Continuing our discussion from last week, I would like to introduce the main parts of a published scientific article.
There are seven parts to a typical scientific journal article.
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Materials and methods section
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- References
Abstract
An abstract provides a short summary of the article. This short summary will include the purpose of the study and results.
Introduction
The introduction provides the reason or motivation for the study.
Materials and Methods
This section describes the setting, design, data collection, and analysis of the study.
Results
In this section the author’s describe the study population and results.
Discussion
This section provides the scientific interpretation of the results in the context of other scientific research and a discussion of the limitations of the study.
Conclusions
Usually contain recommendations for further study.
References
This section contains the references for the scientific facts the author’s use in their article.