Steps to write a journal article

A Step-by-Step Guide for Non-Scientists To form a truly educated opinion on a scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that field. And to be able to distinguish between good and bad interpretations of research, you have to be willing and able to read the primary research literature for yourself. Reading and understanding research papers is a skill that every single doctor and scientist has had to learn during graduate school.

If that sounds crazy, bear with me. Then they write the literature review, work through their material, and write a conclusion. The result of this is often that the conclusions that get written are very narrowly focused and the introductions are vapid — too many generalities in both.

Tackling a conclusion at the outset can give you a clear sense of your intended audience and the material you plan to cover in the article. Briefly overview them with an eye toward summarizing them and how they relate to your argument.

Taken together, this should be about a paragraph or two — not much more than a page of double-spaced text. I find it useful to think very practically about the scholars in the field who might be interested in the case.

Consider a person or set of people as the focus for each of these paragraphs and answer for them why they should find the case generative to think through.

How to Write a Journal Article Review APA Style | Pen and the Pad

And it can work well to scale up, so start with the most immediate, empirical body of literature and move up to more theoretical concerns.

For the first of these paragraphs, consider: What does your evidence help to show that extends the conversation about the topic or the field? If not, what does including your area of interest do to the subfield or study of a geographical place? The succeeding paragraphs should extend your contributions to more abstract fields.

And then, building out from there, I might write a paragraph about a more macro-level theoretical concept, say biopolitics, subjectivity, phenomenology, neoliberalism, etc.

Pick a few that are immediately relevant to the mission of the journal and focus your efforts there. Generally, the last paragraphs of conclusions are the most far-reaching in their intent, often making suggestions about how your case and the insights it provides might affect the discipline more generally.

I always find this the hardest paragraph to write, in part because it depends on imagining a reader who is fairly alien to me. But if you can make your work relevant to that person — someone fundamentally disinterested in your case — then you have a pretty successful argument.

How to Review a Journal Article: 13 Steps (with Pictures)

This should be a clarifying exercise. You can read about Step 3 here.How to Write a Journal Article In my writing workbook, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success, I take you through all the steps to revising a classroom paper, conference paper, or thesis chapter into a peer-reviewed journal article that you send to a journal.

If your article was rejected, it is still useful to analyse feedback, work out why and revise it for somewhere else. Most feedback will help you improve your paper and, perhaps, your journal article writing, but sometimes it may seem overheated, personalised or even vindictive.

Some of it may even seem unprofessional. Jun 18,  · Also take note of the journal in which it's published. Be cautious of articles from questionable journals, or sites like Natural News, that might .

There is no single correct way to write an academic article. While the framework, principles and examples presented here are based on articles that have appeared in leading An academic journal article in which the findings of quantitative research are reported will typically have the structure outlined in Table 1.

Despite such idiosyncrasies, knowing a few things about the purposes and format of a journal article will help you get published. You should understand the function of each section and write accordingly. May 20,  · How to Write a Journal Article (in 6 Steps): Step 5 — The Introduction & Argument academic articles, academic publishing, academic writing, anthropology, argumentation, argumentative structure, ethnography, literature review, social science writing.