- Accessibility of clinics
- Incentives to continue
For a comprehensive collection, see catalogofbias.org .
Here are some noteworthy examples of study bias from the literature: An example of information bias was observed when in 1998 an alleged association between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism was reported. Recall bias (a subtype of information bias) emerged when parents of autistic children recalled the onset of autism after an MMR vaccination more often than parents of similar children who were diagnosed prior to the media coverage of that controversial and meanwhile retracted study [ 51 ]. A study from 2001 showed better survival for academy award-winning actors, but this was due to immortal time bias that favors the treatment or exposure group [ 52 , 53 ]. A study systematically investigated self-reports about musculoskeletal symptoms and found the presence of information bias. The reason was that participants with little computer-time overestimated, and participants with a lot of computer-time spent underestimated their computer usage [ 54 ].
Information bias can be mitigated by using objective rather than subjective measurements. Standardized operating procedures (SOP) and electronic lab notebooks additionally help to follow well-designed protocols for data collection and handling [ 55 ]. Despite the failure to mitigate bias in studies, complete descriptions of data and methods can at least allow the assessment of risk of bias.
Rule 6: avoid questionable research practices.
Questionable research practices (QRPs) can lead to exaggerated findings and false conclusions and thus lead to irreproducible research. Often, QRPs are used with no bad intentions. This becomes evident when methods sections explicitly describe such procedures, for example, to increase the number of samples until statistical significance is reached that supports the hypothesis. Therefore, it is important that researchers know about QRPs in order to recognize and avoid them.
Several questionable QRPs have been named [ 56 , 57 ]. Among them are low statistical power, pseudoreplication, repeated inspection of data, p -hacking [ 58 ], selective reporting, and hypothesizing after the results are known (HARKing).
The first 2 QRPs, low statistical power and pseudoreplication, can be prevented by proper planning and designing of studies, including sample size calculation and appropriate statistical methodology to avoid treating data as independent when in fact they are not. Statistical power is not equal to reproducibility, but statistical power is a precondition of reproducibility as the lack thereof can result in false negative as well as false positive findings (see Rule 3 ).
In fact, a lot of QRP can be avoided with a study protocol and statistical analysis plan. Preregistration, as described in Rule 2, is considered best practice for this purpose. However, many of these issues can additionally be rooted in institutional incentives and rewards. Both funding and promotion are often tied to the quantity rather than the quality of the research output. At universities, still only few or no rewards are given for writing and registering protocols, sharing data, publishing negative findings, and conducting replication studies. Thus, a wider “culture change” is needed.
It would help if more researchers were familiar with correct interpretations and possible misinterpretations of statistical tests, p -values, confidence intervals, and statistical power [ 59 , 60 ]. A statistically significant p -value does not necessarily mean that there is a clinically or biologically relevant effect. Specifically, the traditional dichotomization into statistically significant ( p < 0.05) versus statistically nonsignificant ( p ≥ 0.05) results is seldom appropriate, can lead to cherry-picking of results and may eventually corrupt science [ 61 ]. We instead recommend reporting exact p -values and interpreting them in a graded way in terms of the compatibility of the null hypothesis with the data [ 62 , 63 ]. Moreover, a p -value around 0.05 (e.g., 0.047 or 0.055) provides only little information, as is best illustrated by the associated replication power: The probability that a hypothetical replication study of the same design will lead to a statistically significant result is only 50% [ 64 ] and is even lower in the presence of publication bias and regression to the mean (the phenomenon that effect estimates in replication studies are often smaller than the estimates in the original study) [ 65 ]. Claims of novel discoveries should therefore be based on a smaller p -value threshold (e.g., p < 0.005) [ 66 ], but this really depends on the discipline (genome-wide screenings or studies in particle physics often apply much lower thresholds).
Generally, there is often too much emphasis on p -values. A statistical index such as the p -value is just the final product of an analysis, the tip of the iceberg [ 67 ]. Statistical analyses often include many complex stages, from data processing, cleaning, transformation, addressing missing data, modeling, to statistical inference. Errors and pitfalls can creep in at any stage, and even a tiny error can have a big impact on the result [ 68 ]. Also, when many hypothesis tests are conducted (multiple testing), false positive rates may need to be controlled to protect against wrong conclusions, although adjustments for multiple testing are debated [ 69 – 71 ].
Thus, a p -value alone is not a measure of how credible a scientific finding is [ 72 ]. Instead, the quality of the research must be considered, including the study design, the quality of the measurement, and the validity of the assumptions that underlie the data analysis [ 60 , 73 ]. Frameworks exist that help to systematically and transparently assess the certainty in evidence; the most established and widely used one is Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE; www.gradeworkinggroup.org ) [ 74 ].
Training in basic statistics, statistical programming, and reproducible analyses and better involvement of data professionals in academia is necessary. University departments sometimes have statisticians that can support researchers. Importantly, statisticians need to be involved early in the process and on an equal footing and not just at the end of a project to perform the final data analysis.
In reality, science often lacks transparency. Open science makes the process of producing evidence and claims transparent and accessible to others [ 75 ]. Several universities and research funders have already implemented open science roadmaps to advocate free and public science as well as open access to scientific knowledge, with the aim of further developing the credibility of research. Open research allows more eyes to see it and critique it, a principle similar to the “Linus’s law” in software development, which says that if there are enough people to test a software, most bugs will be discovered.
As science often progresses incrementally, writing and sharing a study protocol and making data and methods readily available is crucial to facilitate knowledge building. The Open Science Framework (osf.io) is a free and open-source project management tool that supports researchers throughout the entire project life cycle. OSF enables preregistration of study protocols and sharing of documents, data, analysis code, supplementary materials, and preprints.
To facilitate reproducibility, a research paper can link to data and analysis code deposited on OSF. Computational notebooks are now readily available that unite data processing, data transformations, statistical analyses, figures and tables in a single document (e.g., R Markdown, Jupyter); see also the 10 simple rules for reproducible computational research [ 76 ]. Making both data and code open thus minimizes waste of funding resources and accelerates science.
Open science can also advance researchers’ careers, especially for early-career researchers. The increased visibility, retrievability, and citations of datasets can all help with career building [ 77 ]. Therefore, institutions should provide necessary training, and hiring committees and journals should align their core values with open science, to attract researchers who aim for transparent and credible research [ 78 ].
Rule 9: report all findings.
Publication bias occurs when the outcome of a study influences the decision whether to publish it. Researchers, reviewers, and publishers often find nonsignificant study results not interesting or worth publishing. As a consequence, outcomes and analyses are only selectively reported in the literature [ 79 ], also known as the file drawer effect [ 80 ].
The extent of publication bias in the literature is illustrated by the overwhelming frequency of statistically significant findings [ 81 ]. A study extracted p -values from MEDLINE and PubMed Central and showed that 96% of the records reported at least 1 statistically significant p -value [ 82 ], which seems implausible in the real world. Another study plotted the distribution of more than 1 million z -values from Medline, revealing a huge gap from −2 to 2 [ 83 ]. Positive studies (i.e., statistically significant, perceived as striking or showing a beneficial effect) were 4 times more likely to get published than negative studies [ 84 ].
Often a statistically nonsignificant result is interpreted as a “null” finding. But a nonsignificant finding does not necessarily mean a null effect; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence [ 85 ]. An individual study may be underpowered, resulting in a nonsignificant finding, but the cumulative evidence from multiple studies may indeed provide sufficient evidence in a meta-analysis. Another argument is that a confidence interval that contains the null value often also contains non-null values that may be of high practical importance. Only if all the values inside the interval are deemed unimportant from a practical perspective, then it may be fair to describe a result as a null finding [ 61 ]. We should thus never report “no difference” or “no association” just because a p -value is larger than 0.05 or, equivalently, because a confidence interval includes the “null” [ 61 ].
On the other hand, studies sometimes report statistically nonsignificant results with “spin” to claim that the experimental treatment is beneficial, often by focusing their conclusions on statistically significant differences on secondary outcomes despite a statistically nonsignificant difference for the primary outcome [ 86 , 87 ].
Findings that are not being published have a tremendous impact on the research ecosystem, distorting our knowledge of the scientific landscape by perpetuating misconceptions, and jeopardizing judgment of researchers and the public trust in science. In clinical research, publication bias can mislead care decisions and harm patients, for example, when treatments appear useful despite only minimal or even absent benefits reported in studies that were not published and thus are unknown to physicians [ 88 ]. Moreover, publication bias also directly affects the formulation and proliferation of scientific theories, which are taught to students and early-career researchers, thereby perpetuating biased research from the core. It has been shown in modeling studies that unless a sufficient proportion of negative studies are published, a false claim can become an accepted fact [ 89 ] and the false positive rates influence trustworthiness in a given field [ 90 ].
In sum, negative findings are undervalued. They need to be more consistently reported at the study level or be systematically investigated at the systematic review level. Researchers have their share of responsibilities, but there is clearly a lack of incentives from promotion and tenure committees, journals, and funders.
Study reports need to faithfully describe the aim of the study and what was done, including potential deviations from the original protocol, as well as what was found. Yet, there is ample evidence of discrepancies between protocols and research reports, and of insufficient quality of reporting [ 79 , 91 – 95 ]. Reporting deficiencies threaten our ability to clearly communicate findings, replicate studies, make informed decisions, and build on existing evidence, wasting time and resources invested in the research [ 96 ].
Reporting guidelines aim to provide the minimum information needed on key design features and analysis decisions, ensuring that findings can be adequately used and studies replicated. In 2008, the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of Health Research (EQUATOR) network was initiated to provide reporting guidelines for a variety of study designs along with guidelines for education and training on how to enhance quality and transparency of health research. Currently, there are 468 reporting guidelines listed in the network; see the most prominent guidelines in Table 2 . Furthermore, following the ICMJE recommendations, medical journals are increasingly endorsing reporting guidelines [ 97 ], in some cases making it mandatory to submit the appropriate reporting checklist along with the manuscript.
Guideline name | Study type |
---|---|
ARRIVE | Animal experiments |
CONSORT | Randomized trials |
STROBE | Observational studies |
PRISMA | Systematic reviews |
SPIRIT | Study protocols |
STARD/TRIPOID | Diagnostic/prognostic studies |
The EQUATOR Network is a library with more than 400 reporting guidelines in health research ( www.equator-network.org ).
The use of reporting guidelines and journal endorsement has led to a positive impact on the quality and transparency of research reporting, but improvement is still needed to maximize the value of research [ 98 , 99 ].
Originally, this paper targeted early-career researchers; however, throughout the development of the rules, it became clear that the present recommendations can serve all researchers irrespective of their seniority. We focused on practical guidelines for planning, conducting, and reporting of research. Others have aligned GRP with similar topics [ 100 , 101 ]. Even though we provide 10 simple rules, the word “simple” should not be taken lightly. Putting the rules into practice usually requires effort and time, especially at the beginning of a research project. However, time can also be redeemed, for example, when certain choices can be justified to reviewers by providing a study protocol or when data can be quickly reanalyzed by using computational notebooks and dynamic reports.
Researchers have field-specific research skills, but sometimes are not aware of best practices in other fields that can be useful. Universities should offer cross-disciplinary GRP courses across faculties to train the next generation of scientists. Such courses are an important building block to improve the reproducibility of science.
This article was written along the Good Research Practice (GRP) courses at the University of Zurich provided by the Center of Reproducible Science ( www.crs.uzh.ch ). All materials from the course are available at https://osf.io/t9rqm/ . We appreciated the discussion, development, and refinement of this article within the working group “training” of the SwissRN ( www.swissrn.org ). We are grateful to Philip Bourne for a lot of valuable comments on the earlier versions of the manuscript.
S.S. received funding from SfwF (Stiftung für wissenschaftliche Forschung an der Universität Zürich; grant no. STWF-19-007). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Step-By-Step Tutorial With Examples + FREE Template
By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | March 2024
For many students, crafting a strong research paper from scratch can feel like a daunting task – and rightly so! In this post, we’ll unpack what a research paper is, what it needs to do , and how to write one – in three easy steps. 🙂
What (exactly) is a research paper.
Let’s start by asking the most important question, “ What is a research paper? ”.
Simply put, a research paper is a scholarly written work where the writer (that’s you!) answers a specific question (this is called a research question ) through evidence-based arguments . Evidence-based is the keyword here. In other words, a research paper is different from an essay or other writing assignments that draw from the writer’s personal opinions or experiences. With a research paper, it’s all about building your arguments based on evidence (we’ll talk more about that evidence a little later).
Now, it’s worth noting that there are many different types of research papers , including analytical papers (the type I just described), argumentative papers, and interpretative papers. Here, we’ll focus on analytical papers , as these are some of the most common – but if you’re keen to learn about other types of research papers, be sure to check out the rest of the blog .
With that basic foundation laid, let’s get down to business and look at how to write a research paper .
While there are, of course, many potential approaches you can take to write a research paper, there are typically three stages to the writing process. So, in this tutorial, we’ll present a straightforward three-step process that we use when working with students at Grad Coach.
These three steps are:
Let’s dig into each of these.
As we mentioned earlier, in a research paper, you, as the researcher, will try to answer a question . More specifically, that’s called a research question , and it sets the direction of your entire paper. What’s important to understand though is that you’ll need to answer that research question with the help of high-quality sources – for example, journal articles, government reports, case studies, and so on. We’ll circle back to this in a minute.
The first stage of the research process is deciding on what your research question will be and then reviewing the existing literature (in other words, past studies and papers) to see what they say about that specific research question. In some cases, your professor may provide you with a predetermined research question (or set of questions). However, in many cases, you’ll need to find your own research question within a certain topic area.
Finding a strong research question hinges on identifying a meaningful research gap – in other words, an area that’s lacking in existing research. There’s a lot to unpack here, so if you wanna learn more, check out the plain-language explainer video below.
Once you’ve figured out which question (or questions) you’ll attempt to answer in your research paper, you’ll need to do a deep dive into the existing literature – this is called a “ literature search ”. Again, there are many ways to go about this, but your most likely starting point will be Google Scholar .
If you’re new to Google Scholar, think of it as Google for the academic world. You can start by simply entering a few different keywords that are relevant to your research question and it will then present a host of articles for you to review. What you want to pay close attention to here is the number of citations for each paper – the more citations a paper has, the more credible it is (generally speaking – there are some exceptions, of course).
Ideally, what you’re looking for are well-cited papers that are highly relevant to your topic. That said, keep in mind that citations are a cumulative metric , so older papers will often have more citations than newer papers – just because they’ve been around for longer. So, don’t fixate on this metric in isolation – relevance and recency are also very important.
Beyond Google Scholar, you’ll also definitely want to check out academic databases and aggregators such as Science Direct, PubMed, JStor and so on. These will often overlap with the results that you find in Google Scholar, but they can also reveal some hidden gems – so, be sure to check them out.
Once you’ve worked your way through all the literature, you’ll want to catalogue all this information in some sort of spreadsheet so that you can easily recall who said what, when and within what context. If you’d like, we’ve got a free literature spreadsheet that helps you do exactly that.
With your research question pinned down and your literature digested and catalogued, it’s time to move on to planning your actual research paper .
It might sound obvious, but it’s really important to have some sort of rough outline in place before you start writing your paper. So often, we see students eagerly rushing into the writing phase, only to land up with a disjointed research paper that rambles on in multiple
Now, the secret here is to not get caught up in the fine details . Realistically, all you need at this stage is a bullet-point list that describes (in broad strokes) what you’ll discuss and in what order. It’s also useful to remember that you’re not glued to this outline – in all likelihood, you’ll chop and change some sections once you start writing, and that’s perfectly okay. What’s important is that you have some sort of roadmap in place from the start.
At this stage you might be wondering, “ But how should I structure my research paper? ”. Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, but in general, a research paper will consist of a few relatively standardised components:
Let’s take a look at each of these.
First up is the introduction section . As the name suggests, the purpose of the introduction is to set the scene for your research paper. There are usually (at least) four ingredients that go into this section – these are the background to the topic, the research problem and resultant research question , and the justification or rationale. If you’re interested, the video below unpacks the introduction section in more detail.
The next section of your research paper will typically be your literature review . Remember all that literature you worked through earlier? Well, this is where you’ll present your interpretation of all that content . You’ll do this by writing about recent trends, developments, and arguments within the literature – but more specifically, those that are relevant to your research question . The literature review can oftentimes seem a little daunting, even to seasoned researchers, so be sure to check out our extensive collection of literature review content here .
With the introduction and lit review out of the way, the next section of your paper is the research methodology . In a nutshell, the methodology section should describe to your reader what you did (beyond just reviewing the existing literature) to answer your research question. For example, what data did you collect, how did you collect that data, how did you analyse that data and so on? For each choice, you’ll also need to justify why you chose to do it that way, and what the strengths and weaknesses of your approach were.
Now, it’s worth mentioning that for some research papers, this aspect of the project may be a lot simpler . For example, you may only need to draw on secondary sources (in other words, existing data sets). In some cases, you may just be asked to draw your conclusions from the literature search itself (in other words, there may be no data analysis at all). But, if you are required to collect and analyse data, you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the methodology section. The video below provides an example of what the methodology section might look like.
By this stage of your paper, you will have explained what your research question is, what the existing literature has to say about that question, and how you analysed additional data to try to answer your question. So, the natural next step is to present your analysis of that data . This section is usually called the “results” or “analysis” section and this is where you’ll showcase your findings.
Depending on your school’s requirements, you may need to present and interpret the data in one section – or you might split the presentation and the interpretation into two sections. In the latter case, your “results” section will just describe the data, and the “discussion” is where you’ll interpret that data and explicitly link your analysis back to your research question. If you’re not sure which approach to take, check in with your professor or take a look at past papers to see what the norms are for your programme.
Alright – once you’ve presented and discussed your results, it’s time to wrap it up . This usually takes the form of the “ conclusion ” section. In the conclusion, you’ll need to highlight the key takeaways from your study and close the loop by explicitly answering your research question. Again, the exact requirements here will vary depending on your programme (and you may not even need a conclusion section at all) – so be sure to check with your professor if you’re unsure.
Finally, it’s time to get writing. All too often though, students hit a brick wall right about here… So, how do you avoid this happening to you?
Well, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to writing a research paper (or any sort of academic piece), but we’ll share three practical tips to help you get started.
First and foremost , it’s essential to approach your writing as an iterative process. In other words, you need to start with a really messy first draft and then polish it over multiple rounds of editing. Don’t waste your time trying to write a perfect research paper in one go. Instead, take the pressure off yourself by adopting an iterative approach.
Secondly , it’s important to always lean towards critical writing , rather than descriptive writing. What does this mean? Well, at the simplest level, descriptive writing focuses on the “ what ”, while critical writing digs into the “ so what ” – in other words, the implications . If you’re not familiar with these two types of writing, don’t worry! You can find a plain-language explanation here.
Last but not least, you’ll need to get your referencing right. Specifically, you’ll need to provide credible, correctly formatted citations for the statements you make. We see students making referencing mistakes all the time and it costs them dearly. The good news is that you can easily avoid this by using a simple reference manager . If you don’t have one, check out our video about Mendeley, an easy (and free) reference management tool that you can start using today.
We’ve covered a lot of ground here. To recap, the three steps to writing a high-quality research paper are:
Remember, this is just a b ig-picture overview of the research paper development process and there’s a lot more nuance to unpack. So, be sure to grab a copy of our free research paper template to learn more about how to write a research paper.
Can you help me with a full paper template for this Abstract:
Background: Energy and sports drinks have gained popularity among diverse demographic groups, including adolescents, athletes, workers, and college students. While often used interchangeably, these beverages serve distinct purposes, with energy drinks aiming to boost energy and cognitive performance, and sports drinks designed to prevent dehydration and replenish electrolytes and carbohydrates lost during physical exertion.
Objective: To assess the nutritional quality of energy and sports drinks in Egypt.
Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study assessed the nutrient contents, including energy, sugar, electrolytes, vitamins, and caffeine, of sports and energy drinks available in major supermarkets in Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza, Egypt. Data collection involved photographing all relevant product labels and recording nutritional information. Descriptive statistics and appropriate statistical tests were employed to analyze and compare the nutritional values of energy and sports drinks.
Results: The study analyzed 38 sports drinks and 42 energy drinks. Sports drinks were significantly more expensive than energy drinks, with higher net content and elevated magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C. Energy drinks contained higher concentrations of caffeine, sugars, and vitamins B2, B3, and B6.
Conclusion: Significant nutritional differences exist between sports and energy drinks, reflecting their intended uses. However, these beverages’ high sugar content and calorie loads raise health concerns. Proper labeling, public awareness, and responsible marketing are essential to guide safe consumption practices in Egypt.
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Nature volume 530 , pages 148–151 ( 2016 ) Cite this article
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Scientists are becoming increasingly frustrated by the time it takes to publish a paper. Something has to change, they say.
When Danielle Fraser first submitted her paper for publication, she had little idea of the painful saga that lay ahead.
She had spent some 18 months studying thousands of fossil species spread across North America from the past 36 million years, and now she had an intriguing result: animal populations were spread widest across latitudes in warm, wet climates. Her work, crucial to earning her PhD at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, might be used to make predictions about the response of mammals to climate change — a key question in ecology today. So, with her PhD adviser's encouragement, she sent it to Science in October 2012.
Ten days later, the paper was rejected with a form letter. She sent it to another prestigious journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Rejected. Next, she tried Ecology Letters . Bounced. “At this point, I definitely was frustrated. I hadn't even been reviewed and I would've loved to know how to improve the paper,” recalls Fraser. “I thought, 'Let's just get it out and go to a journal that will assess the paper'.”
In May 2013, she submitted the paper to Proceedings of the Royal Society B , considered a high-impact journal in her field. The journal sent it out for review — seven months after her initial submission to Science . “Finally!” Fraser thought. What she didn't know was that she had taken only the first steps down the long, bumpy road to publication: it would take another three submissions, two rejections, two rounds of major revisions and numerous drafts before the paper would finally appear. By that point, she could hardly bear to look at it.
Fraser's frustration is widely shared: researchers are increasingly questioning the time it takes to publish their work. Many say that they feel trapped in a cycle of submission, rejection, review, re-review and re-re-review that seems to eat up months of their lives, interfere with job, grant and tenure applications and slow down the dissemination of results. In 2012, Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at the Rockefeller University in New York City, wrote a commentary that lamented the “glacial pace” of scientific publishing 1 . “In the past three years, if anything, it's gotten substantially worse,” she says now. “It takes forever to get the work out, regardless of the journal. It just takes far too long.”
But is the publication process actually becoming longer — and, if so, then why? To find out, Nature examined some recent analyses on time to publication — many of them performed by researchers waiting for their own work to see the light of day — and spoke to scientists and editors about their experiences.
The results contain some surprises. Daniel Himmelstein, a computational-biology graduate student at the University of California, San Francisco, analysed all the papers indexed in the PubMed database that had listed submission and acceptance dates . His study, done for Nature , found no evidence for lengthening delays 2 : the median review time — the time between submission and acceptance of a paper — has hovered at around 100 days for more than 30 years (see 'Paper wait'). But the analysis comes with major caveats. Not all journals — including some high-profile ones — deposit such time-stamp data in PubMed, and some journals show when a paper was resubmitted, rather than submitted for the first time. “Resetting the clock is an especially pernicious issue,” Himmelstein says, and it means that the analysis might be underestimating publication delays.
Some data suggest that wait times have increased within certain subsets of journals, such as popular open-access ones and some of the most sought-after titles. At Nature , the median review time has grown from 85 days to just above 150 days over the past decade, according to Himmelstein's analysis, and at PLoS ONE it has risen from 37 to 125 days over roughly the same period.
Many scientists find this odd, because they expect advances in digital publishing and the proliferation of journals to have sped things up. They say that journals are taking too long to review papers and that reviewers are requesting more data, revisions and new experiments than they used to. “We are demanding more and more unreasonable things from each other,” says Vosshall. Journal editors counter that science itself has become more data-rich, that they work to uphold high editorial and peer-review standards and that some are dealing with increasing numbers of papers. They also say that they are taking steps to expedite the process.
Publication practices and waiting times also vary widely by discipline — with social sciences being notoriously slow. In physics, the pressure to publish fast is reduced because of the common practice of publishing preprints — early versions of a paper before peer review — on the arXiv server . Some of the loudest complaints about publication delays come from those in biological fields, in which competition is fierce and publishing in prestigious journals can be required for career advancement. This month, a group of more than 70 scientists, funders, journal editors and publishers are meeting at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute campus in Chevy Chase, Maryland, to discuss whether biologists should adopt the preprint model to accelerate publishing . “We need a fundamental rethinking of how we do this ,” Vosshall says.
In March 2012, Stephen Royle, a cell biologist at the University of Warwick, UK, started on a publication mission of his own. His latest work answered a controversial question about how cells sense that chromosomes are lined up before dividing, so he first sent it to Nature Cell Biology ( NCB ), because it is a top journal in his field and an editor there had suggested he send it after hearing Royle give a talk. It was rejected without review. Next, he sent it to Developmental Cell . Rejected. His next stop, the Journal of Cell Biology , sent the paper out for review. It came back with a long list of necessary revisions — and a rejection.
Royle and his lab spent almost six months doing the suggested experiments and revising the paper. Then he submitted the updated manuscript to Current Biology . Rejected. EMBO Journal . Reviewed and rejected.
Finally, in December 2012, he submitted it to the Journal of Cell Science ( JCS ), where it was reviewed. One reviewer mentioned that they had already assessed it at another journal and thought that it should have been published then. They wrote that the work was “beautifully conducted, well controlled, and conservatively interpreted”. A second reviewer said that it should not be published. The editor at JCS decided to accept it. The time between first submission to Nature Cell Biology and acceptance at JCS was 317 days. It appeared online another 53 days later 3 . The work went on to win the JCS prize as the journal's top paper for 2013.
Despite the accolade, Royle says that the multiple rejections were demoralizing for his student, who had done the experiments and needed the paper to graduate. He also thinks that the paper deserved the greater exposure that comes from publication in a more prestigious journal. “Unfortunately, the climate at the moment is that if papers aren't in those very top journals, they get overlooked easily,” he says. And Royle, who has done several publication-time analyses and blogged about what he found, has shown that this experience is not unusual. When he looked at the 28 papers that his lab had published in the previous 12 years, the average time to gestate from first submission to publication was the same as a human baby — about 9 months (see go.nature.com/79h2n3 ).
But how much of these delays were his own doing? To publish the chromosome paper, Royle indulged in the all-too-familiar practice of journal shopping: submitting first to the most prestigious journals in his field (often those with the highest impact factor) and then working his way down the hierarchy . ( Nature Cell Biology 's current impact factor is 19; JCS 's is 5.) Journal impact factor or reputation are widely used by scientists and grant-review and hiring committees as a proxy for the quality of the paper. On the flip side, critics say that editors seek out the splashiest papers to boost their publication's impact factor, something that encourages journal shopping, increases rejection rates and adds to the wait time. Journal editors reject this; Ritu Dhand, Nature editorial director in London, says that Nature 's policy of selecting original, important work “may lead to citation impact and media coverage, but Nature editors aren't driven by those considerations”.
How much time does journal shopping add? In the analysis of his group's research papers, Royle found that more than half were shopped around, and that this consumed anywhere from a few days to more than eight months. He went on to analyse all the papers published in 2013 that are indexed in PubMed, and examined whether higher impact factor correlated with longer median publication times. He found an inverted bell-shaped curve — the journals with the lowest and highest impact factors had longer review times than did those in the middle. For the vast majority of those in the middle, review times stood at around 100 days — matching Himmelstein's analysis. Those with the very highest impact factors (30–50) had a review time of 150 days, supporting the idea that pitching a paper to a series of top journals could result in significant delays in publication.
Many scientists, editors and publishers have long acknowledged that journal name is a flawed measure of the quality and value of a piece of research — but the problem shows no signs of going away . “Where your paper is published doesn't say anything about you, your paper's impact or whether it's right or wrong,” says Maria Leptin, director of EMBO, an organization of Europe's leading life scientists and publisher of the EMBO Journal . “Nobody has the courage to say, we, as a funding organization, or we, as a tenure committee, are not going to look at where you publish as opposed to what you publish .”
And the obsession with prestigious journals is just one source of delay — as Fraser, who was battling to publish her paper on ancient animal populations — was about to found out.
Peer review
By October 2013, a full year had passed since Fraser had first submitted her paper to a journal, and she had pretty much stopped caring about impact factor. By this point, the paper had spent two months in review at Proceedings of the Royal Society B , before coming back with mixed reports — and a rejection. So Fraser decided to try PLoS ONE , a journal that says it will publish any rigorous science, regardless of its significance, scope or anticipated citations. It has an impact factor of 3, and a reputation for rapid publication.
PLoS ONE sent the paper out to a single reviewer. Two months later, Fraser got a decision letter that essentially stated that the paper was rejected but might be eligible for re-review if the suggested revisions were made. She made the revisions, adding citations and a small amount of reanalysis. In March 2014, she resubmitted the manuscript, which PLoS ONE sent out to a different reviewer. Another two months passed before she received the new review: major revisions, please.
“I'm just happy they didn't tell me to go away,” recalls Fraser. “I do have e-mails from the time that say, '1-millionth draft'!” She persevered, making more revisions to meet the reviewer's demands, and in June 2014 submitted the paper to PLoS ONE for a third time. Success! The paper 4 was published online 23 months after she had first sent it to Science . The long peer-review and revision process did improve the paper, Fraser says now. “It was really much better.” But did the main conclusion of the paper change? “Not really.”
It takes forever to get the work out, regardless of the journal.
Last year, Chris Hartgerink, a behavioural-sciences graduate student at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, ran an analysis of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) family of journals since the first one launched in 2003. (He chose the journals largely because they make the data easily accessible, and because he was waiting for a paper to be published in PLoS ONE .) He found that the mean review time had roughly doubled in the past decade, from 50–130 days to 150–250 days, depending on the journal (see go.nature.com/s3voeq ). And when Royle looked at eight journals that had published cell-biology papers over the past decade, he found that publication times had lengthened at seven of them, mostly because review times had stretched out.
One contention is that peer reviewers now ask for more. When Ron Vale, a cell biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, analysed biology papers that had been published in Cell , Nature and the Journal of Cell Biology , in the first six months of 1984 and compared that with the same period in 2014, he found that both the average number of authors and the number of panels in experimental figures rose by 2–4 fold 5 . This showed, he argued, that the amount of data required for a publication had gone up, and Vale suspects that much of the added data come from authors trying to meet reviewers' demands. Scientists grumble about overzealous critics who always seem to want more, or different, experiments to nail a point. “It's very rare for the revisions to fundamentally change a paper — the headline doesn't change,” Royle says. His analysis of his group's publication times showed that almost 4 months of the average 9-month gestation was spent revising papers for resubmission.
Many scientists also blame journal editors, who, they say, can be reluctant to provide clear guidance and decisions to authors when reviews are mixed — unnecessarily stringing out the review and revision process. Journal heads disagree, and say that their editors are accomplished at handling mixed reviews. Cell editor-in-chief Emilie Marcus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that editors at her journal take responsibility for publication decisions and help authors to map out a plan for revisions.
Technological advances mean that research now involves handling more and more data, editors say, and there is greater emphasis on making that information available to the community. Marcus says that her journal is working to cut review times by, for example, increasing the number of papers that go through only one round of revision — 14% of their papers did so in 2015. In 2009, Cell also restricted the amount of supplemental material that could accompany papers as a way to keep requests for “additional, unrelated experiments” at bay.
PLOS executive editor Veronique Kiermer, based in San Francisco, declined to discuss the specifics of Fraser's paper, but she called its total review time of nine months an “outlier” and said that it was “not ideal to have research being evaluated by a single person”. She acknowledges that PLoS ONE 's publication time has risen; one factor is that the volume of papers has, too — from 200 in 2006 to 30,000 per year now — and it takes time to find and assign appropriate editors and reviewers. (PLOS used 76,000 reviewers in 2015.) Another, says Kiermer, is that the number of essential checkpoints — including competing-interest disclosures, animal-welfare reports and screens for plagiarism — have increased in the past decade. “We'll do everything we can both in terms of technology and looking at workflows to bring these times to publication down,” she says.
Dhand says that at Nature , too, editors find it harder to find reviewers than in the past, “presumably because there are so many more papers that need reviewing”. Himmelstein found that the number of papers in PubMed more than doubled between 2000 and 2015, reaching nearly 1 million articles.
Technology advances
Digital publishing may have had benefits in shortening 'production' time — the time from acceptance to publication — rather than time in review. In Himmelstein's analysis, time spent in production has halved since the early 2000s, falling to a stable median of 25 days.
Several new journals and online publishing platforms have promised to speed up the process even more. PeerJ, a family of journals that launched in 2013, is one of several that now encourage open peer review, in which reviewers' names and comments are posted alongside articles. The hope is that the transparency will prevent unnecessary delays or burdensome revision requests from reviewers.
It's very rare for the revisions to fundamentally change a paper.
The biomedical and life-sciences journal eLife launched in 2012 with a pledge to make initial editorial decisions within a few days and to review papers quickly. Reviewers get strict instructions not to suggest the 'perfect experiment', and they can ask for extra analysis only if it can be completed within 2 months. Otherwise, the paper is rejected. Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor-in-chief of eLife , says that these policies mean that more than two-thirds of the journal's accepted papers undergo just one round of review.
In a 2015 analysis, Himmelstein created a ranking by the median review time for all 3,482 journals that had papers with time stamps in the PubMed database from January 2014 to June 2015 (see go.nature.com/sscrr6 ). PeerJ had a relatively fast time: 74 days after submission. At eLife , it took 108 days, and PLoS ONE took 117. By comparison, Cell 's review time was 127 days; Nature 's was 173 days; PLoS Medicine took 177 days; and Developmental Cell was among the slowest of the popular biomedical journals, at 194 days. Marcus notes that comparison between journals is difficult because the publications define received, revised and accepted days differently, and that Developmental Cell places a high priority on timely review.
Preprints reconsidered
One way for biologists to accelerate publication is by embracing preprints. These allow work to quickly receive credit and critique, says Bruno Eckhardt, associate editor of Physical Review E and a theoretical physicist at the University of Marburg in Germany. “It is almost like going on Facebook — it means you are ready to go public,” he says. A preprint submitted to bioRxiv — a server run by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York — is published online within 24 hours and given a digital object identifier (DOI); subsequent revisions are time-stamped and anyone can read and comment on the paper. “The minute a research story gets into the public domain, it benefits from the collective power of different brains looking at a problem,” says Vale. What's more, proponents say, preprint publishing can simply be added onto the conventional publication process. F1000Research , which launched in 2012, does this by publishing papers first, then inviting open peer review and revision.
Some scientists are going a step further, and using platforms such as GitHub, Zenodo and figshare to publish each hypothesis, data collection or figure as they go along. Each file can be given a DOI, so that it is citable and trackable. Himmelstein, who already publishes his papers as preprints, has been using the Thinklab platform to progressively write up and publish the results of a new project since January 2015. “I push 'publish' and it gets a DOI with no delay,” he says. “Am I really gaining that much by publishing [in a conventional journal]? Or is it better to do what is fastest and most efficient to get your research out there?”
But preprints and real-time digital publishing platforms are no panacea. Vosshall says that many biologists are “terrified” of preprints because they fear getting scooped by competitors or losing credit and intellectual-property rights for their ideas. And even after preprint publishing, scientists can still find themselves slogging through peer review and chasing high-impact journals for a final publication to adorn their CV. Vosshall says that the scientific community relies on conventional journals to serve as a 'prestige filter' so that important papers are brought to the attention of the right readers. Without them, “How do we find the good stuff?” she asks.
For Fraser, her PLoS ONE publication proved a success. When the paper was finally published after its almost-two-year wait, she got positive responses, she says. It has been viewed nearly 2,000 times, had 51 shares on Facebook and Twitter and got 280 downloads. The publication also helped her to secure her current position — as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. “I pretty much got the top postdoc that I could have gotten.”
Still, the whole process is not something she wants to endure again — so these days, she tends to send her papers to mid-range journals that are likely to publish her work right away. “If my ultimate goal is to get a faculty job, I can't afford to wait two years on a single paper,” she says.
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Nature special: The future of publishing
Chris Hartgerink’s analysis of wait times at PLoS journals
Daniel Himmelstein’s analysis of wait times at PubMed journals for 2014–15
Daniel Himmelstein’s analysis of wait time at PubMed journals from 1981–15
Stephen Royle’s analysis of his lab’s papers
Stephen Royle’s analysis of waits at cell biology journals
Stephen Royles’ analysis of impact factor and wait times
Ron Vale’s analysis of data and author increases in papers
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Published on September 24, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on March 27, 2023.
The introduction to a research paper is where you set up your topic and approach for the reader. It has several key goals:
The introduction looks slightly different depending on whether your paper presents the results of original empirical research or constructs an argument by engaging with a variety of sources.
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Step 1: introduce your topic, step 2: describe the background, step 3: establish your research problem, step 4: specify your objective(s), step 5: map out your paper, research paper introduction examples, frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.
The first job of the introduction is to tell the reader what your topic is and why it’s interesting or important. This is generally accomplished with a strong opening hook.
The hook is a striking opening sentence that clearly conveys the relevance of your topic. Think of an interesting fact or statistic, a strong statement, a question, or a brief anecdote that will get the reader wondering about your topic.
For example, the following could be an effective hook for an argumentative paper about the environmental impact of cattle farming:
A more empirical paper investigating the relationship of Instagram use with body image issues in adolescent girls might use the following hook:
Don’t feel that your hook necessarily has to be deeply impressive or creative. Clarity and relevance are still more important than catchiness. The key thing is to guide the reader into your topic and situate your ideas.
The AI-powered Citation Checker helps you avoid common mistakes such as:
This part of the introduction differs depending on what approach your paper is taking.
In a more argumentative paper, you’ll explore some general background here. In a more empirical paper, this is the place to review previous research and establish how yours fits in.
After you’ve caught your reader’s attention, specify a bit more, providing context and narrowing down your topic.
Provide only the most relevant background information. The introduction isn’t the place to get too in-depth; if more background is essential to your paper, it can appear in the body .
For a paper describing original research, you’ll instead provide an overview of the most relevant research that has already been conducted. This is a sort of miniature literature review —a sketch of the current state of research into your topic, boiled down to a few sentences.
This should be informed by genuine engagement with the literature. Your search can be less extensive than in a full literature review, but a clear sense of the relevant research is crucial to inform your own work.
Begin by establishing the kinds of research that have been done, and end with limitations or gaps in the research that you intend to respond to.
The next step is to clarify how your own research fits in and what problem it addresses.
In an argumentative research paper, you can simply state the problem you intend to discuss, and what is original or important about your argument.
In an empirical research paper, try to lead into the problem on the basis of your discussion of the literature. Think in terms of these questions:
You can make the connection between your problem and the existing research using phrases like the following.
Although has been studied in detail, insufficient attention has been paid to . | You will address a previously overlooked aspect of your topic. |
The implications of study deserve to be explored further. | You will build on something suggested by a previous study, exploring it in greater depth. |
It is generally assumed that . However, this paper suggests that … | You will depart from the consensus on your topic, establishing a new position. |
Now you’ll get into the specifics of what you intend to find out or express in your research paper.
The way you frame your research objectives varies. An argumentative paper presents a thesis statement, while an empirical paper generally poses a research question (sometimes with a hypothesis as to the answer).
The thesis statement expresses the position that the rest of the paper will present evidence and arguments for. It can be presented in one or two sentences, and should state your position clearly and directly, without providing specific arguments for it at this point.
The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.
Present your research question clearly and directly, with a minimum of discussion at this point. The rest of the paper will be taken up with discussing and investigating this question; here you just need to express it.
A research question can be framed either directly or indirectly.
If your research involved testing hypotheses , these should be stated along with your research question. They are usually presented in the past tense, since the hypothesis will already have been tested by the time you are writing up your paper.
For example, the following hypothesis might respond to the research question above:
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The final part of the introduction is often dedicated to a brief overview of the rest of the paper.
In a paper structured using the standard scientific “introduction, methods, results, discussion” format, this isn’t always necessary. But if your paper is structured in a less predictable way, it’s important to describe the shape of it for the reader.
If included, the overview should be concise, direct, and written in the present tense.
Full examples of research paper introductions are shown in the tabs below: one for an argumentative paper, the other for an empirical paper.
Are cows responsible for climate change? A recent study (RIVM, 2019) shows that cattle farmers account for two thirds of agricultural nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. These emissions result from nitrogen in manure, which can degrade into ammonia and enter the atmosphere. The study’s calculations show that agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution, accounting for 46% of the country’s total emissions. By comparison, road traffic and households are responsible for 6.1% each, the industrial sector for 1%. While efforts are being made to mitigate these emissions, policymakers are reluctant to reckon with the scale of the problem. The approach presented here is a radical one, but commensurate with the issue. This paper argues that the Dutch government must stimulate and subsidize livestock farmers, especially cattle farmers, to transition to sustainable vegetable farming. It first establishes the inadequacy of current mitigation measures, then discusses the various advantages of the results proposed, and finally addresses potential objections to the plan on economic grounds.
The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013; Meier & Gray, 2014). These studies have consistently found that the visual and interactive aspects of the platform have the greatest influence on body image issues. Despite this, highly visual social media (HVSM) such as Instagram have yet to be robustly researched. This paper sets out to address this research gap. We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that daily Instagram use would be associated with an increase in body image concerns and a decrease in self-esteem ratings.
The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:
and your problem statement
Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.
This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .
The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper . A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement .
A research paper designed to present the results of empirical research tends to present a research question that it seeks to answer. It may also include a hypothesis —a prediction that will be confirmed or disproved by your research.
If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.
Caulfield, J. (2023, March 27). Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved June 13, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-paper/research-paper-introduction/
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How long the research process takes varies by:
Things to keep in mind:
Frustration and backtracking are a normal part of the process. However, reference librarians can show you strategies that can save you time and can help you do your research more effectively. Ask us for assistance.
You can use the Research Paper Wizard to help plan the sequence and find sources.
*This is the published material about the topic. It is not "literature" as in fiction or drama, although there is literature about the field of literature, too.
Most people who are considered authorities:
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When it comes to academic writing, one of the most common questions asked is: How long should a research paper be? This question is essential, as the length...
When it comes to academic writing, one of the most common questions asked is: How long should a research paper be? This question is essential, as the length can impact not only the scope but also the quality of the paper. In this article, we'll explore various elements that come into play when deciding the length of a research paper. We'll delve into the components, their specific lengths, and the average time required to compile an excellent research paper.
A research paper is a type of academic paper where the author conducts original research on a specific topic, interprets the findings, and then summarizes, argues, or presents the information. This form of academic writing requires in-depth analysis and a thorough literature review to establish credibility and relevance.
The number of pages in a research paper can vary significantly depending on the level of study, subject matter, and specific requirements set by the course or academic journal. High school papers may range from 5-20 pages, college-level papers from 10-30 pages, and graduate theses can be significantly longer, even reaching 100+ pages for Ph.D. dissertations. The spacing, citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago), and number of words also affect the paper's length.
A research paper typically consists of several key components, each with its importance:
The length of each component depends on the overall length and complexity of the research paper. As a general guideline, the abstract might be 150-250 words, the introduction and conclusion around 10% of the entire paper each, literature review and methodology sections could be a few pages each, and the results and discussion sections might take up the rest of the paper.
The average length of a research paper varies widely depending on the field, level, and journal specifications. However, most academic papers range from 10-20 pages.
The time it takes to write a research paper can vary significantly. For college students or researchers familiar with the topic and the research process, it may take a few weeks. However, if it is your first time, it might take longer, possibly a few months. This time includes researching, writing the first draft, revising, proofreading, and finalizing the paper.
An effective summary, often in the form of an abstract, should include the research question, methodology, main findings, and conclusions. It must be concise while encapsulating the essential aspects of the paper.
The word count for a research paper depends on several factors, such as academic level, field of study, and specific guidelines. However, research papers commonly range from 2,500 to 10,000 words.
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Grammarly is a crucial tool for academic writing, helping with everything from grammar errors to plagiarism. Its real-time feedback can make the difference between a rough first draft and a polished piece of original research. Grammarly is particularly helpful for students whose first language is not English.
Grammarly also offers a word count feature that can help you gauge how long your research paper is turning out. This can be particularly useful if you're writing a term paper with a strict word limit. It supports different citation styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago, which are critical for formatting in-text citations and references section correctly.
Top 5 Features
Cost : Free with optional paid storage.
Zotero stands as one of the best tools for managing references for your research paper. Forget the hassle of manually writing down your citations; Zotero automates this process. The tool helps you organize your research material and is excellent for keeping track of your literature review articles and journal citations.
Zotero is not just a one-stop-shop for citation needs. It also offers collaborative features, making it suitable for team research projects. Its cross-platform support ensures you can switch between devices without losing your saved citations. The tool is a must-have for both high school and college students undertaking research papers.
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Microsoft Word is perhaps the most traditional yet indispensable tool for academic writing. Most people are familiar with its basic functionalities, but Word also offers advanced features that can aid in the writing process of your research paper. From setting up your title page to managing page numbers and appendices, the software has it all.
The tool also helps in inserting in-text citations, endnotes, and footnotes. One of the underutilized features is the "Review" tab, which helps in tracking changes, something essential for revising and re-writing. Word is an all-rounder and has stood the test of time when it comes to academic writing, from your first time doing a paper to your last.
Cost : One-time payment of $49 for macOS and Windows, $19.99 for iOS.
Scrivener is a powerful tool that excels in helping you organize complex projects. While Microsoft Word is sufficient for shorter papers, Scrivener shines when you're working on a longer research paper or thesis. Its corkboard view allows you to see the structure of your entire paper, from the intro to the results and discussion sections.
The software offers templates designed for academic papers, making it easier to start your project without worrying about formatting. It has a split-screen feature, allowing you to refer to your research or another section of your paper while writing. The tool’s writing statistics can help you track your progress and set goals, helping you spend less time worrying about how long your research paper should be.
Cost : Typically purchased by educational institutions; individual pricing not publicly listed.
Turnitin is often the go-to tool for educational institutions when it comes to checking the originality of academic papers. It is not just a plagiarism checker; it's a comprehensive solution for academic integrity. Turnitin provides an originality report that can be invaluable for both students and educators in identifying unintended plagiarism.
The tool also includes a Feedback Studio feature, where professors can leave comments or grade the paper. This is particularly useful for improving your writing in real-time. Moreover, Turnitin’s peer review capabilities are great for collaborative projects and can be beneficial in graduate-level research where multiple stakeholders are involved.
Cost : Free.
Google Scholar serves as an excellent tool for conducting the literature review part of your research paper. Unlike standard search engines, Google Scholar focuses solely on academic publications, including articles, theses, and conference papers. It's a free resource, making it accessible for students at all levels, from high school to postgraduate.
One standout feature of Google Scholar is its “Cited by” function, which allows you to see how many times a particular paper has been cited. This can provide a good idea of the paper's relevance and impact in the academic community. The service also allows you to export citations in various styles such as MLA, APA, and Chicago, simplifying the often complex task of creating a references section.
Cost : Free with optional paid plans starting at $7.99/month.
Evernote is a note-taking app that can be particularly useful when you're in the research phase of your paper. The tool's web clipper extension allows you to save articles, PDFs, or even just parts of web pages, turning your Evernote into a digital research library. It’s excellent for gathering material for your literature review, methodology, or any other section of your paper.
Evernote isn't just for research; it's also an effective organizational tool. You can create separate notebooks for different research papers or subjects, tag your notes for easy searching, and even share them with classmates or co-authors. The cross-platform syncing means your notes follow you, whether you're at the library, at home, or on the go.
Cost : Free with optional paid plans for more storage.
Mendeley is a reference management tool that also functions as a social network for researchers. The software can store your research papers and other documents, keeping them accessible and organized. For any academic paper, especially those requiring extensive literature review, this feature is invaluable.
Mendeley offers a Word plugin that helps you insert citations and generate bibliographies in real-time as you write your research paper. The collaboration feature enables you to connect with other researchers, an excellent way to share resources, or get feedback on your research paper. Given its extensive features, Mendeley is not just a tool but an academic community that can guide you through your academic writing process.
The time required to write a research paper depends on several factors, including your familiarity with the topic, research requirements, and writing skills. It could range from a few weeks to several months.
While it's technically possible to write a research paper in one day, the quality will likely suffer, risking plagiarism and inadequate research.
A 20-page research paper could take several weeks to a couple of months to write, depending on the level of depth and research required.
Writing a research paper for college typically takes a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on the complexity and research requirements.
By understanding the different factors that contribute to the length and time required for a research paper, you'll be better equipped to produce high-quality academic writing. Keep this guide handy to navigate through your research paper journey effectively.
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You must have known what research looks like. It has a particular structure that should be followed at any cost since it is the criteria for writing a research paper . Several questions come into the mind of students such as how to write a research paper, how long should a research paper be, etc.
That’s why we have brought a series of research writing and addressing different questions related to it. This blog aims to answer queries about the duration your research should ideally take, including insights on how to write an 8-page paper effectively. Although it depends upon the guidelines given by your teacher, there is also a standard length of research writing. Let’s dive in and learn everything about the ideal word count of any research.
Table of Contents
A research paper is an essay that is based on your investigational work you have completed or will complete on just one or many specific topics of a specific discipline. Research or investigation essays are lengthy depending on the scope and extensive nature of the topic.
It’s just an analysis of the topic from your own perspective. A student or a reader present facts and their theories in front of the audience to inform them about the specific subject matter. If you dont know how long is a research paper, here we will take you on a deeper tour to help you understand these essays thoroughly.
Discussing the standard length of a paper, it’s important to note that it varies depending on the specific instructions given to each student and the structural requirements related to their chosen finance research topics . It is never a fixed one for all types of papers yet, there are some conditions and possibilities because of which the word count varies.
Research that has a thesis statement only requires 2 to 3 arguments to be proved and will be summed up in 500 to 700 words. After providing the introduction and a little background on the research, you can directly shift to mentioning the arguments and claims so you may prove the statement and complete the research.
Some research requires detailed analysis and interpretation of the findings. This kind of paper has several stages such as introduction, background, thesis statement, objective, research questions, literature review, research methodology, data collection, discussion, findings, conclusion, and bibliography. Such research easily crosses 5000 words because it is important to discuss everything about the topic.
So it entirely depends upon the structure you are following to write the research. It could be as long as just 500 words, or 5000 words, and even more. It all varies therefore you must be prepared for writing a paper no matter how long it should be.
Many students wonder how long should an introduction be in a research paper? The simple answer to this query is as short as possible that justify the requirements and employ all the methods that are necessary for coveying your message.
Typically, a standard length of introductory paragraph is 300-500 words. If your topic needs more than the standard word count than always ask for suggestion from your professor on first priority. We hope now you know how long should an introduction be for a research paper.
Identifying the length of research is important because of so many reasons. You might have never realized the significance of considering how long a paper should be, so here we go with some of the vital reasons.
You cannot write more than is required in research. If you are doing so then you are automatically ignoring the quality measures of writing a paper. If you are writing more than words than is required then there are chances you are going to submit a poor quality research work.
When your guidelines have mentioned 1000 words maximum and you are submitting research of 2000 words, you already know what wrong you have done. If you are not sticking to the guidelines it will result in deduction of marks, fall in grades, and repetition of the class course.
It is necessary to keep a balance between the word count of all the headings. Without this much-needed balance, you might end up submitting a poor paper that has a longer introduction, and a shorter explanation of the findings. That’s why attaining a balance is important in your research word count.
When you are delivering quality content, you will be appreciated no matter what. If you consider the length of your research, you are one step forward in delivering quality research work to your teacher.
This question is valid and one of the frequently asked questions by the students of high school and college. It is also important to know before you start working on your paper. Don’t forget to read the instructions provided by your teacher, however, we have more suggestions for you regarding the length of the research.
Your teacher indeed decides what should be the ideal length of your research. They have given some guidelines to you and you need to follow them. The teachers always know the best and they will suggest to you how long your essay should be.
Some teachers have kept a certain word limit for the paper while others provide you complete freedom to write as long as you want. It is necessary to figure out what’s best for your research. In high schools, a standard length of any research is a maximum of 7 to 8 pages while the minimum should be 5 pages.
Sometimes it is based on the thesis for research paper . From the part of the abstract to the conclusion, there must be a balance between the word count of every heading. It is your responsibility as a writer to track the word count when you are trying to justify your thesis by giving several arguments and claims.
If you have decided how many arguments it will take to prove your thesis, then you have already finalized the length of your research. All you have to do is prepare everything in advance and see if you are proving your point within 5 or 8 pages.
A researcher must be discussing all the standard details that could justify the purpose of writing the paper. It must have all the headings properly discussed. Since all the points must be 100% clear in the research, deciding on a word limit in the very beginning could be a little hard.
But it is not impossible to identify by making an outline and checking how many pages will be covered in writing about a certain topic. All you have to do is take care that no point is missing in the research. Cutting the research short and trying to discuss facts to the exact point won’t help unless you are entirely explaining every aspect as required.
You have learned something about the ideal length of research. When it comes to the word count, the criterion is a bit different. For example, if you need a Ph.D. research paper help , you must know the word count, typically between 70,000 to 80,000 words. As you suggest a specific word count for every heading, it is easier to guess how many words are required to summarize every title.
It is easier to assign a specific word count to every heading and then see what’s the total word length of the paper. For instance, you have to decide how many words will be used to cover your introduction section. A literature review is a second longer part after the discussion in every research so it is necessary to make an outline in advance and see what is the ideal length of every heading.
By giving a suggested word count to each heading you will make a clear pathway to follow during the complete research. It will be automatically easier for you to see how many words will be written to explain everything in your research thoroughly.
There are several sections in research that require certain word counts. Let’s see what word count is usually subjected to every heading.
An abstract for a research paper is the first main part that summarizes the research from the beginning to the conclusion. It contains the thesis, methodology, findings, and conclusion. So to explain the complete research in a few sentences, roughly 100 to 200 words will be required. So you may keep in mind the word count for an abstract is a maximum of 200 words.
An introduction is also a major part of the research and it is easily covered within 300 words maximum. Nothing else is required to explain terminologies or theories in this section. However, there are many opinion on this topic and each have different answers. That’s the prime reason students spend day and night on google looking for answers on their questions such as how long should introduction be for research paper. In short, 300 to 500 words are more than enough to state your thoughts in an into section and persuade your readers.
The literature review is the second-longest section in any research. It contains a reference to the past research done in a similar field by other researchers. Every research must have 5 to 8 or even more past papers discussed in it. Therefore the ideal word count for this section is 500 to 1000 words.
The methodology section also has subcategories in which you have to explain the method of research, data collection, population, research implications, research Instrument, etc. It will take around 300 to 400 words and 100 words extra if you are discussing a theoretical framework too.
This is the longest part of any research since you have to explain all the findings and tell your readers how successfully you have managed to prove your thesis. This part is as long as 500 to 1000 or even 1500 words depending upon the results and the explanation required.
A conclusion is a not so lengthy part of the paper. It is usually done within only 100 or 150 words maximum. It is that simple and thus it doesn’t need so many words to finish the argument and put a full stop.
Forming a paper outline in advance will also help you in understanding how many words you may need to cover every heading. This is one of the best ideas for assigning a particular word count to every heading of the paper.
As you’ll create a paper outline, you will get an instant idea of how many words you have to write in total to complete the research. Following this strategy will surely help you won’t be puzzled later during the writing process.
It is always a good idea to ask your teacher or instructor before following any word count technique. They have assigned you a paper so they can provide you with a better guideline to write your paper. It is the easiest method of identifying the word count of your research as it’s something recommended by an expert. Your job will become much easier and simpler by just seeking advice from your teacher.
A middle school student is just starting with the research work and they are at the initial stages of learning how to conduct research. To understand how long a paper should be for middle school, you need to do some work.
It is always better to seek help from an expert to decide the word limit of your essay when you’re a high school student. It could be your teacher or any senior student who will help you and guide how many pages you should write for your research. It is suggested to write 4 to 5 pages when you are a middle school student in writing a paper.
It is always important to do some research and find out what’s best for your paper. Google is always open to helping students in learning new things without any limit. You can open the Google search engine, write down your query in the search bar and click on it.
Next, you will have everything to read and understand how a paper for middle school will work. By doing so you will automatically get an in-depth idea of crafting research for the initial level project.
After analyzing everything you can easily guess what should be the length of any research written by a middle school student. In pages, it is suggested to write 3 to 5 pages, but in words, it is recommended to write 400 to 500 words only. You can also hire a professional paper writing service to aid you in the process.
As it’s a new thing for the students to perform, they might get nervous easily. That’s why starting slow and taking baby steps towards learning research writing will help a lot.
High school is a different stage than middle school. You are mature, better at studies, and even more creative than before. This stage comes with its challenges and one of them is writing the research. If you are a new high school student we bet you don’t know much about paper writing at this level.
When a high school student writes a research paper, it’s usually written within 500 to 1000 words. It could be more than this word count or just 5 to 6 pages. The teacher’s instructions do matter a lot in this aspect and without them, you can’t understand the criteria of research writing. It takes a lot of research, consultation, and creativity to write a paper that stands out. The competition is even tougher in high schools so you know how tough it can get to write a research paper fast .
Your research will decide if you are going to pass the school or not. Many students stay stuck in a class because they are incapable of submitting a brilliant research paper. Most of the time it’s because they don’t know the standard guidelines for writing a paper.
They usually end up ignoring the pattern, writing incorrect information, or exceeding or limiting the length assigned for the research. So it’s better to keep in mind what is the better approach for research writing and how a high school student can learn to write it.
Have you ever thought about how long your research should be when you have finally reached college? It is the final stage of your education and writing research in this phase will require a lot of preparation. In college, you have to write the longest research papers because it is the standard of a paper written by a college student.
So how exactly long should research be for college? It starts with roughly 3000 words and goes up to 15000 words. 15000 words is a lot but students who are working on their thesis need a lot of details to justify and complete their research. Without doing this they are not getting passed at any cost so now you know why it is so important.
Different sections of the paper require their particular word count. It is sometimes difficult to identify but your teachers will always be there to guide you. Sometimes students are given the entire freedom to keep their essay length on their own. It helps them understand how easily they can prove their thesis either in a few or a lot of pages.
For newcomers in college unsure about the ideal length for research papers, utilizing Google is a great option to delve deeper into the nuances of research writing. It’s particularly helpful in exploring various guidelines related to history research topics . A lot of content is already published on the web which teaches the students almost everything they need.
We hope you know how long is a research paper, no matter if you are writing one for your middle school, high school, or college. All of them have different requirements and basic criteria that should be followed. We also hope this blog has helped you learn everything about deciding the word count or overall length of your research.
Our comment section is always open for your discussion and feedback. If you want to get in touch with us or discuss the topic more, just leave a comment in the given box. We would love to hear from our readers and see what they have in their minds after reading our blog.
The average length of a research paper is usually 5 to 7 pages. It can also be more or less than this but it is the standard length of research
How long does it take to write a 7-page research paper.
A 7-page research paper is quite lengthy and it will require about 3 to 4 days for completion. It involves research, outlining, writing, and proofreading so 4 days are suitable to write a 7-page research paper. Taking 5 days or a week is also justified in writing 7-page research. Most of the teachers give 2 to 3 weeks to complete such a project.
A college research paper exceeding the 5000-word limit is too long if the guidelines have suggested less than 5000 words to write. There is no particular length as such because it is all based on the requirements of research writing.
A research paper is usually not written by counting the paragraphs. It is written headings or pages-wise. Though for a middle school paper it must have 10 to 12 paragraphs, 15 to 18 paragraphs for a high school paper, and more than 20 paragraphs for a college research project.
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If you’re writing a research paper or dissertation , then you know how important it is to include a thorough, comprehensive literature review. But exactly how long should your literature review be in relation to the rest of your work? While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, there are some factors that will help determine the length of your review. In this post, we’ll discuss what information to include in your literature review and how long it should be.
Keep reading to learn more.
A literature review is a critical summary and evaluation of the current resources (e.g., books and journal articles) on a specific topic or research question. It is a crucial part of academic writing, such as dissertations, in all categories and fields. Essentially, literature reviews help contextualize your investigations and show how your work is building on existing research.
No matter how long your literature review is, it should generally:
● Establish context for your research (i.e., provide relevant background information so your reader understands the historical significance of your study ).
● Identify gaps in the existing literature (such as unaddressed questions or aspects of your topic).
● Highlight significant concepts related to your topic.
● Cite relevant studies.
● Support your argument.
It’s also essential that a literature review critically analyze the sources cited in your study, considering factors such as sample size, research design, and potential biases. Be sure to structure your literature review using the same referencing style as the rest of your research paper (e.g., APA , Chicago , MLA ).
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The length of your literature review depends on several factors, including the scope and purpose of your research. In general, the length of the review should be proportionate to your overall paper. For example, if you’re writing a fifty-thousand-word dissertation, then your literature review will likely be an entire chapter comprising about 20 pages. If it’s for a 15-page research paper, your literature review may only be a few pages.
Here are several factors that could affect the length of your literature review:
● Institutional guidelines : Always check the guidelines provided by your institution or journal (such as an APA journal ). There may be a specific length or word count required for publication.
● Scope : If your research topic is narrow and focused, your literature review may be shorter. Conversely, if your topic is broad and encompasses a large body of literature, your review may need to be longer.
● Field of study : Different academic fields may have different expectations regarding the length of literature reviews. For example, literature reviews in the humanities might be longer than those in the natural sciences.
Also, consider your audience. If your literature review is for a general audience or a class assignment, it can probably be shorter and less specialized. However, if it’s for an academic audience in your field of study, you may need to be more thorough and provide an extensive review of the existing literature.
Most literature reviews follow the same basic structure of an introduction, body, and conclusion. Most of the time, they are part of a larger work, so the introduction and conclusion paragraphs will be relatively brief.
However, if the review is a standalone piece, then your introduction and conclusion will be longer since you will need to discuss your research objectives, methods, and findings as well as analyze the literature used in your study.
To ensure your literature review makes an impression, have it professionally proofread by our expert literature review editing services . Submit your free sample of 500 words or less to get started today!
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How old your research sources can be, using the publication date or date of creation as the defining criteria, is either stated in your assignment rubric or depends on your field of study or academic discipline. If it’s a requirement for your assignment, look for words like “sources must be published in the last 10 years” or words to that effect that specify the publication date or range required. If the currency of sources is not a requirement of your assignment, think about the course involved and what an appropriate age might be.
How fast-changing is the field of study?
Sources for a history paper might, by their very nature, be older if they are diaries, personal letters, or other documents created long ago and used as primary sources. Sources used for research in the sciences (health care, nursing, engineering), business and finance, and education and other social science fields require more “cutting edge” research, as these fields change quickly with the acquisition of new knowledge and the need to share it rapidly with practitioners in those fields.
A good rule of thumb is to use sources published in the past 10 years for research in the arts, humanities, literature, history, etc.
For faster-paced fields, sources published in the past 2-3 years is a good benchmark since these sources are more current and reflect the newest discoveries, theories, processes, or best practices.
Use the library’s Multi-Search search results page to limit your sources to those published within a date range you specify. Use the Publication Date custom setting seen on the left side of the search results page:
For further assistance with this or other search techniques, contact the Shapiro Library email at [email protected] or use our 24/7 chat service.
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research paper length
You may be wondering how long your research paper should be? Well, you are not alone. Many students are always asking about the optimal term paper length. This challenge can be further heightened when your instructor has not provided you with the page limit or word count.
Research papers are quite complex because they are academic writings based on your original research on a specific topic. This is why getting our paper writing help can be useful to get that A.
No matter the method you choose, your paper should contain your analysis and interpretation of the findings to be complete.
When considering all those factors, students often wonder how long their research papers should be. Let’s explore this in detail.
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Ideally, the most optimal length of a research paper is around 5 pages for short papers and 10 pages for long ones. However, the exact length of your term paper is best determined by your instructor and his instructions.
The same is determined by a number of factors, including the extent and depth of your subject.
The question of how long a research paper should be can be difficult to respond to because it depends on several factors. The most important factors that determine the length of your term paper include;
All those factors held constant; it is possible to estimate the length of a less complex research paper if it is demarcated into sections that include the outline, introduction, individual paragraphs, conclusion, and reference page.
Those are the basic components of a typical research paper . Let’s have a look at how long each section should be.
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An outline is an important part of your research paper. It provides the structure of your paper. It organizes the contents of your term paper into sections.
However, the outline does not contain details about your paper. It only highlights the topics to be covered and the issues to be tackled within those topics.
A format of an outline should include the following;
There are brief full-sentence descriptions under the five sections that act as guidelines for your research paper. Therefore, the outline should not exceed 2 pages for short research papers and between 4 to 5 pages for longer papers with 15 to 20 pages.
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As we have noted, the length of your term paper depends on the topic and its contents. This applies to the introduction. For a typical 5-page research paper, your introduction should not exceed half a page.
However, if you are writing a long essay of 15 pages or more, the introduction may span to a page or several paragraphs. Since most of the research papers given to undergraduate college students are not lengthy, the introduction should not exceed a page.
Even though no definitive rules determine the length of individual paragraphs in a paper, the most recommended length is between 90 words and 130 words. Any paragraph below 90 words is deemed too short to sustain an argument, while one with over 130 words is deemed over-argued.
At the same, it is important to note that the length of the paper determines its length. When the paper is short, then the paragraphs should be short.
If the research paper is long, then the paragraphs should be longer. However, a paragraph should contain more than four sentences. For some topics like childhood obesity , the paragraphs may take longer to incorporate data and statistics in your paper.
Since individual paragraphs should focus on one idea, the length of the paragraph should be determined by the supporting text.
If your idea requires a lot of support in the form of illustrations, examples, statistics, paraphrases, quotes, definitions, causes, and effects, then the paragraph will be longer.
In case the idea presented by the individual paragraph is straightforward and does not require a lot of supporting evidence, then it will be shorter.
The paragraphs add content to the outline. The outline provides topics, subtopics, and guidelines, while the paragraphs add content and further explanations.
A conclusion is a very important part of your research paper. This is because you, as the author of your paper, are wrapping up everything you have discussed in your paper.
Basically, the length of the conclusion is determined by your paper’s length.
The longer the paper, the longer the conclusion, and the shorter it is, the shorter the conclusion. A conclusion should not be below 3 sentences. It will take a few hours to write all these components of your paper.
Even though this is the case, an effective conclusion should have the following characteristics.
From this, it is evident that the conclusion is very important in your research paper. You may not include all of the above, but it is important to restate your paper’s topic, thesis, and main points. Check our research paper writing guide to learn more about how to write these parts.
The reference page length completely depends on the number of sources you have used in your paper. Your paper may be lengthy with few sources, while others can be shorter with more.
A good term paper should have a reference page listing all your information sources. Provided that you list the sources in the right referencing format, like APA and MLA , the length of the reference page is not definitive.
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How long should a term paper be for high school.
Most teachers in high schools require their students to submit 3 to 5-page research papers. Those are the normal research papers assigned within the semester. However, final research papers like the English 102 papers are between 5 and 7 pages.
Even though the topic of the graduate paper determines its length, such papers are considerably longer. This is because they tackle complex topics requiring in-depth explanations, citations, examples, etc. They can be between 7 and 15 pages. They can also exceed the count.
The research papers written by students in middle school are considerably shorter than those given to college or graduate school students. The normal papers written within the semester are between 1 and 2 pages, while the final papers are between 2 and 4.
The length of a literature review depends on the purpose and the audience of the term paper. In most of the research papers in college, the literature review should not exceed two pages. For longer papers of more than 10 pages, it can be between 2 and 3 pages.
To write a research paper fast, begin by selecting a topic. This is followed by researching the topic and working on a thesis. Write the structure of your paper by creating an outline.
Follow the outline and write the paper by beginning with an introduction and ending with a conclusion. Finally, proofread your paper to correct errors. Read our checklist on how to revise your paper to a final copy.
You must select a specific style when formatting a research or term paper. The most common formats for research papers are MLA, APA, Chicago, and Harvard.
Each format dictates the style of the paper, the spacing, the in-text citation style, and the reference page style. You can get all these done if you get someone to write your homework at a very reasonable cost.
Most academic journal articles span 20 to 25 pages when they have a one-and-half line spacing. If the academic journals are double-spaced, they can be between 25 and 30 pages. The journal’s word count ranges from 4000 to 7000 words.
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What is the normal research paper length.
Research papers are popular for frightening students due to the many hours and hard effort needed. Fortunately, there are several ways to assist you through them. One of them is by understanding the basics, like how to conduct research and the standard length of a research paper.
You’ll discover that if you know the research paper length and how much research you’ll have to do, they’re not that unpleasant to undertake.
In this article, you’ll find the general guidelines for the length of an academic research paper. We’ll also look at the research paper paragraph length and how many pages you can fit your research into.
First, let’s begin with the average word count of the research.
How many words are sufficient? A thousand? Or a lot more? To be clear, there’s no general answer specific to all fields. Factors like topics chosen, fields of study, and instructions from an academic professional come into play.
However, a research paper can be between 4000 to 6000 words on average. In some fields, that may get up to 8000 or even more.
How many pages is a research paper in high school? Research papers are often called term papers, and most high school instructors expect their pupils to produce 3 to 5 pages of them.
They are usually given during a semester and sometimes may be up to 5 and 7 pages long if they are final papers.
A short research paper can be between 2000 to 3000 words long. These are often seen in high school research papers mentioned above. In fewer cases, they can be for college studies.
The length of a research paper varies depending on the stage of education, course of study, and departmental guidelines. In addition, of course, the volume of relevant findings and the length of your conclusion and discussion can also play a part. But these are often personal factors.
However, academic pieces like essays are usually shorter than research papers or theses.
Your research paper assignment will often come with straightforward guidelines on the pages or word count range it is expected to fall within.
For instance, you could be given a paper that should fall between 4500–5000 words or 20–25 pages. If you’re not given a specific range or limit, don’t forget to confirm with your instructor.
A research paper is often divided into:
To answer the question, “how long is a typical research paper?” We intend to look at them through various lenses. The ideal length of a research paper should be up to 8000 words. That means without the references and abstract sections, and you should have over 150 sentences and 30 paragraphs.
Although there are no hard and fast rules for choosing the length of individual paragraphs in a research paper, the most common length is between 90 and 130 words. Any paragraph under 90 words is judged insufficient to support an argument, whereas any paragraph above 130 words is seen as over-inflated.
It is also worth noting that the length of the written piece dictates the paragraph lengths. Therefore, when the document is brief, the paragraphs should be similar and vice versa.
On the other hand, a paragraph should include more than four sentences. This is because some topics in specific fields may require lengthier paragraphs to add facts and statistics to your work. And because every section should concentrate on a single concept, the length of a paragraph should be dictated by its supporting ideas.
For example, if an explanation demands detailed evidence in the form of statistics, illustrations, quotations, examples, and definitions, it would naturally be longer.
However, very brief paragraphs also exist in papers of roughly 2,000 words. These can be frequent and large papers of over 10,000 words. The type of paper and course of study often cause these drastic changes.
The average length of a research paper will always differ because of dissimilar types, structures, topics, and instructions. When giving precise specifications for your research paper length, tailor your research to meet its requirements. Remember to avoid adding irrelevant ideas just to beef up your writing. Stick to concise and rich ideas.
Guide on how to write results and discussion in a research paper, term paper help guide for your perfect piece, leave a reply cancel.
I analyzed a random sample of 61,517 full-text research papers, uploaded to PubMed Central between the years 2016 and 2021, in order to answer the questions:
What is the typical length of a discussion section? and which factors influence it?
I used the BioC API to download the data (see the References section below).
1. The median discussion section was 1,115 words long (equivalent to 43 sentences, or 7 paragraphs), and 90% of the discussion sections were between 482 and 2,230 words.
2. Compared to other sections in a research paper, the discussion was about the same length as either the methods or the results, and double the length of the introduction .
3. The length of the discussion does not differ between review articles and original research articles .
4. The quality of the journal does not influence the length of the discussion section .
Here’s a table that describes the length of a discussion section in terms of words, sentences, and paragraphs:
Discussion Section Length | |||
---|---|---|---|
Word Count | Sentence Count | Paragraph Count | |
Minimum | 40 words | 1 sentence | 1 paragraph |
25th Percentile | 824 words | 32 sentences | 5 paragraphs |
50th Percentile (Median) | 1,115 words | 43 sentences | 7 paragraphs |
Mean | 1,206.8 words | 46.4 sentences | 7.8 paragraphs |
75th Percentile | 1,480 words | 57 sentences | 9 paragraphs |
Maximum | 32,816 words | 2,006 sentences | 981 paragraphs |
From these data, we can conclude that the discussion sections in most research papers are between 824 and 1,480 words long (32 to 57 sentences).
If you are interested, here are the links to the articles with the shortest and longest discussion sections.
The discussion section constitutes 29.5% of the total word count in a research article, equivalent to the length of either the methods or the results, and double the length of the introduction [source: How Long Should a Research Paper Be? ].
The following table shows the median word count of the discussion section for different study designs:
Study design | Number of studies in the sample | Median discussion word count |
---|---|---|
Case series | 140 studies | 1,003 words |
Case-control | 443 studies | 1,016 words |
Randomized controlled trial | 842 studies | 1,066 words |
Case report | 407 studies | 1,077 words |
Meta-analysis | 1,481 studies | 1,116 words |
Quasi-experiment | 144 studies | 1,117 words |
Cross-sectional | 3,529 studies | 1,128 words |
Cohort | 5,180 studies | 1,164 words |
Pilot study | 686 studies | 1,185 words |
Systematic review | 689 studies | 1,210 words |
The data show no clear pattern since the discussions of review articles and original research articles have almost similar word counts. So we can conclude that there is no particular article type that requires a longer discussion section.
In order to study the influence of the journal quality on the length of the discussion section, I ran a Poisson regression that models the discussion word count given the journal impact factor. Here’s the model output:
Variables | Coefficient | Standard error | p-value |
---|---|---|---|
(Intercept) | 7.114 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
Journal impact factor | 0.001 | <0.001 | <0.001 |
The model shows that a higher journal impact factor is associated with a slightly longer discussion section. Although statistically significant, this effect is practically negligible since a 1 unit increase in the journal impact factor is associated with an increase of only 0.1% in the discussion word count. For the median article, this means that a 1 unit increase in the journal impact factor is associated with an approximate increase of 1 word in the discussion section.
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I have read that references in scientific papers should be no more than 2-3 years old, since such fields move fast, and no more than 10 years for arts or related fields:
A good rule of thumb is to use sources published in the past 10 years for research in the arts, humanities, literature, history, etc. For faster-paced fields, sources published in the past 2-3 years is a good benchmark since these sources are more current and reflect the newest discoveries, theories, processes, or best practices.
However, I believe that's subjective, so how old is it for a reference to be "too old" to cite?
References can be as old as they need to be to cover the material. I had some that were more than 30 years old. But if all of your references are "old," people are going to want to know why.
You must also be sure you cover the most current research in your field. A few in my own dissertation were for material published in the same year as my own work.
The link given in the comments and the revised question seems to be directed toward undergraduate research assignments, and the "ten years" reference is a part of an example assignment, not a requirement given by the Shapiro Library. The key idea in the link is that references must be "somewhat current."
For a thesis or dissertation, one must cover the field, including both early and very new research.
There is no rule about the age of citations. For example in my PhD-thesis I quoted some math-papers from 1600s that were originally written in latin (but those were exceptions).
Much more relavant than the year is the content of a citation and that you cover the relevant literature.
Also, you might want to include a few (relevant!) citations from recent years in order to show that you did your reading not just at the beginning of your thesis and then ignored everything afterwards.
I have cited a book on farming by Columella from the 1st century CE .
It provided crucial evidence for the use of a word at that time. But I did not take the evidence as the final say on the matter. I also cited 15th century academic analysis of the evidence as well as 21st century work. There is a fundamental difference between saying
It is true because X says so
X says so, so let us analyse it and cite more recent opinions on whether it is true.
In any discipline it may be necessary to contrast older and younger opinions on the same subject, and you will have to do some work yourself to argue that any given source, whatever its age, is - or is not - reliable.
As it happens, I rejected all the academic analysis and accepted my own interpretation of the original evidence. You as a researcher are expected to determine on a case-by-case basis what evidence needs to be cited, and what can be accepted.
Of course, at some stage, you have to accept that a certain claim is true because X says so. To do this you have to cite something that is fairly recent (which will depend on the discipline) and, if it not the most recent, argue why you are accepting it in preference to the most recent.
Your rule has a large fraction of exception that you should always consider. Make sure you cite the relevant papers for your claims and that you cite the papers which were the first introducing the idea. Don't cite a textbook for ideas just because they are recent. Instead, try to find and cite the original works.
If you cite an idea originating back to Aristoteles it does not make sense to use a recent source. The idea is that old! Also, if you want to prove your claim, that some method was used in the 70s, it's useful to cite papers written in the 70s.
The rule you quote is total nonsense for the sciences, and I have a hard time taking it seriously for the humanities.
You cite whatever you need to cite, regardless of its age. Typically, if you're referring to something that is decades old, it's now either common knowledge (e.g., Newton's laws) so probably doesn't need citation at all, or it's in textbooks (which are probably more appropriate to cite than the original source). Both of those things are a consequence of age but age per se is a completely spurious reason to not cite something.
A group of researchers published this very interesting paper:
The nearly universal link between the age of past knowledge and tomorrow’s breakthroughs in science and technology: The hotspot
From a pure data science perspective, they try to understand how the distribution of reference age affects the forward citations of an article. They analyze all publications (~ 28 million) in Web of Science published between 1945 - 2013.
Unfortunately, they do not show an aggregated histogram of age differences between a publication and its references. But in Fig. 1 we see the mean (0-50 years) and variance (0-4) for all published papers and it is all over the place. So the take away might be to cite what you want.
However, they echo in their paper the comments and answers that you got here. Impactful and hopefully good research seems to differ from the "cite what you want" approach. If you want to increase the likelihood of your work having an impact you should base your work on recent advances but also be aware of well-established theories or overlooked ideas from the past. They show this in the paper by finding a hotspot of highly cited papers that have a low mean age distance to their references but a high variance in age distance.
Here is a link to the paper (super interesting): http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/3/4/e1601315.full.pdf
There's no limit on how old they can be. In biology people often cite Darwin (1859) and geneticists who work on pedigrees can cite government records from hundreds of years ago. Work involving theology may cite the Bible. Historians cite original documents from thousands of years ago. Sometimes a fun game is to see what the oldest citation you can get away with is. Plato or Aristotle is often a safe bet.
Generally, you are supposed to cite the oldest paper that made a discovery, as the credit belongs to them. When in doubt, you can cite one old and one new paper.
However, your work must be in the context of contemporary scientific literature. If you cite a 50 year old paper for a theory, you better make sure the theory has not been disproven in another paper published 30 years after. If you say the state of the art in a field is a paper published 10 years ago, it would look really bad if somebody brought up a 5 year old paper that advanced it further. This is why citing old material is risky: You can't easily tell that it's still current. If a paper came out last monday, chances are pretty low that somebody refuted it in that time.
To be honest, just like you’ve said, all of this is quite subjective... Personally, I believe that if a paper is relevant to the point you are trying to make and hasn’t been categorically disproven then it’s fair game. However, what I think is irrelevant; it depends on the person marking your dissertation and how they feel about it. Some academics I know don’t care while others do. I was once marked down for using a 7 year old paper as a reference even though it was very relevant to my work, simply because the lecturer marking my work didn’t want to see anything older than 5 years.
For the most part, it should be fine. Academics who insist on only recent papers are few, in my experience.
Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged citations thesis masters online-resource ..
Research data – how long should it be kept.
Researchers are tasked with collecting, storing and the retention of research data beyond the completion of their research project. Do you know exactly how long you should retain your research data? Carmela Gallo from the University of Melbourne’s Legal and Risk team offers key advice on research data management for researchers.
According to Management of Data and Information in Research: A guide supporting the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2.3 Storage, retention and disposal),
“The period for which data should be retained should be determined by prevailing standards for the specific type of research and any applicable state, territory or national legislation. In general, the minimum period for retention of research data is 5 years from the date of publication.”
However, researchers should not be misled in believing that all research data retention period requirements are 5 years from the date of publication based on the above statement. As a researcher at the University of Melbourne, you need to be aware that the University of Melbourne Records Retention & Disposal Authority provides the legal mechanism for the retention and disposal of university records in accordance with the Victorian Public Records Act 1973. This includes research data.
By applying the disposal classes to your research data, you will be meeting your compliance obligation. Below is a summary of the retention periods for research data from the University of Melbourne Records and Retention Disposal Authority
Includes data created that is:
Temporary – Minimum 15 years after completion of research activity
Temporary – Minimum 15 years after the child reaches the age of 18
Temporary – Minimum 5 years after completion of research activity
However, under certain circumstances, there may be other factors that will override these retention periods for research data. Below are two examples:
Researchers will need to consider regulatory responsibilities, ethical, legal, cultural and other guidelines when determining how long to retain research data. The University of Melbourne Records Retention and Disposal Authority is one of those guidelines. From a records perspective, it is important that researchers determine and document the retention and disposal requirements from the beginning. It is important that this information is readily available into the future.
For more information on research data management, you can attend this upcoming Researcher@Library webinar, ‘File Management 101: Taming the digital chaos’ on Thursday 23 July, 2020 at 1pm with Peter Neish from the Digital Scholarship team.
Carmela Gallo works as a Records Analyst in Records & Information, Legal and Risk at the University of Melbourne. For more information on research data and record-keeping, subscribe to the Records Services Update e-newsletter by emailing [email protected] or browse past editions available from their website .
Image credit: Andrew Pons on Unsplash
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By Katie Okamoto
Katie Okamoto is an editor focused on the environment. She has covered the intersection of products and sustainability for more than a decade.
Microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere.
The teeny tiny pieces of plastic have been found in everything from drinking water to chicken nuggets, apples, and broccoli.
Recent studies have linked these pollutants to heart disease , lung disorders , and more worrying health issues.
But unfortunately, microplastics are now so pervasive that they’re nearly impossible to avoid.
If you’re concerned about the health effects linked to microplastics, the experts I spoke with said that you can lower your risk by taking care of your general health: getting plenty of sleep and exercise, eating a balanced diet, lowering stress, and seeking preventative care.
Still, it’s probably a good idea to lower your exposure to microplastics even if you can’t avoid them completely. Although you can cut back your exposure in as many ways as there are sources of plastic, the experts I spoke with recommended focusing on exposures from water, food, and air.
I talked to three doctors and a research scientist for tips on how to reduce the amount of tiny plastics and their chemicals that you (or your kids ) might ingest. Here’s what they recommend.
Some research indicates plastic bottled water may be a significant source of microplastics. While scientists are still studying just how significant, one study from 2019 of water and other commonly consumed food and drink found it to be the most concentrated source .
There is emerging evidence that on average, bottled water contains more microplastics than tap. (One study published in 2024 suggests that we have underestimated measured concentrations.)
Drinking bottled water in a pinch isn't the end of the world, but if you have concerns about it, you could always consider carrying a reusable steel or glass bottle or tumbler when out and about.
Switching to tap water from plastic bottled water will likely significantly reduce your routine exposure to plastics. But while the average plastic water bottle contains more microplastics and nanoplastics than tap, research shows that tap water may also be a source of microplastics.
Several of our water filter picks are specifically NSF/American National Standards Institute–certified to reduce microplastics, which means they’ve been rigorously tested in an accredited lab. They’re certified only to reduce since the filters cannot guarantee total elimination. Our picks include under-sink filters , such as the Aquasana AQ-5200 , and the Brita Elite , a pitcher filter .
Exceptional, affordable under-sink filtration.
Certified for the most contaminants, widely available, affordable, and compact.
$100 + FS w/code AQWC50
Ace filtration, long lifespan.
This 10-cup, user-friendly model is rated to last six months between replacements.
Yes, it’s ironic that most NSF/ANSI-certified water filters contain plastic. But any microplastic shedding from using the plastic filter is likely to be minimal, as long as you avoid running hot water through the filter and store your water in the fridge, since heat accelerates plastic degradation.
Research suggests that boiling tap water, cooling it, and then filtering it may be especially effective at reducing microplastics, although it’s less practical for most people than simply using a filter.
Plastic food storage and packaging is so common that it’s difficult to avoid entirely. But your safest bet is to avoid storing food or liquid in plastic when possible and to minimize exposing any plastic (even those that say they’re BPA-free or microwave-safe) to high heat. Sunlight, acids, and physical erosion can also degrade plastic.
It’s great to reuse single-use plastic —just not for food. Unless you’re using the plastic in the freezer, save it for something that isn’t food storage or reheating, said Dr. Gillian Goddard, an endocrinologist and author at ParentData , a science-based online resource for parents. That means don’t reuse plastic takeout containers, breastmilk bags, or drink bottles.
Avoid microwaving or heating food or water in plastic—even if it says it’s microwave-safe, said Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at University of California San Francisco. Instead, consider glass or ceramic. The Pyrex Simply Store 18-Piece Set is our pick for the best food storage containers , and they survived our drop tests, stack neatly, and come with user-friendly lids (although you may not want to microwave the plastic lids). Our runner-up, the leakproof Glasslock 18-Piece Container Set , is another great option.
The best glass container set.
The Pyrex Simply Store containers stack neatly and are made from durable tempered glass. The colorful lids make it easier to match their shape to the corresponding container, though you may need to replace them over time.
The best leakproof glass container set.
The Glasslock containers have locking lids that will prevent leaks. But these lids also put stress on the lips of the containers, so the glass may be prone to chipping over time.
Dishwasher temperatures run very hot and can degrade plastic—even dishwasher-safe plastic—and lead to microplastic shedding. Try to wash your plastic food containers by hand.
Some research suggests that plastic cutting boards can be a significant source of microplastics in your diet, since repeated cutting on their surface can dislodge particles that adhere to food. Wood cutting boards also have some other advantages: They’re better for your knife blades and last longer than plastic when properly maintained.
The best wood cutting board.
This beautiful teak board requires more careful cleaning than a plastic board, but it feels better under a knife and is easier to maintain than the other wood boards we tested.
Our cutting board pick, the Teakhaus Medium Professional Carving Board with Juice Canal 109 , is made from sustainably harvested teak. If you still prefer plastic for certain uses, use it sparingly and replace it after heavy scarring.
The air we breathe is also a potential source of microplastics, in the form of dust. Reducing airborne dust in your home, then, may reduce your exposure to inhaled microplastics.
The best canister vacuum.
This bagged canister vacuum excels on both bare floors and carpets, and has many adjustment options and useful attachments. It should last for the long haul.
7-Year Standard Warranty
10-Year Extended Warranty
That means doing boring stuff, like vacuuming regularly with a bagged, sealed-system vacuum that has a HEPA or S-class filter and mopping and wiping down surfaces with a damp sponge or cloth (since dusting kicks those tiny particles back up into the air).
Exceptional, efficient, affordable.
Perfect for bedrooms, playrooms, and living rooms, this air purifier is one of the highest-performing, most-durable, and most-economical models we’ve tested.
You should also take care of seasonal chores like cleaning fans and AC unit filters and changing HVAC filters, and consider getting an air purifier if you live near a busy road.
Infants may be exposed to microplastics and nanoplastics in much higher concentrations than adults. Research shows that this exposure may be cause for concern, particularly at critical stages of early development. But much like health risks to adults, it’s important to think of microplastics exposure as just one piece of a child’s overall health.
“I emphasize that before putting much energy and resources into minimizing unknown risks, it is worth attending to reducing the risks we know about,” said Dr. Carlos Lerner, a pediatrician and professor of clinical pediatrics at UCLA Health. He cited following safe sleep recommendations for infants, avoiding secondhand smoke, and practicing good nutrition as examples.
If you want to take a more precautionary approach, avoid using plastic to warm formula or breastmilk. This is the main point of advice from the experts I spoke with, as well as the Cleveland Clinic .
Recent evidence shows that polypropylene-bottle-fed babies may swallow very high levels of tiny plastics due to the high temperatures used to sterilize bottles and prepare formula, as well as shaking the bottles to mix. If you want to feed your baby warmed formula and use plastic bottles, consider premixing the formula in a glass container, then cooling it down before transferring it to the feeding bottle.
If you use heat to sterilize plastic bottles, leave them to cool then rinse them several times before filling them with formula or breastmilk, Lerner suggested.
If your baby prefers warmed milk or formula, consider heating it in a glass or silicone bottle. (If you don't use a bottle warmer, we have advice about how to safely do this without one.) The Philips Avent Glass Natural Response Baby Bottle is our recommendation for the best glass baby bottle.
Our favorite glass bottles.
With only three pieces and a large, easy-to-screw-on collar, this glass bottle is simple to use and didn’t leak in our test. But the very wide nipple may not work well for all babies.
For young kids who eat with their hands, try to establish a habit of handwashing before eating, said Woodruff. While handwashing is not always possible, it can help reduce exposure from touching microplastics in dust and soil (and maybe, just maybe, stem the tide of germs).
Scientists are still studying the exact connections between these teeny tiny pieces of plastic and human health. But it’s clear that exposure to plastic—whether it’s those tiny particles, the chemicals they leach, or a combination—is being linked to a variety of worrying health issues.
Some of those connections still require more research, such as ties to colon cancer , respiratory disease , metabolic function , and disruption to endocrine systems , while others—like a recent study that found those with levels of plastics in their arteries were at a higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, and death—seem a little more clear.
It’s important to remember that these links point to concerns about the impact of microplastics on public health, but they are not specific, predictable outcomes. “What I’m thinking about is population risk, not a risk to a specific individual,” said Goddard.
The tricky thing is that microplastics and nanoplastics are impossible to avoid, no matter how diligent you are: They’re in the air we breathe , our drinking water , and our food. But scientists aren’t sure what levels of microplastics and nanoplastics we’re each taking in from those sources.
The oft-cited estimate that the average person eats a credit card’s worth of plastic every week has been called into question . But our bodies are certainly taking in plastic, and that’s more than nature intended.
Given the growing body of evidence, it’s possible that we’ll start to see more public health measures that address microplastic pollution. Until then, taking care of your overall health is the first line of defense, followed by taking reasonable steps to reduce microplastic exposure.
This article was edited by Christine Cyr Clisset and Ben Frumin.
Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at UCSF , phone interview , April 25, 2024
Gillian Goddard, MD, endocrinologist and adjunct assistant professor at NYU Langone Hospital and author of “Hot Flash” newsletter from ParentData , phone interview , April 26, 2024
Carlos Lerner, MD, pediatrician at the Children’s Health Center at UCLA and professor and Jack H. Skirball endowed chair in Pediatrics at UCLA , email interview , April 26, 2024
Hayley Goldbach, MD, board-certified physician and dermatologic surgeon at Brown University , email interview , April 29, 2024
Katie Okamoto
Katie Okamoto is a writer and the editor of sustainability coverage at Wirecutter. She has been covering food and design products and their intersections with environment and health issues for more than a decade. Katie has also worked in design and sustainability, and she holds a bachelor’s in environmental studies, a master’s in architecture, and a professional certificate in life cycle assessment.
by Katie Okamoto
We share how to get the most out of silicone items you may already own, and we recommend swaps you should consider instead of buying new tools and gadgets.
by Anna Perling
Our favorite alternatives to plastic or disposable food storage include silicone food-storage bags, beeswax wraps, and cloth produce bags.
by Andrea Barnes
Laundry detergent sheets claim to be a more-sustainable option than traditional liquid, powder, or pod detergents. Unfortunately, they don’t clean well.
by Anna Perling and Katie Okamoto
We have the best freezer containers, plus expert advice on saving money and reducing waste by getting the most from your freezer.
Some people continue to experience health problems long after having COVID-19. Understand the possible symptoms and risk factors for post-COVID-19 syndrome.
Most people who get coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recover within a few weeks. But some people — even those who had mild versions of the disease — might have symptoms that last a long time afterward. These ongoing health problems are sometimes called post- COVID-19 syndrome, post- COVID conditions, long COVID-19 , long-haul COVID-19 , and post acute sequelae of SARS COV-2 infection (PASC).
Post- COVID-19 syndrome involves a variety of new, returning or ongoing symptoms that people experience more than four weeks after getting COVID-19 . In some people, post- COVID-19 syndrome lasts months or years or causes disability.
Research suggests that between one month and one year after having COVID-19 , 1 in 5 people ages 18 to 64 has at least one medical condition that might be due to COVID-19 . Among people age 65 and older, 1 in 4 has at least one medical condition that might be due to COVID-19 .
The most commonly reported symptoms of post- COVID-19 syndrome include:
Other possible symptoms include:
Keep in mind that it can be hard to tell if you are having symptoms due to COVID-19 or another cause, such as a preexisting medical condition.
It's also not clear if post- COVID-19 syndrome is new and unique to COVID-19 . Some symptoms are similar to those caused by chronic fatigue syndrome and other chronic illnesses that develop after infections. Chronic fatigue syndrome involves extreme fatigue that worsens with physical or mental activity, but doesn't improve with rest.
Organ damage could play a role. People who had severe illness with COVID-19 might experience organ damage affecting the heart, kidneys, skin and brain. Inflammation and problems with the immune system can also happen. It isn't clear how long these effects might last. The effects also could lead to the development of new conditions, such as diabetes or a heart or nervous system condition.
The experience of having severe COVID-19 might be another factor. People with severe symptoms of COVID-19 often need to be treated in a hospital intensive care unit. This can result in extreme weakness and post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event.
You might be more likely to have post- COVID-19 syndrome if:
Post- COVID-19 syndrome also appears to be more common in adults than in children and teens. However, anyone who gets COVID-19 can have long-term effects, including people with no symptoms or mild illness with COVID-19 .
If you're having symptoms of post- COVID-19 syndrome, talk to your health care provider. To prepare for your appointment, write down:
Your health care provider might do lab tests, such as a complete blood count or liver function test. You might have other tests or procedures, such as chest X-rays, based on your symptoms. The information you provide and any test results will help your health care provider come up with a treatment plan.
In addition, you might benefit from connecting with others in a support group and sharing resources.
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CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) was introduced with the intention of recognizing individual author contributions, reducing authorship disputes and facilitating collaboration. The idea came about following a 2012 collaborative workshop led by Harvard University and the Wellcome Trust, with input from researchers, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and publishers, including Elsevier, represented by Cell Press.
CRediT offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to the published work.
The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the descriptions are accurate and agreed by all authors
The role(s) of all authors should be listed, using the relevant above categories
Authors may have contributed in multiple roles
CRediT in no way changes the journal’s criteria to qualify for authorship
CRediT statements should be provided during the submission process and will appear above the acknowledgment section of the published paper as shown further below.
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Conceptualization | Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims |
Methodology | Development or design of methodology; creation of models |
Software | Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components |
Validation | Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs |
Formal analysis | Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data |
Investigation | Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection |
Resources | Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools |
Data Curation | Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse |
Writing - Original Draft | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation) |
Writing - Review & Editing | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre-or postpublication stages |
Visualization | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation |
Supervision | Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team |
Project administration | Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution |
Funding acquisition | Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication |
*Reproduced from Brand et al. (2015), Learned Publishing 28(2), with permission of the authors.
Zhang San: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software Priya Singh. : Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Wang Wu : Visualization, Investigation. Jan Jansen : Supervision. : Ajay Kumar : Software, Validation.: Sun Qi: Writing- Reviewing and Editing,
Read more about CRediT here opens in new tab/window or check out this article from Authors' Updat e: CRediT where credit's due .
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change , primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.
The main greenhouse gases that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and cutting down forests can also release carbon dioxide. Agriculture, oil and gas operations are major sources of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main sectors causing greenhouse gases.
Climate scientists have showed that humans are responsible for virtually all global heating over the last 200 years. Human activities like the ones mentioned above are causing greenhouse gases that are warming the world faster than at any time in at least the last two thousand years.
The average temperature of the Earth’s surface is now about 1.2°C warmer than it was in the late 1800s (before the industrial revolution) and warmer than at any time in the last 100,000 years. The last decade (2011-2020) was the warmest on record , and each of the last four decades has been warmer than any previous decade since 1850.
Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the Earth is a system, where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others.
The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.
Climate change can affect our health , ability to grow food, housing, safety and work. Some of us are already more vulnerable to climate impacts, such as people living in small island nations and other developing countries. Conditions like sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion have advanced to the point where whole communities have had to relocate, and protracted droughts are putting people at risk of famine. In the future, the number of people displaced by weather-related events is expected to rise.
In a series of UN reports , thousands of scientists and government reviewers agreed that limiting global temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C would help us avoid the worst climate impacts and maintain a livable climate. Yet policies currently in place point to a 3°C temperature rise by the end of the century.
The emissions that cause climate change come from every part of the world and affect everyone, but some countries produce much more than others .The seven biggest emitters alone (China, the United States of America, India, the European Union, Indonesia, the Russian Federation, and Brazil) accounted for about half of all global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020.
Everyone must take climate action, but people and countries creating more of the problem have a greater responsibility to act first.
Many climate change solutions can deliver economic benefits while improving our lives and protecting the environment. We also have global frameworks and agreements to guide progress, such as the Sustainable Development Goals , the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement . Three broad categories of action are: cutting emissions, adapting to climate impacts and financing required adjustments.
Switching energy systems from fossil fuels to renewables like solar or wind will reduce the emissions driving climate change. But we have to act now. While a growing number of countries is committing to net zero emissions by 2050, emissions must be cut in half by 2030 to keep warming below 1.5°C. Achieving this means huge declines in the use of coal, oil and gas: over two-thirds of today’s proven reserves of fossil fuels need to be kept in the ground by 2050 in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change.
Adapting to climate consequences protects people, homes, businesses, livelihoods, infrastructure and natural ecosystems. It covers current impacts and those likely in the future. Adaptation will be required everywhere, but must be prioritized now for the most vulnerable people with the fewest resources to cope with climate hazards. The rate of return can be high. Early warning systems for disasters, for instance, save lives and property, and can deliver benefits up to 10 times the initial cost.
Climate action requires significant financial investments by governments and businesses. But climate inaction is vastly more expensive. One critical step is for industrialized countries to fulfil their commitment to provide $100 billion a year to developing countries so they can adapt and move towards greener economies.
To get familiar with some of the more technical terms used in connection with climate change, consult the Climate Dictionary .
Climate change is a hot topic – with myths and falsehoods circulating widely. Find some essential facts here .
See the latest climate reports from the United Nations as well as climate action facts .
Fossil fuels are by far the largest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, which poses many risks to all forms of life on Earth. Learn more .
Read the UN Chief’s latest statements on climate action.
What is net zero? Why is it important? Our net-zero page explains why we need steep emissions cuts now and what efforts are underway.
What is renewable energy and why does it matter? Learn more about why the shift to renewables is our only hope for a brighter and safer world.
How will the world foot the bill? We explain the issues and the value of financing climate action.
What is climate adaptation? Why is it so important for every country? Find out how we can protect lives and livelihoods as the climate changes.
Learn more about how climate change impacts are felt across different sectors and ecosystems.
Women and girls are on the frontlines of the climate crisis and uniquely situated to drive action. Find out why it’s time to invest in women.
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Data on the real-world efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.
The UK Health Security Agency ( UKHSA ) is monitoring the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in the real world as set out in the COVID-19 vaccine surveillance strategy and has published reports on the impact of the COVID-19 vaccines on:
This study estimates the long-term duration of protection of the COVID-19 vaccines against hospitalisation for all adults in England , depending on which vaccine individuals were last eligible to receive. This includes the effectiveness of the latest booster programme; XBB.1.5 monovalent boosters given to those aged 65 years and older as part of the autumn 2023 vaccination programme. The effectiveness of the recent XBB.1.5 vaccines against hospitalisation with the sub-lineages circulating during the study period (XBB-sub-lineages, EG.5.1 and JN.1) is also estimated.
This study estimates vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of the Sanofi/GSK booster (based on the Beta variant) and the Pfizer Original/BA.4-5 bivalent booster (based on the ancestral and BA.4/5 Omicron sub-lineages), given as part of the spring 2023 vaccination programme, amongst those aged 75 years and older in England.
This study estimates the long-term duration of protection of the monovalent COVID-19 vaccines against hospitalisation, as well as the incremental vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of the bivalent BA.1 booster vaccines given as part of the autumn 2022 booster campaign to those aged 50 years or older.
The latest evidence shows that vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation is similar for the BA.4/5 variants as it is for BA.2. In somebody who received their second dose around 6 months previously, a booster dose increases protection against hospitalisation by 50% to 60%. This is the most comprehensive analysis of vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation for BA.4/5 undertaken to date.
This study estimates the effectiveness of booster vaccination with AstraZeneca against symptomatic disease and hospitalisation in individuals who were not able to receive mRNA vaccines in the UK.
This study estimates the effectiveness of booster vaccination against symptomatic disease caused by the BA.2 sub-lineage of the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant.
This study estimates vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation with the Omicron and Delta variants and investigates the impact of using different hospitalisation outcome definitions.
This study reports on vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation with the Omicron variant in adults aged 75 years and older.
This study reports on vaccine effectiveness against transmission of COVID-19 with the Alpha and Delta variants.
Updated analysis on the effectiveness of 3 doses of COVID-19 vaccines against symptomatic COVID-19 and hospitalisation in adults aged 65 years and older.
This study provides real world evidence of significant increased protection from the booster vaccine dose against symptomatic disease and hospitalisation irrespective of the primary course.
This study reports on the vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease with 2 dose courses of BNT1622 and ChAdOx1-S as well as booster doses of BNT162b2 following a primary course of either BNT1622 or ChAdOx1-S.
Results from the first UK real-world study by UKHSA show significantly increased protection against symptomatic disease from a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in those aged 50 years and older.
This study reports on the vaccine effectiveness and duration of protection of Comirnaty, Vaxzevria and Spikevax against mild and severe COVID-19 in the UK.
This study investigates the impact of different dosing schedules on immune response and vaccine effectiveness.
This study reports on the immune response and clinical effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine among individuals in clinical risk groups.
This study reports on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines on hospitalisation disease with the Delta variant . A supplementary appendix is also available to download.
This study reports on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines on symptomatic disease with the Delta variant.
A study using the SARI watch surveillance system of COVID-19 hospitalisations found high levels of protection against hospitalisation after both a single dose and 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
A study on deaths with COVID-19 indicates that COVID-19 vaccines offer high levels of protection against mortality .
Impact of vaccination on household transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in England is an analysis to determine whether individuals who have received vaccine, but still become infected with SARS-CoV-2 up to 60 days after the first dose, are less likely than unvaccinated cases to transmit to their unvaccinated household contacts.
The VIVALDI study found evidence that COVID-19 vaccines were associated with a substantially reduced risk of infection in care home residents.
The Avon CAP study , conducted in 2 hospitals in Bristol, found evidence of high levels of protection against hospitalisation in 80+ year olds with a single dose of either vaccine.
Early data from the SIREN study shows a promising impact on infection in healthcare workers aged under 65. Healthcare workers in the study are tested for COVID-19 every 2 weeks – whether or not they have symptoms.
Early data from routine COVID-19 testing in older adults shows that vaccines are effective at preventing COVID-19 disease and severe outcomes.
Report on the impact of COVID-19 vaccination programme on seroprevalence in blood donors in England, 2021.
Monitoring reports previously published by Public Health England (now part of UKHSA ).
COVID-19 vaccine surveillance reports are available for:
Earlier reports are available as part of the National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports.
National flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports are available for:
Added link to 'Effectiveness of autumn 2023 COVID-19 vaccination and residual protection of prior doses against hospitalisation in England, estimated using a test-negative case-control study'.
Added link to 'Effectiveness of the adjuvanted Sanofi/GSK (VidPrevtyn Beta) and Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty Original/Omicron BA.4-5) bivalent vaccines against hospitalisation amongst adults aged 75 years and older in England, estimated using a test-negative case control study design'.
Added link to 'Duration of protection of ancestral-strain monovalent vaccines and effectiveness of bivalent BA.1 boosters against COVID-19 hospitalisation in England: a test-negative case-control study'.
Added link to 'Effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against severe disease with Omicron sub-lineages BA.4 and BA.5 in England'.
Added 'Effectiveness of AstraZeneca COVID-19 booster vaccination against the Omicron and Delta variants'.
Added link to effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against the Omicron BA.2 sub-lineage study.
Added link to 'Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation with the Omicron variant'.
Added link to Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against hospitalisation with the Omicron variant in adults aged 75 years and older.
Added link to Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against transmission.
Added link to Effectiveness of 3 doses of COVID-19 vaccines against symptomatic COVID-19 and hospitalisation in adults aged 65 years and older.
Added effectiveness of BNT162b2 (Comirnaty, Pfizer-BioNTech) COVID-19 booster vaccine against COVID-19 related symptoms and hospitalisation in England: test negative case-control study.
Added Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of concern.
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1- The median length of a research paper is 4,133 words (equivalent to 166 sentences or 34 paragraphs), excluding the abstract and references, with 90% of papers being between 2,023 and 8,284 words. 2- A typical article is divided in the following way: Introduction section: 14.6% of the total word count.
An Overview. . In short, research paper's average length can range from 1,500 words for research proposals and case studies - all the way to 100,000 words for large dissertations. Research, by its nature of being complex, requires a careful and thorough elucidation of facts, notions, information, and the like - which is all reflected in its ...
When it comes to length - while varying based on assignment type - general guidelines recommend that undergraduate research papers range from 3-7 pages in length while graduate-level assignments usually require 10+ page lengths. 6. Considerations when Setting an Ideal length for your Specific Topic and Audience.
What it means to be "timely" varies across fields or disciplines. Seminal research articles and/or foundational books can remain relevant for a long time and help establish the context for a given paper. For example, Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment (Bandura et al., 1961) is often cited in contemporary social and child psychology ...
By refining your focus, you can produce a thoughtful and engaging paper that effectively communicates your ideas to your readers. 5. Write a thesis statement. A thesis statement is a one-to-two-sentence summary of your research paper's main argument or direction.
Rule 4: Write a data management plan. In 2020, 2 Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) papers in leading medical journals were retracted after major concerns about the data were raised [ 42 ]. Today, raw data are more often recognized as a key outcome of research along with the paper.
Step 1: Find a topic and review the literature. As we mentioned earlier, in a research paper, you, as the researcher, will try to answer a question.More specifically, that's called a research question, and it sets the direction of your entire paper. What's important to understand though is that you'll need to answer that research question with the help of high-quality sources - for ...
They say that journals are taking too long to review papers and that reviewers are requesting more data, revisions and new experiments than they used to. ... Does it take too long to publish ...
Step 1: Introduce your topic. Step 2: Describe the background. Step 3: Establish your research problem. Step 4: Specify your objective (s) Step 5: Map out your paper. Research paper introduction examples. Frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.
However, reference librarians can show you strategies that can save you time and can help you do your research more effectively. Ask at the Help Desk, through Ask-us (chat), text to 479-385-0803 or email [email protected] for assistance. You can use the Research Paper Wizard to help plan the sequence and find sources. [email protected]. subject ...
Conducting research normally takes longer than you expect. Frustration and backtracking are a normal part of the process. However, reference librarians can show you strategies that can save you time and can help you do your research more effectively. Ask us for assistance. You can use the Research Paper Wizard to help plan the sequence and find ...
High school papers may range from 5-20 pages, college-level papers from 10-30 pages, and graduate theses can be significantly longer, even reaching 100+ pages for Ph.D. dissertations. The spacing, citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago), and number of words also affect the paper's length.
Research that has a thesis statement only requires 2 to 3 arguments to be proved and will be summed up in 500 to 700 words. After providing the introduction and a little background on the research, you can directly shift to mentioning the arguments and claims so you may prove the statement and complete the research.
The length of your literature review depends on several factors, including the scope and purpose of your research. In general, the length of the review should be proportionate to your overall paper. For example, if you're writing a fifty-thousand-word dissertation, then your literature review will likely be an entire chapter comprising about ...
From these data, we can conclude that most research papers have a 3 to 5 paragraph introductions (consisting of 15 to 28 sentences). If you are interested, here's the link to the PubMed article that had the longest introduction of 9,776 words, 426 sentences, and 196 paragraphs!. The introduction constitutes 14.6% of the total word count of a research paper, nearly half the length of other ...
A good rule of thumb is to use sources published in the past 10 years for research in the arts, humanities, literature, history, etc. For faster-paced fields, sources published in the past 2-3 years is a good benchmark since these sources are more current and reflect the newest discoveries, theories, processes, or best practices. Use the ...
Ideally, the most optimal length of a research paper is around 5 pages for short papers and 10 pages for a long one. However, the exact length of your research paper is best determined by your instructor and the instructions that he provides. The same is determined by a number of factors including the extent and depth of your subject.
How long is a short research paper? A short research paper can be between 2000 to 3000 words long. These are often seen in high school research papers mentioned above. In fewer cases, they can be for college studies. How long is a research paper: length guide. The length of a research paper varies depending on the stage of education, course of ...
Overall length of the discussion section. Here's a table that describes the length of a discussion section in terms of words, sentences, and paragraphs: From these data, we can conclude that the discussion sections in most research papers are between 824 and 1,480 words long (32 to 57 sentences). If you are interested, here are the links to ...
24. I have read that references in scientific papers should be no more than 2-3 years old, since such fields move fast, and no more than 10 years for arts or related fields: A good rule of thumb is to use sources published in the past 10 years for research in the arts, humanities, literature, history, etc.
In general, the minimum period for retention of research data is 5 years from the date of publication.". However, researchers should not be misled in believing that all research data retention period requirements are 5 years from the date of publication based on the above statement. As a researcher at the University of Melbourne, you need to ...
There is no prescribed length as such for the rationale (or justification) of the study. Plus, it depends on several factors. Research document: In a thesis/dissertation, you get more space compared with a journal article. So, your rationale in the former could be longer than that in the latter. Research question: Research into an absolutely ...
Crucially, citation practices do not differ between the two styles of paper. However, for your convenience, we have provided two versions of our APA 7 sample paper below: one in student style and one in professional style. Note: For accessibility purposes, we have used "Track Changes" to make comments along the margins of these samples.
June 2024. Microplastics and nanoplastics are everywhere. The teeny tiny pieces of plastic have been found in everything from drinking water to chicken nuggets, apples, and broccoli. Recent ...
Most master's degree programs require you to take 30 to 60 credit hours of coursework. Some programs involve as many as 72 credit hours. It's possible to complete a 34-credit Master of Applied Data Science degree in as little as twelve months. A 72-credit Master of Business Administration (MBA), on the other hand, will likely take two to ...
People who had severe illness with COVID-19 might experience organ damage affecting the heart, kidneys, skin and brain. Inflammation and problems with the immune system can also happen. It isn't clear how long these effects might last. The effects also could lead to the development of new conditions, such as diabetes or a heart or nervous ...
CRediT author statement. CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) was introduced with the intention of recognizing individual author contributions, reducing authorship disputes and facilitating collaboration. The idea came about following a 2012 collaborative workshop led by Harvard University and the Wellcome Trust, with input from researchers, the ...
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun's activity or large volcanic eruptions. But since the 1800s ...
This study estimates the long-term duration of protection of the COVID-19 vaccines against hospitalisation for all adults in England, depending on which vaccine individuals were last eligible to ...
Customer relationship management software can give you a clear, unified customer profile — a single, simple, secure, and customizable dashboard with a customer's purchase history, order status, outstanding customer service issues, and more. This information can be invaluable, especially since 70% of customers expect every representative they contact to know their purchase and issue history.