Abstract

An abstract should give a full summary of your experiment, from related research in your field to your results, conclusions, and applications. You will focus on the bulk of your research, giving an assortment of important points from the different sections of your paper. Because your abstract is an overview, it will probably be the last part of the paper you will write. Make sure to include the following content in your abstract.

1. Relate your work to the field. You probably did extensive literary research before you started playing mad scientist. Discuss how your research will fit into the context of your peers’ research and give information essential to understanding the experiment that is not commonly known within the community.
2. State the purpose of your experiment. People are looking at your abstract to determine whether or not your work is related to their research. You’ll want to make sure that you’ve given them a clear idea of your purpose. If they use your ideas, you’ll be cited and gain credibility.
3. Describe your procedure. Give a general overview of the most important methods you used to perform your experiment. Try to minimize this to one or two sentences.
4. Summarize your results. Scientific writing should not be a mystery. Your peers want to know the details of your findings. You already did the detective work; at this point, you’re explaining the numbers and figures.
5. State your conclusions. Feel free to “toot your own horn” and show the community how important your research is by discussing the implications of your work. Remember, conclusions and results are two different things. Results are your numerical data and the trends you find within that data; your conclusions are the big picture effects that these data and trends will have on your field.

Introduction

Before you blindfold yourself and step in front of the firing squad, take control of your writing and focus on the problem. The introduction should quickly narrow the breadth of your subject area to a specific topic, logically leading your reader to the gaps you found in the general understanding of the topic and following with the answers you found to fill those gaps.

1. Relate your research to previous research. You will want to introduce your topic by indirectly showing your reader how you arrived at your topic. It is important that you don’t begin with a vague, broad sentence. For instance, if you’re working with DNA, you won’t want to begin by talking about Watson and Crick or stating that DNA is crucial to life processes. The DNA discussion has greatly evolved since the discovery of its significance, shape, and replication processes. Your research will be focused on one small part of a huge body of research. Therefore, you want to relate your research to more local ideas. In doing so, your writing will move quickly and maintain focus.
2. State the problem and objective. Here you will tell your reader what you did and why you did it. In relating your research to previous research, you should be able to create a smooth transition into your problem.
3. Briefly discuss your results and conclusions. You may start feeling like you’re repeating yourself because you’re constantly dredging up your results and conclusions. Well, to some extent, you are repeating yourself. This is the most important part of your research, so you want to flash that bling all over the place.

Methods

Now that you’ve got your readers perched on the edges of their seats in anticipation, it’s time to give them the blow by blow account of your action packed bout with science. Unfortunately, the methods section of your paper must be craftily worded, maintaining an appropriate balance between making your experiments replicable and respecting the familiarity of your audience with lab techniques.

When writing your methods, it is best to leave out numerical details (unless absolutely necessary) and gloss over commonly used, well-known procedures, referring to them by their common names rather than the details of their performance. This is especially true if you used kits, which can simply be referenced by name and serial number.

When writing, focus on the most important aspects of your experiments. What made your work unique? What procedures cannot be changed without getting different results? What procedure led to your most important results?

1. Review literature in your field or in the journal you’re submitting to for formatting ideas. This will give you a sense of what is expected from your writing and an idea of what aspects of experimentation should be elaborate or curt.
2. Review your lab book and make an outline of your procedures. This will help you lump together procedures so your methods read fluidly. For instance, you can probably talk about ion exchange and size exclusion chromatography in the same section of your methods.
3. Remember your audience. It is highly likely that your audience will be in your field and familiar with the techniques you used. Don’t waste their time with unnecessary details about your experiment. Unless the purpose of your experiment was to improve a technique, you’ll want to focus on the general aspects of your experiment. Be discriminate in your choice of details, making your writing as concise as possible.

Results

It’s now time to create the beauty and majesty that will be your results section. The results section should contain explanations of your findings and apparent trends within those findings. You’ll want to limit the amount of numerical data you include within your writing itself; if numerical data are necessary, you can include it in a table. For visual representations of trends, include graphs.

1. Give a brief overview of your methods. This will give context to your results and allow you to easily introduce them. For example, “Optimal enzyme pH was determined through variable addition of strong acid to a buffered solution. Analysis of substrate concentration after addition of the enzyme showed…”
2. Make your information bite sized. Don’t overwhelm your reader with information. Pick out the most important aspects of your results and include more elaborate information in an appropriate figure.
3. Point out trends. This will be essential to transitioning into your discussion. It displays your analytical skills and will lead you to your conclusions.
4. Include explanations with figures. Each figure you include should have an accompanying explanation that gives the context of the results.