Mark suggests, “The biggest thing to remember is to relate the science to society. In other words, try to show how your study relates to real world applications. Also, a tip about the introduction. When you start your paper, try to start wide and work your way down to your specific research question. This way your audience can follow your thought progression and know how the study relates to them.”
Anja suggests, the following points:
- Start out the introduction with information about the topic you’re studying and why it is important to society (for example, maybe it affects climate change or water availability) and make sure to back this up with sources (if you’re not sure if something requires a source, get one anyway; it’s better to be safe than sorry)
- End with your objective for the study, where the study location is, and your method of studying it (make sure to also describe this)
- You may also talk about what you expect to observe and why
- Be objective in your writing (try to avoid saying “we did this”; instead say “this was done”
- Be specific
- Never say “this caused this” (you can never prove anything); instead say “this most likely happened because…”
- A common mistake is to interpret your results in the actual results section. Do not do this. All you need to do in the results section is describe the trends (e.g. the average rainfall at Site A tended to be higher than that at Site B). Then, in the discussion address this observation and talk about why this might be, using evidence from other studies or your own background knowledge.
- Make sure that your tables and charts do not have raw data. Instead, organize them so that they show people the “bigger picture”, what the main trends are. Calculate averages and standard deviations. Make a line graph showing trends over time or a bar graph showing differences between two areas.
- If your observations are not what you expected, talk about why this might be (maybe it is the history of the site [e.g. may have been disturbed once], maybe there is something you could have done better in your methods (perhaps you didn’t get enough data).
Kelly suggests, “Be concise and write observations before interpretations. Edit at least 5 times in order to remove filler words, use appropriate terminology, and avoid repeating oneself. I always start writing the methods, then results and discussion. The hardest part is the introduction and the topic background. The more literature I read, the better my introduction and background will be.”