Lecture general characteristics

2. Structure of the Paper 

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A scientific article is aimed to convey information or to report on a scientific 
discovery. An article should be preceded by a structured summary with the following 
sections: introduction (stating the problem and the purpose of the study), methods, 
results (very concise), and conclusion (very concise). The majority of natural science 
journals use the IMRAD organization structure for their articles: Introduction, 
Methods, Results, and Discussion. Each section should contain the following 
information: 
1.1. Introduction 
Introduction: 1. Description of the significance of the study (providing 
background facts and information and stating the problem area of research). 2. How 
well this problem has been studied previously. 3. Novelty of the research 
(description of the problem that will be solved in the article; hypothesis that will be 
confirmed/disproved). 4. Purpose. 5. Description of the work. 
1.2. Methods 
Methods: 1. An overview of the materials/methods used. 2. Specifics of the 
materials and methods (number, accuracy, temperature, duration of the experiment, 
order of steps, and size of the samples as well as how and why they were selected). 
3. Comparison of the study’s materials and methods with those applied by other 
researchers (optional). 4. The encountered difficulties and problems that other 
researchers can be faced with while reproducing the experiment (optional). 
1.3. Results 
Results: 1. A general overview of the results. 2. The main results with 
explanations. 3. Their comparison with the results of similar studies/predicted results 
(optional). 4. The encountered difficulties/negative results (optional). 5. Preliminary 
conclusions based on the results. 
At this stage, the author organizes the statistical data obtained; there should 
be no subjective statements or contextual analysis; the information is presented in 
tables and graphs, while the most important results are described in verbal form.