How to write a research paper?

Scientific paper writing is very important these days. Many people can write easily but for some, it becomes a bad experience after many rejections. Without preaching much, let’s go discuss one by one each part of the research paper. Generally, there are some significant parts of a paper such as abstract, introduction, material & method, results& discussions, conclusions, and finally, references.

Abstract: Generally, try to write abstract after completion of the work and writing other parts mentioned above. Then, you gather a proper idea about the whole affair. The abstract should be brief precise having 300-500 words. You need to avoid unnecessary introductory vague sentences. A very effective way is to write in one or two lines your topic and the requirement of it. Then write what you are intending to do in the work. Then, include key findings. If you include these points, you are almost done. After doing so, you need to try to revise the language many times. Complex sentences are difficult to understand. Hence, the use of simple sentences should be focused on. Moreover, one such refrain from the use of too much conjugation such as ‘and’. The keywords are to be selected based on the main theme of the work so that it becomes easy to search online.

Introduction: Some journals ask for brief introduction while others don’t. So, one should keep that in mind. While writing this section, at first you write a few sentences on the topic of the problem gradually narrowing down to the research problem. During this process, also mention the findings of the various previous authors in this regard with proper citation. Always one should take the latest citations. Very old citations are not regarded very much. This shows your lack of engagement with the latest work. For that matter, you can take help of ScienceDirect, Tailor & Francis, IEEE, Emerald, Nature, Springer, and Wiley journals. For Indian writers, UGC care list is very helpful. At last, try to establish your research problem through the gaps of the previous authors’ works. Finally, you write the aim of the work in this section clearly.

Material and Method: This section includes the materials and methods adopted during the work. The materials used during the work should be mentioned in details with specifications in table form. The methods adopted for the process is to be discussed in details with flow diagrams if necessary. For that matter, there are lots of software packages available. Moreover, if someone is using standard methods, he should mention standards in tabular form.

Results and discussions: This section shows the findings of the research. You need to analyze the findings. One should take help of the graphs to communicate the readers. Also, one should know the art of linking the effect of parameters with your study so that it becomes meaningful.

Conclusions: This section includes the key findings of the research. You need to write the key findings briefly.

References: The references could be any form. There are specific styles. According to journals, the reference styles change. These are APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and IEEE. I am showing three predominant types.

1. APA:  Alibali, M. W. (1999). How children change their minds: Strategy change can be gradual or abrupt. Developmental Psychology, 35, 127-145.

2. Chicago: Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network,” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 411, accessed February 28, 2010, doi:10.1086/599247.

3. IEEE: J. U. Duncombe, "Infrared navigation - Part I: An assessment of feasibility," IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices, vol. ED-11, pp. 34-39, Jan. 1959.