Writing a research paper is a daunting task, and soon this becomes a turmoil as time passes by, but you are blank about the writing process. This blog shares the ways to vanquish challenges faced while writing a well-structured manuscript for publication purpose.
Schedule your writing hours
Writing is hard even if it is your first research paper. It requires brainstorming and sharp concentration. The most onerous part of writing is the starting process for which you need to have a rigid writing schedule. Writing a research paper is not a process of a few hours, it takes years to finish. Therefore, regularity is a must to complete the work. If you have stopped exercising for years, a regular workout can only help you trim down. In the same way, regular writing sessions are a must to complete your manuscript.
Tip: Create fixed hours for your writing and keep sticking to them unless you finish your research paper.
Prepare an outline
Considering you have scheduled your writing sessions, you cannot plunge into writing because you are still stuck in a situation where you do not know how to start. You will prepare an outline that will be more or less like a template of your research paper. The framework will include the following questions:
- What is the topic of your research paper?
- What is the importance of your research?
- What are your research objectives?
- What were the research hypotheses?
- What materials did you use?
- What were the research designs?
- What are the findings of your experiments or research?
Tip: Create an outline and discuss it with your peers.
Start writing
The writing process begins when you have created an outline for your research manuscript. Extend the draft by adding details and elaborating on them. To make this job successful, keep writing. Do not halt yourself to decide on a better word or phrase. Do not cease yourself to improve sentence-structure as this is what you will do at the time of editing. You just keep pouring your ideas into a paper.
- Writing materials and methods
If you are struggling with writing a research paper, first of all you should write materials and methods. This is the easiest section to describe as you have all notes for your experiential designs and procedures. You should provide enough details and references as explicit as possible. However, if your method has been previously published, you need to write down literature reference only.
Fluency is crucial in this section thus do not switch from active voice to passive and vice versa within the same paragraph. Frequent switching causes bafflement among readers. To improve coherence in your writing you should be consistent with a subject. However, if you choose experimenter as a subject, for example, “we did the experiment and we found that…”, you will find “we” repetitive, and this would be disruptive. So try to write sentences to vary the beginning of sentences and keep “we” to a minimum.
Tip: Be specific while writing methods and materials and try avoiding shifting a subject within one paragraph.
- Writing result section
Writing result section can be more intimidating for you because you have to be very particular about the choice of words that will not mislead readers after they have read your findings. In result section, you will mention the purpose of your experiment, experiential methods, texts including visual data such as tables and graphs, and data commentary that will include a meaningful summary of data presented in charts, graphs and tables. In brief, this section requires you to summarise and highlight scientific findings for your readers’ interpretation.
Tip: Be concise and objective about your results.
- Writing introduction section
You have written methods, materials and results section. Before moving onto the introduction section, you should reread the methods and results section to corroborate them with your research focus. This review will help you know the topic, research gap/problem, research importance, and research questions that are intrinsic to define introduction.
Tip: Insert all sections and state the novelty of your work. Do not write the introduction very long. Try to wrap it up in 250 to 500 words.
Make revision strategies
You have completed your research paper, but it is still not ready for submission. You have to refine your document. Have a glance at the outline and check whether your research paper includes all sections from the introduction to conclusion. Edit it acutely to replace ambiguous terms with appropriate words and improve sentence structure to make a flow.
Tip: Use different strategies and techniques to polish up your document.