Writing a research article: Advice for beginners

article writing

A research paper is one of the technical writing jargons that require pay for paper at some point. It is a typical and highly rhetorical form where the knowledge of the regulations- implied or explicit going a long way to writing a paper, which will get approved in a peer-reviewed journal.

The importance of the research question:

Every research paper- a good one, addresses a particular research question. A study or a research question or the main research hypothesis is a central organizing principle of the paper. Whatever relates to the question is added to the paper, and the remaining is eliminated. Also, it is evident when the paper shows a well-planned research project fulfilling all the necessary demands. However, some papers are written based on projects in applied domains such as quality improvements undertaken for operational reasons. Also, they do not aim primarily to produce new knowledge. In such scenarios, the authors must explain the central research question known as a posteriori and also design the paper around it for more clarification.

Usually, only one research question must be labeled in any paper; however, the not necessary but relevant question can be included. Go for several papers if the project allows you to find out specific particular research questions. For example, at a specialized clinic using a newly developed questionnaire, if you measured the impact of obtaining written consent, you might want to write on the intervention’s impact and the questionnaire development and validation. The idea is to split the results into ‘optimally publishable units’ and not into ‘least publishable units,’ which is a practice that is rightly decried.

What is a good research question?

A good research question has:

• Specificity
• Originality
• Novelty
• General relevance to a broad scientific community.
• It should be precise
• Should not be identified merely as a general area of inquiry or investigation.

It should extend previous knowledge useful or refute existing knowledge because a study does not necessarily have to break entirely new ground. Finally, the question must be of interest to others who are working in the same field.

Structure of the paper:

Writing the paper becomes considerably easier once the research question is clearly defined. However, there is a question that is answered later on. Therefore, the key to writing the paper successfully is to know the exact structure of the paper. Following is the exact sequel of the paper that one should follow:

• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• As per the author, they state:
• The problem that they want to address
• What method they opted for to answer the question
• What was observed to create the result?
• What hypothesis is concluded in the discussion?

The basics:

Keeping the structure of the paper in place is the best thing that you can opt for. However, certain things that are not explained are to be kept in mind to follow and must be followed.