Notes on paper writing
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The preface of a paper mainly describes the background, objective, ideas, and theoretical references of the research. Sometimes the detailed period of the research should be specified. The preface should be direct, concise, clear, avoiding stereotype, empty words. Too broad discussion and elaborated history and literature description should also be avoided. Do not mention the statistical data and conclusions in the preface. Do not be identical with the abstract. Avoid using the description such as “no report home and aboard is found” or self-evaluation such as “reaching the XX level” or “filling XX gaps”. The preface usually does not need a title. It should not exceed 250 words. For short papers, a small paragraph can be used to act as the preface.

Methods mainly introduce the subject (human or experimental animals, including the control group) selection and basic data, as well as the adopted methods in the research and indexes for observation. The common titles are “Material and Methods”, “Object and Methods”, “Data and Method”.

The clinical research should describe the source of cases and controls, selection standard, age, gender and other important character of the subjects, indicating the informed consent from the subjects involved. The random control group should explain the intervention method (random method) and blind method. The experimental animals should indicate the name, varieties and species, grades, numbers, sources, gender, age, weight, feeding condition, health status, etc. 

Individual-created method should be specified in the Method part for reduplication. The improved method should explain the improvement in detail and give the source of the original method by quoting references. If the method is used intact, only references should be quoted without any detailed description.

Drugs and reagents should use their chemical names, with indication of dosage, unit, purity, batch number, manufacturer, production time. Instrument and devices should indicate the name, model, specification, manufacturer, degree of precision, range of errors. The description of working principles is not needed. Statistical analysis method and selection references should be explained in the statistic treatment. 

The description of results should be objective, real, concise, clearly-arranged and logic, and not be fixed with the discussion part. If graphs and tables are used, all the data need not be repeated in the text, but the main findings and data from the graphs and table can be stated. Data in the graphs and tables should be carefully checked in the text to ensure accuracy and conformity. Statistic analysis should indicate the statistic methods, statistic values, while the P values alone can not reflect the important quantitative information.

The discussion part is an indispensable part in the manuscript, where relevant references can be quoted to demonstrate the research objective and experiment results, and put forward the author’s argument, which should be objective and reasonable and focuses on the theme without exaggeration or deviation. The deficiency of the research and further work plan at the next stage can also be elaborated in the discussion part. Usually graphs and tables are not present in the discussion part.

 

Published date:2013-02-13Click:

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