18/03/2021 Gap Statements « Write Like a Scientist

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Gap Statements

A gap is something that remains to be done or learned in an area of research; it’s a gap in the knowledge of
the scientists in the ield of research of your study. Every research project must, in some way, address a gap–
that is, attempt to ill in some piece of information missing in the scienti ic literature. Otherwise, it is not novel
research and is therefore not contributing to the overall goals of science.

Identify the gap.

A gap statement is found in the Introduction section of a journal article or poster or in the Goals and
Importance section of a research proposal and succinctly identi ies for your audience the gap that you will
attempt to address in your project.

A gap might be a lack of understanding about how well a particular instrument works in a certain situation. It
could be introducing a new method that needs to be tested. Or it could be that you are studying a whole new
organism, system, or part of a process. Your project may also address multiple gaps, in which case you
should be sure to identify each of them clearly!

In a class, you might not always be studying something brand “new.” But, in most cases, you should still try to
come up with something unique about your project, however small. Talk to your professor about what they
expect for your gap statement if nothing seems to work.

An example gap from Hosaka, Itao, and Kuroda (1995):

“… The relationship between the four damping factors, i.e. internal friction, support loss,
air low force in free space, and squeeze force, has not yet been clari ied, so it is not
obvious which one is dominant in actual microsystems.”

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18/03/2021 Gap Statements « Write Like a Scientist

Here, the authors signal to us that this is a gap because they use the words “has not yet been clari ied.” Other
phrases that might help you identify (or form!) a gap statement are:
…has/have not been… (studied/reported/elucidated)
…is required/needed…
…the key question is/remains…
…it is important to address…

Fill the gap.

Once you identify the gap in the literature, you must tell your audience how you attempt to at least somewhat
address in your project this lack of knowledge or understanding . In a journal article or poster, this is often
done in a new paragraph and should be accomplished in one summary statement, such as:

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of lead on the hepatobiliary
system, especially on the liver and on the gallbladder (adapted from Sipos et al. 2003).

You’ll often ind that the irst sentence of the last paragraph in a paper’s introduction will start somewhat like
this, indicating the gap ill.

Some phrases you can use to indicate your gap

“ ill:”

“We therefore analyzed…”
“In this study, we investigated…”
“Therefore, the goals of this study are…”
“In this paper, we report…”

Remember–always keep your voice professional! Colloquial phrases such as “we looked into” or “we checked
if” should be avoided when introducing your gap ill.

So let’s look at this idea in context by looking at some examples from a couple of types of papers. The gap
statements are underlined; the ills are italicized.

Adapted from Monthioux et al. (2001):

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18/03/2021 Gap Statements « Write Like a Scientist

Though ideally expected to be chemically very stable due to the poor reactivity of the
basal aromatic plane from which SWNTs are built, the question of whether all the
chemicals which are now currently proposed in the literature as purifying, suspending, or
grafting agents for SWNTs actually have a limited effect on the SWNT integrity has to be
addressed. In this paper, we report the investigation of the effects of some commonly used
chemical treatments on SWNT structure by means of high resolution transmission
microscopy (HRTEM). We also report the effect on puri ied SWNTs of an organic solvent,
dimethylformamide, used to tentatively prepare SWNT suspension.

Adapted from Zhang, Dawes, and Walker (2001):

Milly’s work recognized the importance of storage capacity of the root zone in controlling
evapotranspiration and has the postential for assessing the catchment-scale response of
vegetation changes. However, the practical application of this model is limited because of
the complex numerical solutions required. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the long-
term impact of vegetation changes on mean annual evapotranspiration at catchment scales
based on data and parameters that are easily measurable at a regional scale.

Adapted from Lecoanet, Bottero, and Wiesner (2004):

A risk assessment of the potential impacts on health and environment that the
production, use, and disposal of nanomaterials may engender requires information
concerning both the potential for exposure to a given material and its (once exposed)
potential impacts such as toxicity or mutagenicity. In this work, we address the issue of
nanomaterial exposure and transport in experiments designed to assess their potential for
migration in porous media such as groundwater aquifers and water treatment plant ilters.

In the second and third examples, the gap may be a little less obvious–it doesn’t use any phrases to signal to
you that there’s something missing, such as “has not been clari ied” or “have not been reported.” But because
of the way the paragraph is laid out–following the conventions of our move structures–we can see that the
underlined section of text is indeed the missing information in the literature that the group sought to address
in their project.

Test yourself

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18/03/2021 Gap Statements « Write Like a Scientist

Practice exercise

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