Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the fourth edition
- 1 Start with a plan
- 2 Conduct a comprehensive literature search
- 3 Prepare for the challenge
- 4 Begin well
- 5 Compose the IMRAD core of a strong first draft
- 6 Assemble the rest of the first draft
- 7 Compile tables to develop, clarify, and support your story
- 8 Include figures for evidence, efficiency, or emphasis
- 9 Report numbers clearly and responsibly
- 10 Revise for coherence
- 11 Improve style and syntax
- 12 Improve word choice
- 13 Attend to punctuation, capitalization, and other mechanics
- 14 Address your ethical and legal responsibilities
- 15 Oral presentations: adapt the text and visuals
- 16 Share your story in public: presenting talks and posters
- 17 Publication: the rest of the story
- Thirty exercises to improve anyone’s scientific writing skills
- Selected resources
- Index
5 - Compose the IMRAD core of a strong first draft
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the fourth edition
- 1 Start with a plan
- 2 Conduct a comprehensive literature search
- 3 Prepare for the challenge
- 4 Begin well
- 5 Compose the IMRAD core of a strong first draft
- 6 Assemble the rest of the first draft
- 7 Compile tables to develop, clarify, and support your story
- 8 Include figures for evidence, efficiency, or emphasis
- 9 Report numbers clearly and responsibly
- 10 Revise for coherence
- 11 Improve style and syntax
- 12 Improve word choice
- 13 Attend to punctuation, capitalization, and other mechanics
- 14 Address your ethical and legal responsibilities
- 15 Oral presentations: adapt the text and visuals
- 16 Share your story in public: presenting talks and posters
- 17 Publication: the rest of the story
- Thirty exercises to improve anyone’s scientific writing skills
- Selected resources
- Index
Summary
Planning to write is not writing.
Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing.
Writing is writing.
e.l. doctorowBy this point in life, you’ve undoubtedly viewed enough scientific documents to recognize that almost all follow quite similar patterns, often expressed by the acronyms IMRAD – Introduction, Methods, Results And Discussion (Day and Gastel, 2011) – or AIMRaD – Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion (Cargill and O’Connor, 2009). Research also is reported in other ways, of course, including such formats as case study reports, research notes, and letters. Adding to the variety, there are a few major journals that structure their articles in entirely different arrangements. However, if you examine any of these with an analytical eye, you generally will be able to find the same categories of information, even without conventional IMRAD headings to guide you.
Together, IMRAD forms the core of an effective scientific paper. Each IMRAD section is structured to address certain questions, and together they shape a critical persuasive argument. We’ll present them in order here, but write them in whatever sequence works effectively for you. If you’re a rabbit (see Chapter 3), you’ll probably start with the Introduction. If you’re a turtle, you might prefer to write it after the Methods and the Results because these two sections are generally more straightforward to compile. If you’re an iconoclast, you’ll wait to write the Introduction until after you’ve written everything else in the core and decided what everything should mean for your audience.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Successful Scientific WritingA Step-by-Step Guide for the Biological and Medical Sciences, pp. 55 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014