes are in operation.’”

Additional Tips: Visual and Audio Aids

News is no longer confined to newspapers. In addition to being more readily available through digital formats, news stories are spread quickly through social media. In such a fast-paced news environment, visual and audio aids can make the difference between an article appearing internationally on hundreds of different websites or failing to get ore than a few views in the local newspaper.

Try to think of any relevant images that you can add to your article/blog post, or share via Twitter for example, to try to boost readership. Even better, video and/or audio clips that can be embedded in a webpage and shared via social media will likely create more interest as well (many people will watch a three-minute news round-up on their smartphones on the commute to work). Remember to credit any image, audio or video, just as you would cite a source used in an essay or lab report.

Try also to choose a quirky, snappy title for any images you use; people are more likely to read the caption and the article if the visual element takes their eye and the caption grabs their attention, than if it sends them to sleep before they’ve begun to read it.

Example

Write: “Trinity Engineer Flying High,” rather than: “Professor Bennett Makes Aeroplane Breakthrough.”