Research article writing: An insight into part of its nature

Research articles (RAs) should usually contain a standard format and clearly stated sections in order to make the paper more easily readable. Besides, they should normally contain a title, name of the authors and affiliation, an abstract, an introduction, a methods section, a results and discussions section, a conclusions section, figures, tables and graphs if necessary, and a reference list. Some optional sections may also be included such as acknowledgments and appendices (Pintos & Crimi, 2010).

The aim of this paper is to analyse the conclusion and references of a medical RA (Wijeysundera, 2010) and thus, compare its different sections and writing conventions with RAs embracing social sciences which keep to the American Psychological Association (APA) system.

One of the last and most valuable sections within a RA is the conclusion section. The function of this section is to summarise the implications shedding light to the subject of investigation as well as providing a personal interpretation. The discussion section should connect to the introduction and hypotheses posed in the introduction section (Pintos & Crimi, 2010).

The conclusions section of this medical research article meets the requirements mentioned above and it is very brief and concise. However, conciseness does not hinder understanding and accomplishes its mission. The researchers have included four additional paragraphs to refer to funding, interests, ethical approval and data sharing. As regards style and grammar, the researchers have made use of the active voice and the simple present tense to conclude the RA.

APA (2010) states that in order to avoid plagiarism and give credit to the RA, every word and ideas of other authors are to be cited using parenthetical in-text citations. Besides, a reference list including all the entries is to be appended on a separate sheet at the end of the paper.

In the article analysed, in-text citations are cited “…using a superscript arabic numeral…” (Shaffer Library, n.d. p.1).Following the Vancouver style (References/bibliography Vancouver style, (n.d.)), the reference list should appear at the end of the paper. Thus, the reference list was not presented on a separate sheet as in APA style, and was not alphabetically arranged. The sources were organised in the same order they were mentioned in the RA but were not double spaced. For digitalised sources, both digital object identifiers (DOI) and links have been utilised. Nevertheless, the word Retrieved and date of retrieval were not provided.

Regardless of the paper, the author of any RA should be present his/her work in a clearly well-structured fashion. The science or field of the RA will define the documentation system to which the author of the paper will conform. Serious RAs should be divided into sections and each section should encompass relevant information in a non-complex and reader-friendly fashion.

Some minor changes within the internal structure of the RA may be altered according to the author’s criterion (University of Washington, 2004). Nonetheless, these changes should be carefully planned and, by no means should they impair understanding. As mentioned above, the aim of a RA is to inform a target audience of new findings. Thus, it should be essential to concentrate on impact, clarity, conciseness and effectiveness (Pintos & Crimi, Ibid.).



References


American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). Unit 3 - The research article: Results, discussions, and conclusions. Universidad CAECE. Retrieved May 2, 2010, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=4692

References/bibliography Vancouver style. (n.d.). Retrieved May 20, 2010, from http://www.library.uq.edu.au/training/citation/vancouv.pdf

Shaffer Library (n.d.). AMA citation style: A concise guide. The University of Findlay. Retrieved May 20, 2010, from http://www.findlay.edu/NR/rdonlyres/DB5BCD1B-07AA-4BC6-A62B-3C962CBAA3CD/0/AMAStyleGuide.pdf

University of Washington (2004). Summarizing a research article. Retrieved May 19, 2010, from http://depts.washington.edu/psywc/handouts/pdf/summarizing.pdf

Wijeysundera, D.N., Beattie, W. S., Elliot, R.F., Austin, P. C., Hux, J.E., & Laupacis, A. (2010).
Non-invasive cardiac stress testing before elective major non-cardiac surgery: Population based cohort study. BMJ, 340 (b5526), 1-9. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b5526