Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Today’s agenda:
1. Did everyone pick a journal and paper?
2. Learn the structure of a scientific paper.
3. The structure and function of the major subunits of the
main body of a scientific paper.
4. Examine the published papers that students chose. How
are they similar and different?
5. Presentations of the objectives of your own individual
study.
A scientific paper is really three (3) separate papers.
This fact is critically important when you set out to
write a paper, or to read one.
Although,
in Title: Fishing for readers
published
form, the
title comes Abstract: The “Reader’s
first and the Digest” version
abstract
second,
they are
nearly The body of the paper:
always the The whole story
last to be
written
What to write first?
Much better:
The overall goal of the study was to test the hypothesis that
habitat complexity was positively correlated with fish species
diversity and density. Specifically, we sampled the fish
community and physical features in two habitat units in each
of three reaches of stream and also measured the micro-
habitat features where fish were caught. These data were
used to. . . .
Materials and Methods (or just Methods)