How to write a scientific paper

[Music] so you want to write and publish a scientific paper or an academic paper and you want to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal I'm going to talk you through the process of how to write that paper and what it is that goes into the various sections of the paper so basically papers have got a number of sections there's the title in the abstract there's the introduction and background there's the methods results discussion and conclusions I'm going to talk to you about what goes into each of those sections let's start by talking about the title now the title needs to be about 15 words or less right that's in a lot of space you got to get to the point quite quickly the things that you want to include in the title are firstly the purpose what is the question that you addressed secondly the scope what are the edges of this thing if you if you addressed a particular population group say that if it included a particular time frame say that some of the time you want to include the methods that you used so if it was a cohort study for example you might want to include that in the title this is all information that is useful to the reader if they if they trying to make a decision whether or not they're going to read your paper things to avoid don't put in acronyms don't use abbreviations don't ever use exclamation marks keep it nice and professional and you'll have a great title next let's talk about the abstract now the abstract is usually about 300 words again it's not a lot of space you want to be concise they're different types of apt abstract what I'm going to talk to you about is one that's called the informative abstract that's the most common type of a project and it follows a certain format and we're just going to get into that of course you're gonna include the purpose of the paper and and you're gonna have an overview of the methods and the main findings the conclusions and the recommendations importantly you're not going to have any discussion so you're not going to critique or evaluate the work you're not going to include any subjective interpretation no speculation no references to other works or other publications you're going to keep it nice and factual you're gonna write in the past hints because this is reporting on a study that's already been completed and you're gonna do the whole thing at about 300 words now let's talk about the introduction in background when you write the introduction in background what you want to get out of this is you want the reader to keep reading to do that what you want to do is provide context in other words with reference to existing literature you're going to tell them what we know and what we don't know in this particular subject area and in the context of what we don't know you're going to introduce your research question the purpose of your study the question that you're going to answer and when they read that they're going to want to carry on reading next we're going to talk about the methods the results the discussion and conclusions before we do I want to say a big thank you to biomed central or BMC for sponsoring this video BMC is a publishing company that publishes open access journals and that means that the full text of anything that they publish is available for free to anybody anywhere in the world BMC are the publishers of globalization and health which is a journal that I'm the chief editor of and I can honestly say having worked with them for many many years that they're a company with integrity I'm extremely impressed with them and I really believe that they're making the world a better place so go to biomed central com or click on the link in the description below and check them out now let's talk about the methods if you want your research to be taken seriously you need the reader to understand exactly how it is that you undertook the research and drew the conclusions that you did in fact you need the methods to be in so much detail that if they wanted to repeat the study themselves to generate the same conclusions and results that you did they would be able to now what your methods section looks like depends largely on the type of research that you've undertaken so method sections in qualitative research look very different to method search sections in in quantitative research what I'm going to be talking about here applies mostly to quantitative research but the basic principles apply to any paper here's what must be included you need to state your your study question or hypothesis right you need to include your study design so was it a cohort study was it a case control study is this secondary data analysis was this content analysis of interviewed data etc etc next you want to talk about your data did you collect the data yourself if so how what tool did you use has the reliability and the validity of this tool been established how did you identify relevant variables if this was routinely collected data like Hospital data or census data or if you access the available data from existing surveys or ongoing studies how did you access it how is it stored was it anonymized or de-identified did you have permission to access it describe the data in more detail in other words if it's sample data what was the sample size how did you decide on that size and describe the variables of interest the number of observations if appropriate how you analyze the data what software did you use what statistical tests did you apply what assumptions did you make highlight any methodological limitations and describe how it is that you address them and if it's appropriate state that you're quite difficult provable for your study now let's talk about the results everything about your paper revolves around the results and for that reason I'm gonna suggest that you write the results first especially if you're working with co-authors so you may have collaborators you may be working with the statistician you may have a supervising author what you want to do is you want to draft the results and the tables and the text of the results you want to circulate that and you want to get agreement on the results before you write the rest of the paper and the reason is the results can change in other words people might suggest that you include certain aspects of the study or remove certain other aspects of the study if you've written the entire paper everything else has to change if the results change because everything revolves around the results so get that finalized get it agreed get it ironclad get that signed off before you write anything else now you start writing your write in a logical manner and make explicit reference to any of the tables and figures included you want to place the tables and figures as close as possible to the first time that they're referred to in the text don't discuss the results don't provide explanations don't provide any speculation don't interpret them don't explain them don't hypothesize keep the results nice and factual now don't ignore any negative findings include any negative results but don't try to explain them not at this point that's for the discussion the discussion this is by far my favorite part of any paper because in the discussion you're not only going to reiterate your findings but you're going to explain them and interpret them and hypothesize and speculate this is where you bring your thoughts and ideas into the paper you're gonna start your discussion off by reiterating your research question and given your findings state what you believe the answer to that question is now remember don't introduce any new data or any new results in the discussion the discussion has to reflect on the results that have already been presented in your paper you need to explain an interpreter result in the context of the literature that you identified in the introduction in background in other words are your findings consistent with what other people had said and does your data fill one of the gaps in knowledge that you identified so you want to show how your work has added something to the body of knowledge and understanding on the topic you also want to reflect on the implications of your findings maybe in terms of practical applications or public policy and of course you want to acknowledge the limitations of your study and you want to discuss those limitations and the implications of those limitations to your results and the more you do that the more you demonstrate that you understand the limitations the more credibility your results will have and in that context you also want to consider and discuss any alternative explanations for your findings definitely discuss any negative findings and consider the impact on your conclusions and then talk about next steps what are the implications of your findings in terms of suggestions for future research and finally there's the conclusion and recommendation section this is where you get to tell the reader so what what is the point of all of this you want to help the reader understand why your research matters so what you want to do is you want to state the answer to the research question that you asked and state any recommendations that can be made as a result of your findings now as you can imagine I've only been able to scratch the surface in terms of what you need to know to write a good paper if you want to learn more then go to learn more 365.com I've got a course there that digs deep on all of these issues and again a big THANK YOU to BMC for sponsoring this video I'd love to hear from you so leave a comment below and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already

Channel: Global Health with Greg Martin

Views: 138,095

Rating: 4.9663501 out of 5

Keywords: write, publish, paper, scientific, academic, methodology, research, peer-reviewed, journal, writing, qualitative research, quantitative research, public health, global health, MPH, study, data

Id: Vky9PDKx5KU

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 04 2018