39. Organization of the text of original article for journal

The most part of international scientific journals require that article describing the results of original experimental investigation, consists of the following parts:

Название - Title

Реферат - Abstract

Введение - Introduction

Методы - Materials and Methods (Theoretical basis)

Результаты - Results

Обсуждение - Discussion

Благодарности - Acknowledgements

Список литературы - References

Этот формат сокращенно называется IMRAD

(Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion).

This format is called IMRAD in short (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion).

Sometimes to the abbreviation IMRAD the letter A is added, which means Abstract, and we get AIMRAD. If an article is devoted to theoretical investigation then the part Methods is called Theoretical Basis. IMRAD format of scientific publications for the first time appeared on pages of scientific journals in the end of 19th century. Nowadays this format of scientific publications became universal standard, which is freely accepted by most of journals. The tendency to unification of the structure of scientific publications of results of original investigations became especially strong since 1972, when the National American institute of standards approved and recommended IMRAD format for application to all journals. In the base of IMRAD-format there is very simple logic.

Parts of article answer the natural questions.

The first question - what problem this investigation is devoted to?

The answer should be in the Introduction.

The next question - how the problem was studied?

The part Method answers this question.

What are the main findings and discoveries?

Look for the answer in the Results.

What does the results obtained mean?

They are in the part Discussions.

Besides, any article begins with Title, after which the authors list follows, place of their work, place of execution of investigation represented.

Then Abstract follows, which is a very short representation of the article content and there are key words in the end.

After Abstract the article begins - paper body.

Often there are Acknowledgements after Discussions and References list concludes the article (Table 3)

Table 3. Typical structure of scientific article

Title

Abstract

Key words

Introduction What did you study?

Why did you study this?

Materials and Methods What did you do?

(Experimental Methods, Experimental

Section, procedures) or Theoretical Basis

Results What did you find?

Discussion What does it mean?

Acknowledgements

References

(Literature cited)

Exceptions are not many, and not so essential. It is seldom (if methodical part of the investigation takes the central place, for example, when several methods were used in an experiment purposely) one can unite Methods and Results in one part - Experiments. Among a few exceptions let's note the journal Cell, where articles have the part Methods to be at last position after the part Discussion. Such an organization of an article does not deny the generally accepted format, and just place questions in other order.

IMRAD structure is typical for articles, devoted to the original research.