Scientific Paper Flashcards
Title
Lengthy, to get the main point across
Centered across the top
Author’s name centered directly below
Affiliation (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona) centered below the author
Abstract
A summary of the paper; comes at BEGINNING
-Meant to give the reader an idea if the paper is relevant to their research
Includes abbreviated versions of the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections
-Do NOT just “copy and paste” from each section
Introduction
Background information for the current study
Literature review, with other journal articles cited as sources
-Search external articles, compoile them to lead into your work; common to use LAST paragraph to introduce YOUR work
Questions, objectives, hypotheses, and predictions of the study
-LAST section of intro (NOT required to be the last, just what’s usually done)
Methods
Thorough enough to be repeatable by others
Present the timeline of the study, the study site, and the organisms involved (scientific names of organisms)
-Include descriptions if necessary here
Discuss all of the experimental design and data collection procedures and bulk methods
Mention the data analysis procedures
Results
Tell the results, but do NOT yet explain them
Statistical values are reported here
Any tables, graphs, or other figures are also included
Split “Methods” into subsections if desires
EVERY section on scientific paper is PARAGRAPH form, NOT bullets
ONE page MAX for methods; must be complete and concise
Discussion
NOW explain the results: what do they mean biologically?
-Do NOT just repeat the results
Compare with the results of others
Literature review, with additional articles cited as sources
-NOT necessarily showing the same results; same/similar study; discuss varying or similar conclusions
Draw an overall conclusion
(Discuss possible sources of error or future work that could be done): Do NOT overemphasize sources of error
Literature cited
List all of the sources but only the sources included in the paper itself
-NO acknowledgements necessary for our class
NO cover pages
Title goes on top of the first page (with author and affiliation), and abstract follows immediately below
Do not start a new page for each new section
All sections begin immediately below the previous section
-This includes the literature cited section
Each section is headed with its section name (Introduction, Results, Literature Cited, etc.)
Citing Sources
The deserts of Africa contain more termite species than any other location in the world (Smith 1994).
Literature cited section
Last name, First and Middle initials. Year. Paper title. Journal name Volume #:Page #’s.
- -Consistency is KEY
- -Varies between journals; this format is used in Ecology journals
Citation in paper: (Last name Year Published)
2 authors: (Smith and Jones 1994)
3 authors: (Smith et al. 1994)
Literature cited: Alphabetized by first author’s last name
Finding sources
Google Scholar
Reporting statistics
Males are significantly taller than females on campus (t=3.261, p=0.002).
-Succinctl do NOT put H0, t, and p in sentence
You don’t say “the p-value was 0.002 and t was…” you report these in parentheses in equation form
Figures and tables
Must be referred to in the results section
-Extension of previous example (t=3.621, p=0.002, Fig. 1)..
Figure headings go below the figure
- Fig. 1. Graph of mean heights (+/- standard deviations) for males and females on campus
- -Describe figure so reader knows what figure depicts
Table headings go above the table
Grammar
Written in the first person (I, we)
Written in the past tense (methods and results in particular; introduction and discussion may vary)
-May be appropriate to use present tense
