7 www.rsc.
org/education
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Moving forward
When you have written the bulk of your
Results and Discussion and Experimental
Methods chapters it is time to think about
Copyright © 2008. Royal Society of Chemistry. All rights reserved.
writing your Introduction.
This first chapter aims to give an overview of
scientific literature related to your research,
give insight into why you chose your subject
area and how it developed from previous
research. It should also demonstrate how
new discoveries that occurred during your
research period influenced your subsequent
work and allowed you to develop your
project and its aims.
Writing the Introduction is often made easier
by referring your first and second year annual
reports, since a preliminary introduction
should have been prepared for each of these.
The Introduction is one of the hardest parts
to write because it is not your own work
Mansfield, Natalie. Your Chemical Science Thesis : An introductory guide to writing up your research project, Royal
Society of Chemistry, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/leicester/detail.action?docID=1186228.
Created from leicester on 2020-03-02 05:19:01.
but a summary of work within your research
area. If you use words or terms outside of
your discipline, e.g. biological or physics
terms, make sure that you understand them
because they may come up in your viva. Also,
if you include obscure chemistry from other
peoples’ work make sure that you understand
it, you may be asked to discuss it during your
viva.
You will need to refer to a wide range
of scientific resources to write your
Introduction; for more insight into
information retrieval please refer
to the RSC publication, “Key Skills
for Scientists: Getting the message
across”. More information about this
publication and how to obtain a copy is
available at www.rsc.org/keyskills
 www.rsc.org/education 

Once again, ask your supervisor or colleagues Notes

to proof-read this section to check for typing
errors, to ensure you have covered all the
necessary information and that it gives an
extensive overview of the background to your
research.

Remember to back up your work frequently.

Save it on your hard drive and to disk, as well
as emailing it to yourself at regular intervals.
The last thing you want to do is spend an
hour writing text and creating diagrams
only to find your computer crashes as you’re
writing the last paragraph. Save your work as
often as you can, it’s worth the extra effort!

Bibliography
This section lists all the references you
have used throughout your thesis and it is
imperative that it is correct throughout, with
no missing or questionable information.
Ensure you follow either the format of RSC or
ACS journals when listing your references, and
whichever one you choose, stick with it, don’t
chop and change. Also, try to avoid http://
Copyright © 2008. Royal Society of Chemistry. All rights reserved.

www references, always quote the original

work where possible to ensure accuracy.

Beware of plagiarism – if you only ever

read things from websites rather than
the original papers or books, there is a
serious danger of quoting straight from
the screen rather than saying “Bloggs
in his JACS paper claims etc”,  and thus
failing to give “Bloggs” due credit for
the original scientific insights!

Mansfield, Natalie. Your Chemical Science Thesis : An introductory guide to writing up your research project, Royal
Society of Chemistry, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/leicester/detail.action?docID=1186228.
Created from leicester on 2020-03-02 05:19:01.