Structuring a Scientific Paper Purpose of a scientific paper? Communicate scientific results and ideas as clearly (and concisely) as possible. Your path of discovery is typically not important to communicate. The presentation should be reader-friendly. Other purposes of scientific papers? Structure of a Paragraph: http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/para.html Topic Sentence [REQUIRED] Supporting Sentences [REQUIRED]: These should support/explain/elaborate on the Topic Sentence. Try not to introduce new topics; those should go in a different paragraph. Concluding Sentence [OPTIONAL – usually a good thing]. Summarize the key point of the paragraph and/or provide a logical transition to the next paragraph.

Question-Structured Paper At the end of Introduction, list your questions (or hypotheses) somewhere in a paragraph that typically begins “In this paper, we…” Make the questions stand out with numbers, bold or italic font, etc. Results section: One sub-section per question. Each sub-section begins with a single Result Sentence that answers one of your key questions (or states if the hypothesis was supported or not). Put each Result Sentence in bold/italic/large font if the journal allows. The Result Sentence is similar to a topic sentence, but it delivers a key result (rather than introducing a topic). The rest of the sub-section (one or more paragraphs) provides the details that support the Result Sentence. Discussion section: Begin with some general comments, broad overview, etc. if you want. Either way, the meat of the Discussion section is… Sub-sections that begin with your questions (preferably in bold type, with the same or similar wording you used in Introduction). Each sub-section poses a question/hypothesis, recaps the answer, and discusses the implications.

Key Points Make your paper reader-friendly by using a consistent structure throughout. Use numbers, bold, italics, etc. to make the structure apparent to the reader. What to include in the paper? If the goal is to write the best paper possible, only include content that is related to your questions. There may be reasons to include other stuff. Alternative Strategy: First, write the Results Sentences (as defined on previous slide). Then figure out what questions to pose at end of Intro. The paper has the same structure as the “Question-structured paper”. The difference is the order in which you write (and think about) the paper. Many of these ideas were implemented in Lichstein et al. (2014, Ecological Applications) Examples of Results Sentences: Chen, Lichstein, et al. (2014, PLOS One)