Introduction
The introduction is exactly what it sounds like: the introduction to the rest of your paper. The introduction should tell the reader what the paper is and why they should read it. In a paper with new research, it should also include your original research questions, (brief) information on what you studies (elaborated in the literature review), the literature gaps, what your research methods are (elaborated in the methods section), and the hypothesis you planned to prove/disprove with your study. In addition to explaining what the reader can find in your paper, you should also try to draw them in with interesting examples, scenarios, or questions that you uncovered while researching that you will address in the paper. This will prompt them to be intrigued and read more.
Literature Review
A literature review is a descriptive and/or analytic summary of the existing material relating to some topic or area of study. Literature reviews are especially important in the Sciences because it is in the literature review that you show your understanding of previous research, and identify any gaps in the current literature that qualifies a need to conduct new studies. The literature review should be the first part of your paper (after the Introduction), and conclude with your specific research questions.
You should follow this pattern:
- Establish themes which emerge from the literature.
- Discuss the themes, especially conflict and difference in understanding of them.
- Draw it all together to establish:
- The agreed state of knowledge on a topic—if there is one
- The nature of disagreements and arguments.
While you will likely have references to previous research in other sections of your paper, your literature will have the largest amount. It is therefore very important that you compile as much research as possible before starting the review, and making sure no previous writings answer your research questions.
Materials & Methods
The materials and methods section in a science paper is an important part where you must be clear in explaining what material you used to conduct an experiment and how you collected the data. Any test your create must be able to be duplicated by others conducting their own studies. Generally you can include information on the tests, and if they are very in depth have more information for duplicating it in an appendix of the paper. You will need to include what type of research methodology you are using (see the Scientific Research Guide for information on methodologies), how you conducted the test and found the information, and how you then analysed that information for your results.
Results & Discussion
Your results section will be where you share the results of your study; this section will likely be numbers, tables, and charts heavy. It is meant to be objective, only giving the results with no additional comment. The discussion will be where you refer back to the results to give comments as they pertain to proving/disproving your hypothesis, answers to your research questions, and other ideas that may have come up during the testing.
References
Your references page will be the compilation of all sources you referred to in the paper. All in-text citations should have a matching reference on this page. See the next page for resources to help you keep track of all your sources while writing and researching.
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