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Should All Research Papers Be Free?

By Kate Murphy

• March 12, 2016

DRAWING comparisons to Edward Snowden , a graduate student from Kazakhstan named Alexandra Elbakyan is believed to be hiding out in Russia after illegally leaking millions of documents. While she didn’t reveal state secrets, she took a stand for the public’s right to know by providing free online access to just about every scientific paper ever published, on topics ranging from acoustics to zymology.

Her protest against scholarly journals’ paywalls has earned her rock-star status among advocates for open access, and has shined a light on how scientific findings that could inform personal and public policy decisions on matters as consequential as health care, economics and the environment are often prohibitively expensive to read and impossible to aggregate and datamine.

“Realistically only scientists at really big, well-funded universities in the developed world have full access to published research,” said Michael Eisen , a professor of genetics, genomics and development at the University of California, Berkeley, and a longtime champion of open access. “The current system slows science by slowing communication of work, slows it by limiting the number of people who can access information and quashes the ability to do the kind of data analysis” that is possible when articles aren’t “sitting on various siloed databases.”

Journal publishers collectively earned $10 billion last year, much of it from research libraries, which pay annual subscription fees ranging from $2,000 to $35,000 per title if they don’t buy subscriptions of bundled titles, which cost millions. The largest companies, like Elsevier , Taylor & Francis , Springer and Wiley , typically have profit margins of over 30 percent , which they say is justified because they are curators of research, selecting only the most worthy papers for publication. Moreover, they orchestrate the vetting, editing and archiving of articles.

That is the argument Elsevier made, supported by a raft of industry amicus briefs, when it filed suit against Ms. Elbakyan, resulting in an injunction last fall against her file-sharing website, Sci-Hub . “It’s as if somehow stealing content is justifiable if it’s seen as expensive, and I find that surprising,” said Alicia Wise, director of universal access at Elsevier. “It’s not as if you’d walk into a grocery store and feel vindicated about stealing an organic chocolate bar as long as you left the Kit Kat bar on the shelf.”

But since a federal court order isn’t enforceable in Russia (Ms. Elbakyan won’t confirm where she is exactly), much less on the Internet, Sci-Hub continues to deliver hundreds of thousands of journal articles per day to a total of 10 million visitors. In an email exchange, Ms. Elbakyan said her motivations were both practical — she needs articles to do her own academic research — and philosophical. She views the Internet as a “global brain,” and because paywalls inhibit the free flow of information, they prevent humanity from being fully “conscious.” The next court date on the matter is March 17.

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Why Isn't Academic Research Free to Everyone?

Scholarly articles, filled with indubitable knowledge and analysis, only exist for the general public behind pricey paywalls. So one lecturer is advocating for them to be free of charge.

A blurb below the search bar on Google Scholar tells you to "stand on the shoulders of giants." The giants in question here are academic writers, and Google Scholar does provide searchable access to essays on a dizzying array of topics, from governance in post-genocide Rwanda to the ethics of using polygraph tests on juveniles. Except for one problem: Most of these articles are paywalled. You need to have university access to read them—or else pay what’s often a substantial fee. Martin Paul Eve , a lecturer at the University of Lincoln’s School of English & Journalism in the United Kingdom, wants to change that. In his book Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies, and the Future , he explains why, and how, research in the humanities should be publicly available for free. Eve spoke to me about his recent book, copyright laws, and why plagiarism isn’t a major concern.

Noah Berlatsky: Why should academic articles be available for free? Why shouldn't academic writers have the same copyright protection as other writers?

Martin Paul Eve: We've spent a long time building mechanisms within the academy that aim to free researchers from the demands of market populism. In other words: Researchers are, in the theoretical ideal model (although the growth of precarious adjunct labor undermines it), paid a salary to produce work. They do not need to sell thousands of copies to earn a living.

This gives academics freedom of enquiry. They don't have to research things that will only sell. They can afford to (and they do) give away their work for free. The desire is to be read and valued so that one can get an academic post, get tenure, get promoted, etc. Copyright, on the other hand, is a time-limited monopoly on the right to sell the result of intellectual labor. Because academics do not need to sell their work, they also don't need the economic protections of copyright. Publishers do (if they sell work) but academics don't.

What academics want is reputational protection. They want to be cited. Open licensing provides a way in which academics can let others use their work more liberally than if it were covered totally by copyright but always with the demand for attribution, which fuels their systems of prestige, hiring, etc.

We designed a system to free academics from the market. We then came up with a model for research dissemination that entailed selling work (i.e., is market based).

Berlatsky: You point out that the sciences have many more free or un-paywalled journals than the humanities. Is that because there's more of a public and business interest in scientific research? And I guess more broadly, is there really enough interest outside the academy in humanities work to make free access much of an issue one way or the other? Eve: To the first question: perhaps. There's definitely a drive by center-right governments to open up scientific research so that it can be commercially exploited. It's far harder to envisage what such commercial exploitation of humanities research might look like (although the "cultural industries" are all sites of external value extraction).

On the second point: I think there is enough interest outside the academy, but that is only half of the story. For the public: We claim that the humanities have value in a democracy for the ability to spur critical thinking in the liberal humanist tradition. I can't see how the university can fulfill that role if people come to university for three years [or four years in the U.S.] and are then kicked out without access. [Large portions] of the population now have humanities degrees and enjoyed their time studying. There isn't ready exposure in the wider world to the work, though, for them to continue this at the moment. Even if you don't buy that line, though, open access is not just about the public. The cost of subscribing to all research journals needed has risen by 300 percent above inflation since 1986 while academic library budgets have only risen by 79 percent total. This means that even Harvard has cancelled subscriptions on the basis of price. Some publishers make a great deal of profit from this. So, going back to my original point, we now have a system where researchers are free to investigate what they like—independent of the market—but they disseminate through channels that frequently deny their fellow researchers access to material for market-based reasons.

Berlatsky: You talk about various methods for funding journals if paywalls are taken away, including having authors pay a substantial fee (which is done in the sciences, where the fees are usually paid for from the author's grants). I wonder though … why don't universities have more money to subsidize their presses? Tuition fees are skyrocketing, the use of cheaper adjunct faculty is on the rise. It seems like universities should have a ton of money. Are university presses just not a very big priority?

Eve: You are right (although this situation of tuition fees is not the case worldwide: Germany has just reverted to a fully state-funded solution, for instance). University presses are often not seen as a priority, though, from an administration point of view.

From their perspective the options look like this: 1) We can pile loads of money into our (new?) press to subsidize production while also paying for access to all the other work our researchers need or 2) We can not pay for the press and instead just pay for access to all the other work our researchers need.

In other words, it looks to administrators like an additional cost rather than part of a systematic attempt to change the culture and fix what is essentially an unsustainable system.

Some universities are very rich. It is a mistake, though, to universally categorize them as such. Many institutions worldwide—certainly in the U.K.—are balanced precariously and even if they understand the transformation that might be made by funding scholarly communications from the supply side, they struggle to find the cash-in-hand to fund enterprises like university presses that could change it.

Berlatsky: In your book you argue that academic articles and books should not just be free, but should be available for republication by anyone, or even available for partial reuse. What sort of reuse are you envisioning? And couldn't there be a problem with plagiarism?

Eve: The current system of fair use is being read in increasingly restricted terms. For instance, using an epigraph from another academic's work is now disallowed by some publishers.

We also cannot distribute repographically produced copies of work for teaching, even within the university, without a (paid-for) license. Likewise, we cannot re-write research articles and reproduce them on Wikipedia without extensive changes, lowering the public reach of our work. We cannot translate work into other languages, even where no commercial translation exists or will exist … The list goes on. I don't think that plagiarism is so much of a concern. Plagiarism specifically means passing off someone else's work as your own. All of the licenses that have been suggested explicitly state that re-used work must be credited to the original author (without implying endorsement). Beyond that, we also have institutional sanctions. If another academic re-used my work without citing me, he or she would likely lose his or her post.

Berlatsky: One way in which academics can make their work free is by sharing their expertise through blog posts, or for that matter through Twitter. If there are barriers to making academic papers available, would informal avenues be one way for academics to get their work and ideas out? Or what are the limitations of that option?

Eve: I am very much in favor of broader dissemination through blogging and social media. It's a great way to spread the word and the conversations that ensue are usually excellent. However, it doesn't come with the reputational returns that academics usually want and is seen as an "add-on" that has to be done amid an academic's already-busy schedule. In other words: The social structures of the academy don't reward it as an activity—and that's often very hard to change.

It's also worth saying that activities such as these do not help the academy fix the budgetary crisis of [its] libraries. To alter that, a more radical solution is needed.

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Scientific Publishing Can’t Be Free

Sarah Zielinski

Every couple of years, it seems, there's an uproar over the cost of scientific journals. This time it's the University of California system objecting to a rate hike for access to journals from the Nature Publishing Group. In the past, it was people objecting to paying for articles in medical journals when the research was funded by the government. The papers are written by scientists and peer reviewers are volunteers, they'll say, so why should we pay for access? And aren't there lots of journals that are open access, free to everyone? Why can't they all be like that?

I can't really say whether the U.C. rate hike is too much or if they're getting a fair deal, but I can at least make one statement: scientific journals can't be free.

I'm not being mean or elitist. I'm just being frank. I've worked for a medical journal run by a non-profit publisher and for a scientific organization that publishes a number of journals, so I can tell you that there's a lot more to publishing a paper in a scientific journal (especially in a journal like Science or Nature ) than meets the eye.

Yes, the raw material is free, and peer reviewers are volunteers. But this ignores every other part of the publishing process. Simply going through the submissions to determine what is appropriate to send on to peer review requires paid employees. Internet-based systems for submission and managing peer review cost money to develop and maintain. Editors at some journals do extensive editing to ensure their papers are comprehensible and nothing important has been missed. Copyeditors focus on spelling, punctuation and grammar in the text, often fixing the really embarrassing errors (like leaving the "l" out of "public health"). If the journal is printed, art and production staff are needed. Web staff get everything online and make sure it stays there. And if there's a news section to a journal, there are reporters and editors to pay.

If we want a system in which science is peer reviewed and papers are understandable, we need all of these extra bits. Open access journals aren't an exception: while free to read, they are not free to produce. The cost is simply shifted to researchers who pay money up front to publish (which may impede young researchers and scientists in developing countries from publishing in these journals), money that came out of grants that may have been funded by taxpayer dollars.

Unlike mass media publishing, scientific journals only get a small amount, if anything, from selling advertising space in their pages or on their web sites. Journals have a small readership compared with, say, the New York Times , which means fewer ad dollars. And they have to contend with the issue of bias: For example, how trustworthy would a medical journal be if it was funded primarily by pharmaceutical ad money? This means that the cost of producing these papers gets passed on to a tiny number of readers who, thus, each have to pay a lot more for a subscription than they do for their daily newspaper.

"Information wants to be free" has become a slogan of our Internet Age, but we're forgetting the second half of the quotation: "Information also wants to be expensive." We've gotten so used to having instant, free access to information that we've forgotten that high quality information comes with a price. If we want that quality, we have to pay for it.

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Sarah Zielinski | | READ MORE

Sarah Zielinski is an award-winning science writer and editor. She is a contributing writer in science for Smithsonian.com and blogs at Wild Things, which appears on Science News.

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• 24 October 2022

COVID research is free to access — but for how long?

• Richard Van Noorden

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific journals rushed to make related research free to read — temporarily, at least. Work on the disease or the virus SARS-CoV-2 would be free “at least for the duration of the outbreak”, publishers of subscription journals declared in a statement issued on 31 January 2020, the day after the World Health Organization declared the new coronavirus outbreak a ‘public-health emergency of international concern’, or PHEIC.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03418-9

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• Future Perfect

Tearing down the academic research paywall could come with a price

Why hide taxpayer-funded research behind paywalls? It’s complicated.

by Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg

Right now, the majority of published scientific findings — and the vast majority of prestigious new research — is hidden behind paywalls. Most of the top scientific publications charge readers high fees for access, with prices that are rising faster than inflation . An annual membership with Nature costs $199, Science starts at $79 per year , and The Lancet charges $227. And these are only a few of the hundreds of journals where new research appears.

This money goes to publishers, not to the academics who actually write scientific papers. And while some top journals do give researchers the option to make their submission free to read, they do this by reversing their fee structure, putting the burden on the author instead.

Nature, for example, charges authors not affiliated with institutions roughly $9,500 to display a paper without the paywall. Given that grant-funded research is already far from profitable for the researchers themselves, this is a significant hurdle that disproportionately hits junior academics and those from lower-income countries.

But in a bid to tear down the paywall and make science more accessible to all, the White House last month announced new guidelines requiring that all taxpayer-funded research, including data used for a study, be made public at no cost by the end of 2025.

The Biden plan is one of the biggest wins yet for the “ open science ” movement. In practice, it often refers to publishing the papers that describe new scientific findings immediately and without paywalls. It can also include publicly sharing full datasets and code used for analysis.

The movement toward transparency and open-access science began with 1990s activism , and reached the White House in 2013 during the Obama administration, having been a force in US politics as early as 2007 . Biden’s interest in open science predates his presidency; in 2016, he remarked that “taxpayers fund $5 billion a year in cancer research every year, but once it’s published, nearly all of that taxpayer-funded research sits behind walls.”

There’s a straightforward argument behind making publicly funded research available: Taxpayers are already paying to fund a study, so why should they also have to pay a fee to a journal to see the results? The hope is that making the latest data and research findings freely available will let scientists and entrepreneurs build more quickly on new discoveries, and members of the public will have a more accurate sense of the state of scientific knowledge.

But despite decades of advocacy for “open science,” the idea is far from universally accepted — and there isn’t even a consistent definition of what it means.

The origins of “open science”

The push for open science — and the pushback — didn’t begin with the US, and past international efforts can hint at how the new guidelines are likely to play out.

In 2018, Robert-Jan Smits , who was then a senior adviser for open access and innovation at the European Political Strategy Centre , founded a movement to open up access to science, taking advantage of growing support in Europe. He recruited a number of influential funders to require that grant recipients make their research public, even though it was a radical departure from the previous paywall-based European standards for academic publication .

In their recently published, free-to-download book, Plan S for Shock , Smits and co-author Rachael Pells argue that science will be more successful as an international, collaborative effort, but that currently, scientists in poorer countries are shut out by high access fees. For society to reap the full benefit of new discoveries, the results need to be available to everyone, not just academics.

While open-access papers show a small if inconsistent increase in citations from other scientists, compared to paywalled research, this massively understates the real impact: A Dutch survey by Springer Nature found that 40% of visitors to their open-access site weren’t academics, and simply had personal or professional interest in a topic.

Under Plan S , which went into effect in 2021 in 12 European countries, scientists receiving grant money from an affiliated funder would, as a condition of that funding, make their findings open access . They could post to a free public repository , like Zenodo and arXiv , or pay a fee to a conventional journal. Universities would often negotiate deals directly with publishers to cover these fees, while some funders introduced their own programs to cover submission fees for research they funded.

Biden’s new plan will have similar requirements, but applied to the huge number of researchers and universities that receive funding from the US federal government, which covers almost 400 different organizations and agencies . The transition is set to be complete by the end of 2025.

Why some want science closed

Freeing research largely paid for by taxpayer money can seem like a no-brainer, but over time, the potential downsides of open science efforts like the Plan S mandate have become more apparent. While pay-to-publish but free-to-read platforms bring more research to the public, they can add barriers for researchers and worsen some existing inequalities in academia. Scientific publishing will remain a for-profit industry and a highly lucrative one for publishers. Shifting the fees onto authors doesn’t change this.

Many of the newly founded open-access journals drop the fees entirely, but even if they’re not trying to make a profit, they still need to cover their operating costs. They fall back on ad revenue , individual donations or philanthropic grants , corporate sponsorship , and even crowdfunding .

But open-access platforms often lack the prestige of well-known top journals like Nature . Scientists early in their careers — as well as those at less wealthy universities in low-income countries — often rely on precarious, short-term grant funding to carry out their research. Their career depends on putting out an impressive publication record , which is already an uphill battle .

The established journals are reluctant to commit to open access, since submission fees may deter potential researchers from sending in their work. And if journals don’t charge submission fees or reader subscriptions, they’ll have to turn to other sources of income, which may be unsustainable in the long run.

There are other ways that the open science movement might fail to live up to the optimistic claims of its advocates. So far, the movement is focused on publicly funded science; corporate R&D and privately funded research are exempt from the mandate. While supporting commercial innovation and entrepreneurship is one of the Biden administration’s explicit goals, some groups are concerned that the “commercialization” of science will actually reduce transparency, and that financial conflicts of interest in commercially funded research will lead to biased studies .

The open science movement’s influence is growing thanks to projects like Plan S, but exactly how far it reaches now is hard to measure. Their coalition of funders backed 200,000 new studies in 2020, making up 12% of articles in the most-cited journals.

The White House guidelines will massively boost adoption — the US government funded 195,000 to 263,000 studies in 2020 — but likely won’t be enough to shift the world of scientific publishing toward a new, more accessible paradigm. If science is really meant to serve the public interest, it should be in the public interest to make it available.

A version of this story was initially published in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to subscribe!

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Did you know: google scholar now informs if publication should be free.

In a recent Nature news q&a article,  Do you obey public-access mandates? Google Scholar is watching , Google Scholar search-engine co-founder Anurag Acharya explained why the search-engine now tracks research papers that are non-compliant with funders' public access mandates.  A Google Scholar profile now shows how many of the scientist's papers should be free to access because of sponsor requirements and the number that are non-compliant.  Google Scholar also offers a way to make non-compliant papers accessible by uploading them into their Google drive. Although Acharya's reasoning runs parallel with the thoughts of sponsors, such as the NIH and NSF, directives and policies on making funded research and the results publicly available, he does not address the roadblocks that many researchers encounter when attempting to bring a non-compliant paper into compliance.  This includes which version of the manuscript to upload, checking on publisher embargos set forth in the publishing agreement and others. 

The service also does not check to see if the article has an open-access license or whether it is peer-reviewed.  Acharya admits the focus for this change is to focus solely on if there is a public version of the article available and inform the researcher through their profile if there are non-compliant papers.

Some researchers such as Michael Schatz, Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Computer Science and Biology at Johns Hopkins University, tweeted that he feels this new feature is a “ wall of shame ”  and the paper he was called on was actually available in a couple of free versions.  Mick Watson, Professor of bioinformatics at University of Edinburgh says the tab is terrible and flawed , pointing out that the paper identified as “not available”, was completely available through Open Access.

Bottom line, as always when using Google Scholar, which is free with unfettered use and loose controls on input, researchers should be careful about the information attached to their profiles and doublecheck the accuracy often.

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New York Times commentary argues that all research papers should be free

The headline for a 13 March New York Times Sunday Review article took the form of an open question: “Should all research papers be free?” The Times classified it as a “news analysis.” But in fact the almost impassioned opinion piece urges universal open access to scientific publications.

Author Kate Murphy, a Houston journalist who writes frequently for the Times , opens by praising graduate student Alexandra Elbakyan from Kazakhstan. Elbakyan “is believed to be hiding out in Russia after illegally leaking millions of documents,” thereby—as Murphy puts it—taking “a stand for the public’s right to know by providing free online access to just about every scientific paper ever published.”

The RT network, which calls itself “three global news channels broadcasting in English, Arabic and Spanish,” calls Elbakyan the “Robin Hood neuroscientist” behind the “Sci-Hub research-pirate site,” which in turn calls itself first “in the world to provide mass & public access to research papers.”

Murphy’s praise of Elbakyan continues:

Her protest against scholarly journals’ paywalls has earned her rock-star status among advocates for open access, and has shined a light on how scientific findings that could inform personal and public policy decisions on matters as consequential as health care, economics and the environment are often prohibitively expensive to read and impossible to aggregate and datamine.

The commentary invokes the views of the ardent open-access advocate Michael Eisen , the Berkeley biologist who cofounded the Public Library of Science . Murphy quotes him, including with this: “The real people to blame are the leaders of the scientific community—Nobel scientists, heads of institutions, the presidents of universities—who are in a position to change things but have never faced up to this problem in part because they are beneficiaries of the system.”

She scants consideration of not-for-profit scientific publishers like the American Institute of Physics (AIP), but strongly criticizes for-profit publishers:

Journal publishers collectively earned $10 billion last year, much of it from research libraries, which pay annual subscription fees ranging from $2,000 to $35,000 per title if they don’t buy subscriptions of bundled titles, which cost millions. The largest companies, like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer and Wiley, typically have profit margins of over 30 percent, which they say is justified because they are curators of research, selecting only the most worthy papers for publication. Moreover, they orchestrate the vetting, editing and archiving of articles.

In that final sentence, Murphy briefly acknowledges that whether or not open access can or should be made free, it’s not costless. She briefly acknowledges that reality at one other point when, concerning the author-pays approach, she reports that “that financial model requires authors to pay a processing charge that can run anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 per article so the publisher can recoup its costs.”

She quotes an industry spokeswoman who denounces the theft of content. She also quotes Peter Suber, Harvard’s director of the office of scholarly communication, about libraries’ journal subscriptions: “The prices have been rising twice as fast as the price of health care over the past 20 years, so there’s a real scandal there to be exposed.”

The opinion piece touches on measures being taken to widen access to scientific publications:

Private funders such as the Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have ... begun making grants contingent on open access to resulting articles, as well as possibly to the underlying data. Researchers in some disciplines, such as physics and mathematics, have started open access journals to protest journal publishers’ paywalls or have formed consortiums that will cover the fees publishers charge authors to make their work open access.

Murphy explicitly alludes to the existence of publishers that aren’t for-profit companies:

“We are starting to see a shift to an era of experimentation and implementation on how open access can work,” said David Crotty, editorial director for journals policy at the nonprofit Oxford University Press , which has been moving toward exclusively open access formats when starting new journals.

Murphy also mentions a federal “ directive requiring agencies that make more than $100 million in research grants to develop plans so that recipients release their findings to the public within a year of publication.” She means the 22 February 2013 memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies by John P. Holdren, the presidential science adviser who heads the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

But she doesn’t mention the progress that has ensued by and among multiple stakeholders, as reported and analyzed recently in an online essay at the Scholarly Kitchen by Fred Dylla, AIP executive director emeritus. Dylla included what he called a “bottom line” paragraph:

So three years out from the directive, 1) public access policy is in place for 98% of the research funding from US federal agencies starting in the last year, 2) a robust article identification system is in place from Crossref that is already tracking more than 11,000 funding agencies worldwide, 3) CHORUS , a public-private partnership, is actively assisting the agencies with implementing their public access plans, 4) TDM [text- and data-mining] solutions are beginning to appear, and 5) agencies, supported by various stakeholders, are making some headway on data management.

Dylla called these results “remarkable, given the slow pace of government, the large number of stakeholders and the complex systems involved.” He added, “It is difficult to find other examples where the US Congress, the Administration, and the private sector worked in concert to get something done that is so helpful to so many citizens in just three years.” (On 22 March, he will host a free webinar with Q&A, “Building bridges in the scholarly publishing community.” Disclosure: I worked for and with the now-sort-of-retired Dylla for a quarter century.)

Murphy reports that Harvard’s Suber doesn’t condone Elbakyan’s “guerrilla tactics” and that he warned, “Unlawful access gives open access a bad name.” But she never squares those concerns with what she offers at the end, where she boosts Elbakyan’s claim that support is to be found even in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Until the system changes, Ms. Elbakyan said she would continue to distribute journal articles to whoever wants them. Paraphrasing part of the United Nations Charter, she said, “Everyone has the right to freely share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and was a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.

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Should All Research Papers Be Free? (nytimes.com) 191 --> 191

Should all research papers be free more login, should all research papers be free.

• Informative
• Interesting

Public money, public papers ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

Most academic papers are published with financial support from federal funding agencies. Too bad publishing academic papers is a private industry with a profit motive to keep you from accessing them. Swartz died over this.

Every One ( Score: 3 , Interesting)

Most? Almost every one in the country. Schools are funded by tuition and tuition is primary sponsored by MASSIVE government loans that basically allow schools to set tuition for students at any price, on government credit. Part of the school budget should be used to fund journals.

Re:Every One ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

If federal funds helped to pay for the paper, why isn't it publicly available? We (the people) have already paid for the work to be done, we should be able to see the results.

Re:Every One ( Score: 5 , Informative)

Agreed. (I'm a researcher; thanks for the pay!)

In the field of medicine, in the US, federal guidelines now state that any publications based on research funded by the NIH must be publicly available. The journals capitulated, and now make special arrangements if you tick a box during submission saying that you have received NIH funding.

In physics and astronomy, worldwide, almost every paper that is published in a journal is also published by the authors on the free preprint server arxiv.org . The journals don't like researchers making their preprints freely available, but any journal that forbade it would quickly find that no one submitted papers to them any more.

Generally, researchers want their work to be freely available, because they want people to read it. The only obstacle is the journals, and they're losing ground.

Re: ( Score: 3 )

Re: ( score: 2 ).

Good luck with that (really).

The problem with unlike physics, biologists appear to think it doesn't count (and so do the journals) so people will cheerfully try to reproduce your work and publish first. For some unfathomable reason that "counts" more than being the first on the archive.

Until the journals, reviewers and editors fix that attitude, it's never going to take off to the extent that it has in physics.

Free...but we need a system ( Score: 3 )

The older system was "peer review" (different than the current review by a class of Peers) where people like Newton would publish their work as "open letters" that would then be re-printed by journals. The older system that that replaced was where the publishers controlled what got published, and it sucked. That's why Newton and the others were doing it differently.

Now the situation is the same as in Newton's day, but the publishers controlling everything is being called "Peer review" and making it availabl

Public Access requirement ( Score: 5 , Informative)

Most US Federal funding sources require that articles about research they support be available for public access by 12 months after publication. The MIT libraries have a good summary [mit.edu] of the various rules. This includes the biggest funding sources for biomedical research: NIH and DoD.

What seems puzzling about the current situation is that because of features unique to academic publishing (the need for researchers to publish to advance their careers, the sources of funding) there is a fairly straightforward way to pay for open access (at least from within academia).

Under the traditional system, university libraries pay publishers for access to journals. The libraries, in turn, get at least part of their money from "indirect cost" charges from research grants. For those not familiar with that term, it is like a tax that a university (or other research organization) levies on research grants to pay for things that are needed to do research, but not a direct line-item cost included in the grant. For example, the salaries of researchers and research supplies are direct costs. Access to the university library and use of the building that the research is conducted in (and its utilities and maintenance) are indirect costs. Equipment or centralized services (e.g. statistical consulting) may be direct or indirect costs depending on university and the specific grant. Typical indirect cost rates are about 50%, so that if an investigator gets a grant for $200,000 of direct costs, the granting institution will pay the university an additional $100,000 to cover indirect costs.

Another way to route the money would be for publishers to make journals open access, but charge researches to publish articles. Publishing costs would become a direct cost line item on research grants, but the indirect cost rate would decrease since libraries would no longer be paying for access. For the system as a whole, the ultimate origin (granting agencies) and terminus (publishers) of publication costs would remain the same. I suspect there would also be major changes in how the money was distributed between researchers and institutions. For example, one worry about an open access system is that although it would make it easier for less well funded laboratories (either in less prestigious institutions or headed by junior researchers) to do work, there would be a bigger barrier for them to publish because it would cost a lot more than it does now. It would also require more of a commitment from universities to support publication of research that is not funded by grants (e.g. a lot of clinical research).

So my conclusion is that although open access is a viable alternative, changing completely to that model would involve a lot of disruption and would inevitably create winners and losers (both academically and financially) compared to the current model. Resistance on the part of the potential losers and inertia are what is slowing down or holding back the switch.

...the indirect cost rate would decrease...

Indirect rates are already opaque and only vaguely justified, so I really doubt that any change in actual costs would be reflected in the indirect rates. Savings in the library's budget will be offset by an increase in administrative overhead somewhere else. Indirects are more like a tax than anything else, and will only go down if the ability of the university's faculty to acquire grants is harmed too much by their current rates.

What will happen in your situation is that indirects will remain the same and

You are correct that there are journals that both charge to publish (typically called "page fees") and also charge a subscription. In general, those fees are a lot lower than the publication charges at journals that do not charge for subscriptions.

As far as the selectivity, I don't see that as an intrinsic feature of the open access model, but more a reflection of the fact that right now, open access journals are newer. Since it usually takes time to build up the positive feedback loop that gives a journal

The thing is that most federal agencies require "public" data sharing for any grants >500k. The reality is that nobody does it.

hell no! ( Score: 3 )

It depends on what you mean by free. If you mean free to read. Yes definitely. If you mean free to publish in. No definitely not. What I want is far fewer papers to read. People should stop publishing shit and salami science and instead publish definitive accomplishments. Journals serve an enormous purpose when they provide editorial control to reject crap and solicit review articles and collections of alike articles from many people in the same field. The latter encourages reading broadly, and brings

Is the paper a specified deliverable? FOIA? ( Score: 2 )

So here is the thing. If the paper is a deliverable of the Federal contract... meaning that it is something sent to the Federal Government as part of the research grant, then yes absolutely the Federal government should be making those papers available to the public.

Notice I said it was on the Federal government to provide access. Has anyone submitted a FOIA request to the sponsoring agencies for research papers? Those papers could then be put online by whomever.

Fact Check... Re:Public money, public papers ( Score: 2 )

Most academic papers are published with financial support from federal funding agencies. Too bad publishing academic papers is a private industry with a profit motive to keep you from accessing them.

Actually, most publicly funded research is now required to be published in publicly accessible ways:

• NIH public access policy [nih.gov]
• NSF public access policy [nsf.gov]
• DOE public access plan [energy.gov]

Granted, those came in to existence in the past decade or so, which leaves a lot of old papers not covered and subject to the whims of the publisher. Regardless, pretty well every existing research grant in the US from the federal government is now subject to those terms. The big for-profit publishers (think Nature and others) ha

It's not just a moral obligation to make the fruit of public research publicly available, for researchers it is rapidly becoming a matter of survival. As far as I'm concerned, if a research paper is siloed behind a paywall, it doesn't exist. While that's a bit of a black and white attitude that makes some research unavailable to me, the trend is, there's such a huge flood of papers that are freely available that any paywalled bits tend to be covered or soon will be. Sure, there are still lots of disciplines

Not only are many research papers federally funded (at least in part) but many are also funded at the state level. My father's work at Ohio State University is in large part behind paywalls.

Uh ( Score: 3 , Insightful)

Next question.

This practice of holding knowledge + data "hostage" is extremely short-sighted.

Open up EVERYTHING so others can

a) access it, and b) duplicate the data

Play the long-term "advancement of civilization" game, not the short-term greed game.

iIs, Betteridge's law of headlines correct? ( Score: 3 )

Sir you are in violation of Betteridge's Law.

Serious question - why not just publish to public? ( Score: 2 )

Re: ( score: 3 , informative).

lack of peer review

Re: ( Score: 3 , Insightful)

Peer Review isn't all that it is cracked up to be. THE only real review is when peers can actually review the work. Just being published behind a paywall doesn't mean it is reviewed, by anyone.

http://www.natureworldnews.com... [natureworldnews.com]

https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

Give the world access, and the papers will be peer reviewed.

Re:Serious question - why not just publish to publ ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

Non sequitur.

You can't dismiss peer review just because some for-profit publishers failed to ensure it was done.

Re: ( Score: 2 , Insightful)

Sure you can. The "seal of approval" has been diluted. It's like diluting any trademark. Once that trust has been betrayed, then it is rightfully difficult to regain it. It doesn't matter if it's journalism or "science".

The time for separate gatekeepers is at an end. Each contributing entity can publish and vet their own work. We don't have the overhead of dead tree publishing anymore and should jettison the other vestiges of such dinosaurs.

Science is ultimately about reproducible results. Results are defin

It is not the process of peer-review that suffers the dilution. It is the journal that suffers it, for not engaging in proper peer-review in the first place. That was my point.

Define "Proper Peer Review". I can see no more "perfect" review than having the publication made public so that it CAN be reviewed by anyone, and not self appointed gatekeepers of the results.

When I see publications saying "We did the research, and no you can't see it, but here is what it means ... trust us", my Spidey Sense goes off. THAT is not science, it is religion.

Perhaps the solution for Journals then is to actually ensure peer review is happening, and instead of going for exclusivity on all papers being published, focus on the very best papers for the field the journal is attempting to cover. So you're paying the journal good money to review and select exceptionally good papers, from what might end up being a sea of low quality or in many cases, lunatic fringe, papers.

Spam, basically. Journals serve to reduce the amount of bad research / falsified research. It's an uphill battle now, with reviewers, editors, and journals charging. Open access journals typically charge significantly more to publish in.

Note, I'm not defending anyone here. Journals charge a lot, but editors and reviewers work for free (it's an expected responsibility, so you typically can do it during regular working hours).

Mostly they're defending against bad resarch. As someone who has done lots of reviews, I'd say that figuring out maliciously falsified stuff is much, much harder than rejecting plain awful crap. I've encountered one paper once where I reason to suspect some dubious data, but it could have been down to a terrible experimental setup rather than falsification---the experiments were terrible.

It does happen, but peer review is more to check things are running OK if everyone is being reasonably honest (most peopl

What pisses me off is that it is not reciprocated with my papers with some shockling bad reviews.

I know what you mean. I'm nostly on the outside now, so I get asked to review but don't submit. I still review because that's how the system works. I do always try to be fair, but I reject I think most of the papers that cross my desk.

One thing I almost never do is ask for more experiemnts. That's often the sign of a cowardly reviewer: not sure what to say so ask for more experiments by default! One venue I rev

Re:Serious question - why not just publish to publ ( Score: 5 , Informative)

I'm not in academia, but I've published a bunch of (mostly IT security) research to be freely read by the public under my own copyright or the copyright of a company that's hired me. My serious question is: what is to prevent individual researchers from just publishing what they have as a PDF or WordPress article on a random site on the Internet? (e.g. are there rules in their contract that says they can only publish through so-and-so service, who has the copyright of academic research, etc.)

In part, this is what preprint servers like arxiv [arxiv.org] and bioarxiv [biorxiv.org] are for.

However, there are deeper-rooted, cultural issues at play here. Academics are rated on their job performance (for keeping your position, finding tenure-track positions, and later attaining tenure) based upon their peer-reviewed publications. Traditionally, this has meant going through the private, paywalled journals.Likewise, getting grants requires publications in peer-reviewed journals, rather than just posting online.

Now, posting in open access journals (like the PLOS family of journals, PeerJ, etc.) helps here, since at the least the access isn't paywalled. But now the academic / lab itself has to pay a much larger publication fee. (Often on the order of $1500 per article.) Moreover, many of said tenure review panels and grant review committees judge you not just on whether you've published, but where . Impact factor matters, and that again tends to steer people towards glammy, paywalled journals like New England Journal of Medicine (which just made a big kerfluffle about research parasites), Nature, Science, etc.)

So, there's a lot going on here. And even the scientists who want to just post preprints and move on are facing tremendous pressures.

Re:Serious question - why not just publish to publ ( Score: 4 , Informative)

My serious question is: what is to prevent individual researchers from just publishing what they have as a PDF or WordPress article on a random site on the Internet?

In order to be published, they have to sign over either the copyright or exclusive rights. Which generally includes even giving their students copies of their own papers.

Reputation, distribution and availability ( Score: 5 , Informative)

Several things and this is by no means an exhaustive list.

1) It's hard to cite articles not published in the standard fashion. Citations matter for professional reputation and advancement in academia. 2) Being published in professional journals (especially key ones for their field) is a big part of their ability to get tenure and grants. (publish or perish) 3) Journals are distributed to interested parties. Just putting a PDF on a web server doesn't mean interested parties will know it exists. 4) Continued availability - journals are maintained by libraries and publishing companies so future researchers can find them. Easy for a URL to just vanish.

Valid points, all. Some more thoughts on each:

1) It's hard to cite articles not published in the standard fashion. Citations matter for professional reputation and advancement in academia.

Arxiv.org is pretty well standardized at this point. So are DOIs. As for the reputation of the cited medium , well, that's a chicken-and-egg problem, but there are signs of increasing fertility among the open-access chickens.

2) Being published in professional journals (especially key ones for their field) is a big part of their ability to get tenure and grants. (publish or perish)

Again, chicken-and-egg. Big, reputable journals attract and publish big, reputable work, which boosts and maintains their size and reputation. But sucking away resources for the profit of the journal owners adds significant friction to scient

Easy - a lot of

The main problem is not that there are rules against it, but simply that if you don't publish in an accepted, refereed journal--it doesn't count. Nobody will read you, nobody will cite you, and most of all you won't get any credit for being published, without which a research scientist has no career, and probably no job.

Available to Tax Payers at least ( Score: 4 , Insightful)

Anything that is funded by tax money should be available to the citizens who pay that tax free of charge, at the very least.

That has a certain appeal. But since things like education funding are part of the federal government's discretionary spending budget and thus funded by income tax, that would leave only about half of the citizens allowed to see those documents (since the other half of the population pays no or negative income taxes).

No, actually, payroll taxes and sales taxes do NOT fund the federal discretionary spending budget. When people talk about "taxpayer funded" spending at universities (here, we're talking about the sort of research that produces the papers in question) they are talking about stuff that comes out of the discretionary budget. Period. This isn't mandated spending (like Social Security, Medicare, etc). Bother to understand how this actually works before you wag your finger at someone. Coward.

If knowledge is available to taxpayers, then it should be available to anyone . Anything less is petty apartheid.

"...should be available to the citizens who pay that tax...."

So the bottom half of US citizens (who pay no federal income tax) shouldn't get to see them? :)

There is no such thing as a free lunch. ( Score: 2 )

Every human activity has a cost. Nothing is free in this world.

Who will pay to publish and host these papers? Advertisement? How well did that turn out for the Internet?

Hosting can be paid for with ads or a small fee for ad-haters, just like the rest of low-cost/cheap content on the internet.

The issue no one is discussing is why do only these journals have exclusive rights to publish these papers? Who gave them this right since they didn't pay for the content? If they don't have exclusive rights, anyone can upload the paper to the internet, like the Russian lady did.

It's quite ridiculous the journal industry makes $10 billion/year while the authors/scientists who publish a

Worked for XXX... now lanl.arXiv.org ( Score: 2 )

Oh who oh who would do such a thing? [arxiv.org]

Who will pay to publish and host these papers?

I'd be willing to do it.

That becomes less of a problem as time goes by and the cost of moving information approaches zero. For universities, it will soon be a smaller budget component than keeping the lights on and heating the classrooms, even if they have to bear the entire cost themselves. The cost of publication will be a rounding error next to salaries.

Free??? ( Score: 2 )

If they used public funding they aren't free, THEY ARE ALLREADY PAID FOR!! Quit double-dipping, wasn't the free cheese enough??

Quit double-dipping

While I like open access, who do you think is double dipping?

And those paywalls are durable ( Score: 4 , Interesting)

I recently did a paper on Albert Michelson [wikipedia.org] -- who died in 1931, so all of his papers have actually been in the public domain for more than a decade.

Despite this, I had to do some hunting to find copies that weren't paywalled, even back into the 1880s. Props where due, though -- the Harvard University library collection is excellent, high-resolution, and wide open.

Should isn't the same as can ( Score: 5 , Insightful)

In principle yes they should be free, especially if the research received grant money from taxpayers. However should != can. There are a few problems to resolve before that is possible.

1) How do you pay for the hosting, publishing, editing, etc? Those things aren't free so someone, somewhere has to pay for them. 2) Who is responsible for quality control and coordinating peer review when applicable? 3) Who defends against plagiarism and fraud? (particularly the well funded kind)

Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong advocate of research (mostly) being widely disseminated for the lowest possible cost but there are some serious logistic and funding issues to work out first. The publishing companies are causing a lot of problems but they do provide some value which would have to be replicated in some fashion to make scientific papers freely available as a practical matter.

Re: ( Score: 2 , Interesting)

1) Universities 2) Universities 3) Universities

Seriously, why the fuck is this even an issue?

Ah, because profit.

1) How do you pay for the hosting, publishing, editing, etc? Those things aren't free so someone, somewhere has to pay for them.

Publication fees. How many of you realize that journals are charging both ends - the authors for publishing and the readers for reading. Universities, through organizations such as SCOPUS

2) Who is responsible for quality control and coordinating peer review when applicable?

The editors, same people that do the job today. Typically these are academics who provide this as part of their service and get payed nominal fee.

3) Who defends against plagiarism and fraud? (particularly the well funded kind)

Who does that now? Not the journals. This typically picked up during the peer review process or post-publication.

Trading one publisher for another ( Score: 2 )

Publication fees.

That's no improvement on what we have now. You are merely trading one publisher for another. What possible expectation could we have that the new publisher will behave any better than the old?

How many of you realize that journals are charging both ends - the authors for publishing and the readers for reading.

I would say most professionals who read these journals are aware of this to at least some degree. It's a part of the anger many academics have towards these journals.

Some journals work that way but many do not. And even when it does work as you describe you still have the problem of funding if you take the publishe

Decoupled journals ( Score: 2 )

Why do all of those have to be a function of the journal?

There are existing preservation networks that will serve information for free (eg, Archive.org). Much of the editing should really be costs borne by the author -- some authors require little to no editing, while other times I'm asked to peer review stuff that's absolute crap.** Maybe you do something so that you can help out people w/ editing if they can't afford it so you don't create bias ... but being able to explain your work is in many ways as

Make them Ad supported ( Score: 2 )

Blame academics ( score: 2 ).

Spot the guy with a huge chip on his shoulder.

Your hated academics inventing peer review is what made modern science, and brought it out of the alchemical dark ages with people writing cryptic symbols in code in obscure codexes and turned it into a system for sharing new discoveries an building on the work of others.

(yeah yeah simplified, there's plenty of holes to pick, but it's not broadly speaking wrong)

Where did I say anything about the merit of peer review?

If you knew anything about the history of commercial academic publishing, you'd realise that youwere taking digs at peer review. I apologise, I assumed you actually had the first clue that you knew what you were talking about. It would appear that I was deeply mistasken.

What I did was point out that European academics (overwhelmingly government employees)

In the UK, academics are almost all employed by the university not the government. It is I believe

Government should pay for these things ( Score: 2 )

Universities and librarians should decide what journals are worth funding, but the government should fund the journals directly with the requirement of open access.

As a youngish researcher I say fuck yes! ( Score: 2 )

It hurts me to see research papers from the beginning of last century still behind paywalls - I am looking at you, Nature Publishing Group (honestly, all are equally guilty). I was a pioneer in advocating publication in open access journals at the place I got my PhD from, and I actually god my supervisor to join the editorial board of one of the better OA journals.

Require all PhD theses to be published ( Score: 2 )

Making degree granting institutions publish them to the net free make a lot of sense.

Some require that. In Germany it seems you literally have to publish it with an ISBN number and everything. Not sure if that's across the whole place or some institutions.

In the UK students are free to publish their thesis online. For certain subjects there are online archives, such as arXiv and the BMVA thesis archive.

If the research is tax payer funded ( Score: 2 )

It should be released for free as in Libre.

Public Paid? ( Score: 2 )

Any research that was funded in part by our taxes should be freely available. Otherwise the researchers and their universities should stop taking our money and start footing the bill.

The answer should be quite simple ( Score: 2 )

If the research is in any way being funded by tax payers' money, then it should be made freely available. Private entities can spend their money how they wish and do with their knowledge what they wish, but the same should not be allowed if there's tax money directly involved.

Pharm industry does not want meds to be available ( Score: 2 )

Absolutely not ( score: 2 ).

If the research is free, the first functional AI will be able to find it, read it, and become smarter.

Do you want skynet? Because that's how you get skynet.

A possible solution ( Score: 2 )

So the real value comes from publishing a significant paper -- i.e. one that is frequently cited, or is even so significant that it ISN'T cited (people doing CRISPR presumably don't bother to cite the original papers any more). Since so many papers are published, publishing in a prestigious journal increases the chance you'll be read and cited.

Those journals (and lesser journals, and bottom-feeding paper-spammers as well) make money by controlling access -- the more prestigious the more money (presumably)

Not all but ( Score: 2 )

And for history... ( score: 2 ).

I write a lot about the history of tech, old computers and radars and such. Most of that is recorded in older journals, like the IEEE and ACM. They continue to charge $30 or more per copy for papers from the 1950s.

For instance, J. Presper Eckert wrote a paper on early storage mechanisms in the early 1950s. About half of them were never used in production, and the other half stopped being used in the 1970s at the latest. That paper has exactly zero commercial value, yet they still charge $30 for it.

$30-$35 an article? ( Score: 2 )

Yes, paywalls hurt science ( score: 2 ).

A friend of mine was doing a PhD thesis. Paywalled content was simply ignored, as if it didn't exist. Sad but true. Thankfully most authors offered alternative ways of getting articles.

The reason this is a good rule of thumb is that when news sources have any proof of something, they don't pose it as a question. Suppose a headline asks, "Is Donald Trump considering gender reassignment surgery?" If they had any proof that the Donald was having a sex change operation, they'd write it this way: "Donald Trump Getting Sex Change Operation!!!" The fact that they can't phrase it that way means they can't prove this and makes "no" a safe (non-refutable) answer.

Let's call this the "weak" versi

Re:This is a real problem ( Score: 4 , Interesting)

using a revision system where pears can review your article

I think you're comparing apples to oranges there.

That's the funniest thing I've heard in years.

It's funny because you believe the nonsense you posted.

As for your current post, I'm simply stunned that you believe that nonsense as well. It's not funny, it's just sad...

Yes, if my tax dollars supported the research.

This is the only valid reason... the others don't apply if you didn't pay for the research.

If you aren't interested in sharing then you can't really call it science. Eventually, every esoteric experiment should be repeatable by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It might take 200 years, or 1000, but eventually all of the most important breakthroughs should eventually trickle down to the High School Science fair.

You can't alter any field unless you allow ideas to propagate.

> Those who decry the cost of publication

The commercial value of a paper is likely used up entirely in the first three months after publication. There is, of course, exceptions to the rule, but they likely represent less than 1% of all papers, more likely 0.001%. After some point, giving them away for free is less expensive than running the paywall.

The same is true for the music industry. Producing a new single is not cheap, you have to pay a lot of people in the food chain. Yet the value of the song bur

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How To Write A Research Paper

Step-By-Step Tutorial With Examples + FREE Template

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | March 2024

For many students, crafting a strong research paper from scratch can feel like a daunting task – and rightly so! In this post, we’ll unpack what a research paper is, what it needs to do , and how to write one – in three easy steps. 🙂 

Overview: Writing A Research Paper

What (exactly) is a research paper.

• How to write a research paper
• Stage 1 : Topic & literature search
• Stage 2 : Structure & outline
• Stage 3 : Iterative writing
• Key takeaways

Let’s start by asking the most important question, “ What is a research paper? ”.

Simply put, a research paper is a scholarly written work where the writer (that’s you!) answers a specific question (this is called a research question ) through evidence-based arguments . Evidence-based is the keyword here. In other words, a research paper is different from an essay or other writing assignments that draw from the writer’s personal opinions or experiences. With a research paper, it’s all about building your arguments based on evidence (we’ll talk more about that evidence a little later).

Now, it’s worth noting that there are many different types of research papers , including analytical papers (the type I just described), argumentative papers, and interpretative papers. Here, we’ll focus on analytical papers , as these are some of the most common – but if you’re keen to learn about other types of research papers, be sure to check out the rest of the blog .

With that basic foundation laid, let’s get down to business and look at how to write a research paper .

Overview: The 3-Stage Process

While there are, of course, many potential approaches you can take to write a research paper, there are typically three stages to the writing process. So, in this tutorial, we’ll present a straightforward three-step process that we use when working with students at Grad Coach.

These three steps are:

• Finding a research topic and reviewing the existing literature
• Developing a provisional structure and outline for your paper, and
• Writing up your initial draft and then refining it iteratively

Let’s dig into each of these.

Need a helping hand?

Step 1: Find a topic and review the literature

As we mentioned earlier, in a research paper, you, as the researcher, will try to answer a question . More specifically, that’s called a research question , and it sets the direction of your entire paper. What’s important to understand though is that you’ll need to answer that research question with the help of high-quality sources – for example, journal articles, government reports, case studies, and so on. We’ll circle back to this in a minute.

The first stage of the research process is deciding on what your research question will be and then reviewing the existing literature (in other words, past studies and papers) to see what they say about that specific research question. In some cases, your professor may provide you with a predetermined research question (or set of questions). However, in many cases, you’ll need to find your own research question within a certain topic area.

Finding a strong research question hinges on identifying a meaningful research gap – in other words, an area that’s lacking in existing research. There’s a lot to unpack here, so if you wanna learn more, check out the plain-language explainer video below.

Once you’ve figured out which question (or questions) you’ll attempt to answer in your research paper, you’ll need to do a deep dive into the existing literature – this is called a “ literature search ”. Again, there are many ways to go about this, but your most likely starting point will be Google Scholar .

If you’re new to Google Scholar, think of it as Google for the academic world. You can start by simply entering a few different keywords that are relevant to your research question and it will then present a host of articles for you to review. What you want to pay close attention to here is the number of citations for each paper – the more citations a paper has, the more credible it is (generally speaking – there are some exceptions, of course).

Ideally, what you’re looking for are well-cited papers that are highly relevant to your topic. That said, keep in mind that citations are a cumulative metric , so older papers will often have more citations than newer papers – just because they’ve been around for longer. So, don’t fixate on this metric in isolation – relevance and recency are also very important.

Beyond Google Scholar, you’ll also definitely want to check out academic databases and aggregators such as Science Direct, PubMed, JStor and so on. These will often overlap with the results that you find in Google Scholar, but they can also reveal some hidden gems – so, be sure to check them out.

Once you’ve worked your way through all the literature, you’ll want to catalogue all this information in some sort of spreadsheet so that you can easily recall who said what, when and within what context. If you’d like, we’ve got a free literature spreadsheet that helps you do exactly that.

Step 2: Develop a structure and outline

With your research question pinned down and your literature digested and catalogued, it’s time to move on to planning your actual research paper .

It might sound obvious, but it’s really important to have some sort of rough outline in place before you start writing your paper. So often, we see students eagerly rushing into the writing phase, only to land up with a disjointed research paper that rambles on in multiple

Now, the secret here is to not get caught up in the fine details . Realistically, all you need at this stage is a bullet-point list that describes (in broad strokes) what you’ll discuss and in what order. It’s also useful to remember that you’re not glued to this outline – in all likelihood, you’ll chop and change some sections once you start writing, and that’s perfectly okay. What’s important is that you have some sort of roadmap in place from the start.

At this stage you might be wondering, “ But how should I structure my research paper? ”. Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, but in general, a research paper will consist of a few relatively standardised components:

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology

Let’s take a look at each of these.

First up is the introduction section . As the name suggests, the purpose of the introduction is to set the scene for your research paper. There are usually (at least) four ingredients that go into this section – these are the background to the topic, the research problem and resultant research question , and the justification or rationale. If you’re interested, the video below unpacks the introduction section in more detail. 

The next section of your research paper will typically be your literature review . Remember all that literature you worked through earlier? Well, this is where you’ll present your interpretation of all that content . You’ll do this by writing about recent trends, developments, and arguments within the literature – but more specifically, those that are relevant to your research question . The literature review can oftentimes seem a little daunting, even to seasoned researchers, so be sure to check out our extensive collection of literature review content here .

With the introduction and lit review out of the way, the next section of your paper is the research methodology . In a nutshell, the methodology section should describe to your reader what you did (beyond just reviewing the existing literature) to answer your research question. For example, what data did you collect, how did you collect that data, how did you analyse that data and so on? For each choice, you’ll also need to justify why you chose to do it that way, and what the strengths and weaknesses of your approach were.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that for some research papers, this aspect of the project may be a lot simpler . For example, you may only need to draw on secondary sources (in other words, existing data sets). In some cases, you may just be asked to draw your conclusions from the literature search itself (in other words, there may be no data analysis at all). But, if you are required to collect and analyse data, you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the methodology section. The video below provides an example of what the methodology section might look like.

By this stage of your paper, you will have explained what your research question is, what the existing literature has to say about that question, and how you analysed additional data to try to answer your question. So, the natural next step is to present your analysis of that data . This section is usually called the “results” or “analysis” section and this is where you’ll showcase your findings.

Depending on your school’s requirements, you may need to present and interpret the data in one section – or you might split the presentation and the interpretation into two sections. In the latter case, your “results” section will just describe the data, and the “discussion” is where you’ll interpret that data and explicitly link your analysis back to your research question. If you’re not sure which approach to take, check in with your professor or take a look at past papers to see what the norms are for your programme.

Alright – once you’ve presented and discussed your results, it’s time to wrap it up . This usually takes the form of the “ conclusion ” section. In the conclusion, you’ll need to highlight the key takeaways from your study and close the loop by explicitly answering your research question. Again, the exact requirements here will vary depending on your programme (and you may not even need a conclusion section at all) – so be sure to check with your professor if you’re unsure.

Step 3: Write and refine

Finally, it’s time to get writing. All too often though, students hit a brick wall right about here… So, how do you avoid this happening to you?

Well, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to writing a research paper (or any sort of academic piece), but we’ll share three practical tips to help you get started.

First and foremost , it’s essential to approach your writing as an iterative process. In other words, you need to start with a really messy first draft and then polish it over multiple rounds of editing. Don’t waste your time trying to write a perfect research paper in one go. Instead, take the pressure off yourself by adopting an iterative approach.

Secondly , it’s important to always lean towards critical writing , rather than descriptive writing. What does this mean? Well, at the simplest level, descriptive writing focuses on the “ what ”, while critical writing digs into the “ so what ” – in other words, the implications . If you’re not familiar with these two types of writing, don’t worry! You can find a plain-language explanation here.

Last but not least, you’ll need to get your referencing right. Specifically, you’ll need to provide credible, correctly formatted citations for the statements you make. We see students making referencing mistakes all the time and it costs them dearly. The good news is that you can easily avoid this by using a simple reference manager . If you don’t have one, check out our video about Mendeley, an easy (and free) reference management tool that you can start using today.

Recap: Key Takeaways

We’ve covered a lot of ground here. To recap, the three steps to writing a high-quality research paper are:

• To choose a research question and review the literature
• To plan your paper structure and draft an outline
• To take an iterative approach to writing, focusing on critical writing and strong referencing

Remember, this is just a b ig-picture overview of the research paper development process and there’s a lot more nuance to unpack. So, be sure to grab a copy of our free research paper template to learn more about how to write a research paper.

Can you help me with a full paper template for this Abstract:

Background: Energy and sports drinks have gained popularity among diverse demographic groups, including adolescents, athletes, workers, and college students. While often used interchangeably, these beverages serve distinct purposes, with energy drinks aiming to boost energy and cognitive performance, and sports drinks designed to prevent dehydration and replenish electrolytes and carbohydrates lost during physical exertion.

Objective: To assess the nutritional quality of energy and sports drinks in Egypt.

Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study assessed the nutrient contents, including energy, sugar, electrolytes, vitamins, and caffeine, of sports and energy drinks available in major supermarkets in Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza, Egypt. Data collection involved photographing all relevant product labels and recording nutritional information. Descriptive statistics and appropriate statistical tests were employed to analyze and compare the nutritional values of energy and sports drinks.

Results: The study analyzed 38 sports drinks and 42 energy drinks. Sports drinks were significantly more expensive than energy drinks, with higher net content and elevated magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C. Energy drinks contained higher concentrations of caffeine, sugars, and vitamins B2, B3, and B6.

Conclusion: Significant nutritional differences exist between sports and energy drinks, reflecting their intended uses. However, these beverages’ high sugar content and calorie loads raise health concerns. Proper labeling, public awareness, and responsible marketing are essential to guide safe consumption practices in Egypt.

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How to Write a Research Paper

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Research Paper Fundamentals

How to choose a topic or question, how to create a working hypothesis or thesis, common research paper methodologies, how to gather and organize evidence , how to write an outline for your research paper, how to write a rough draft, how to revise your draft, how to produce a final draft, resources for teachers .

It is not fair to say that no one writes anymore. Just about everyone writes text messages, brief emails, or social media posts every single day. Yet, most people don't have a lot of practice with the formal, organized writing required for a good academic research paper. This guide contains links to a variety of resources that can help demystify the process. Some of these resources are intended for teachers; they contain exercises, activities, and teaching strategies. Other resources are intended for direct use by students who are struggling to write papers, or are looking for tips to make the process go more smoothly.

The resources in this section are designed to help students understand the different types of research papers, the general research process, and how to manage their time. Below, you'll find links from university writing centers, the trusted Purdue Online Writing Lab, and more.

What is an Academic Research Paper?

"Genre and the Research Paper" (Purdue OWL)

There are different types of research papers. Different types of scholarly questions will lend themselves to one format or another. This is a brief introduction to the two main genres of research paper: analytic and argumentative. 

"7 Most Popular Types of Research Papers" (Personal-writer.com)

This resource discusses formats that high school students commonly encounter, such as the compare and contrast essay and the definitional essay. Please note that the inclusion of this link is not an endorsement of this company's paid service.

How to Prepare and Plan Out Writing a Research Paper

Teachers can give their students a step-by-step guide like these to help them understand the different steps of the research paper process. These guides can be combined with the time management tools in the next subsection to help students come up with customized calendars for completing their papers.

"Ten Steps for Writing Research Papers" (American University)  

This resource from American University is a comprehensive guide to the research paper writing process, and includes examples of proper research questions and thesis topics.

"Steps in Writing a Research Paper" (SUNY Empire State College)

This guide breaks the research paper process into 11 steps. Each "step" links to a separate page, which describes the work entailed in completing it.

How to Manage Time Effectively

The links below will help students determine how much time is necessary to complete a paper. If your sources are not available online or at your local library, you'll need to leave extra time for the Interlibrary Loan process. Remember that, even if you do not need to consult secondary sources, you'll still need to leave yourself ample time to organize your thoughts.

"Research Paper Planner: Timeline" (Baylor University)

This interactive resource from Baylor University creates a suggested writing schedule based on how much time a student has to work on the assignment.

"Research Paper Planner" (UCLA)

UCLA's library offers this step-by-step guide to the research paper writing process, which also includes a suggested planning calendar.

There's a reason teachers spend a long time talking about choosing a good topic. Without a good topic and a well-formulated research question, it is almost impossible to write a clear and organized paper. The resources below will help you generate ideas and formulate precise questions.

"How to Select a Research Topic" (Univ. of Michigan-Flint)

This resource is designed for college students who are struggling to come up with an appropriate topic. A student who uses this resource and still feels unsure about his or her topic should consult the course instructor for further personalized assistance.

"25 Interesting Research Paper Topics to Get You Started" (Kibin)

This resource, which is probably most appropriate for high school students, provides a list of specific topics to help get students started. It is broken into subsections, such as "paper topics on local issues."

"Writing a Good Research Question" (Grand Canyon University)

This introduction to research questions includes some embedded videos, as well as links to scholarly articles on research questions. This resource would be most appropriate for teachers who are planning lessons on research paper fundamentals.

"How to Write a Research Question the Right Way" (Kibin)

This student-focused resource provides more detail on writing research questions. The language is accessible, and there are embedded videos and examples of good and bad questions.

It is important to have a rough hypothesis or thesis in mind at the beginning of the research process. People who have a sense of what they want to say will have an easier time sorting through scholarly sources and other information. The key, of course, is not to become too wedded to the draft hypothesis or thesis. Just about every working thesis gets changed during the research process.

CrashCourse Video: "Sociology Research Methods" (YouTube)

Although this video is tailored to sociology students, it is applicable to students in a variety of social science disciplines. This video does a good job demonstrating the connection between the brainstorming that goes into selecting a research question and the formulation of a working hypothesis.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement for an Analytical Essay" (YouTube)

Students writing analytical essays will not develop the same type of working hypothesis as students who are writing research papers in other disciplines. For these students, developing the working thesis may happen as a part of the rough draft (see the relevant section below). 

"Research Hypothesis" (Oakland Univ.)

This resource provides some examples of hypotheses in social science disciplines like Political Science and Criminal Justice. These sample hypotheses may also be useful for students in other soft social sciences and humanities disciplines like History.

When grading a research paper, instructors look for a consistent methodology. This section will help you understand different methodological approaches used in research papers. Students will get the most out of these resources if they use them to help prepare for conversations with teachers or discussions in class.

"Types of Research Designs" (USC)

A "research design," used for complex papers, is related to the paper's method. This resource contains introductions to a variety of popular research designs in the social sciences. Although it is not the most intuitive site to read, the information here is very valuable. 

"Major Research Methods" (YouTube)

Although this video is a bit on the dry side, it provides a comprehensive overview of the major research methodologies in a format that might be more accessible to students who have struggled with textbooks or other written resources.

"Humanities Research Strategies" (USC)

This is a portal where students can learn about four methodological approaches for humanities papers: Historical Methodologies, Textual Criticism, Conceptual Analysis, and the Synoptic method.

"Selected Major Social Science Research Methods: Overview" (National Academies Press)

This appendix from the book  Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy , printed by National Academies Press, introduces some methods used in social science papers.

"Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: 6. The Methodology" (USC)

This resource from the University of Southern California's library contains tips for writing a methodology section in a research paper.

How to Determine the Best Methodology for You

Anyone who is new to writing research papers should be sure to select a method in consultation with their instructor. These resources can be used to help prepare for that discussion. They may also be used on their own by more advanced students.

"Choosing Appropriate Research Methodologies" (Palgrave Study Skills)

This friendly and approachable resource from Palgrave Macmillan can be used by students who are just starting to think about appropriate methodologies.

"How to Choose Your Research Methods" (NFER (UK))

This is another approachable resource students can use to help narrow down the most appropriate methods for their research projects.

The resources in this section introduce the process of gathering scholarly sources and collecting evidence. You'll find a range of material here, from introductory guides to advanced explications best suited to college students. Please consult the LitCharts  How to Do Academic Research guide for a more comprehensive list of resources devoted to finding scholarly literature.

Google Scholar

Students who have access to library websites with detailed research guides should start there, but people who do not have access to those resources can begin their search for secondary literature here.

"Gathering Appropriate Information" (Texas Gateway)

This resource from the Texas Gateway for online resources introduces students to the research process, and contains interactive exercises. The level of complexity is suitable for middle school, high school, and introductory college classrooms.

"An Overview of Quantitative and Qualitative Data Collection Methods" (NSF)

This PDF from the National Science Foundation goes into detail about best practices and pitfalls in data collection across multiple types of methodologies.

"Social Science Methods for Data Collection and Analysis" (Swiss FIT)

This resource is appropriate for advanced undergraduates or teachers looking to create lessons on research design and data collection. It covers techniques for gathering data via interviews, observations, and other methods.

"Collecting Data by In-depth Interviewing" (Leeds Univ.)

This resource contains enough information about conducting interviews to make it useful for teachers who want to create a lesson plan, but is also accessible enough for college juniors or seniors to make use of it on their own.

There is no "one size fits all" outlining technique. Some students might devote all their energy and attention to the outline in order to avoid the paper. Other students may benefit from being made to sit down and organize their thoughts into a lengthy sentence outline. The resources in this section include strategies and templates for multiple types of outlines. 

"Topic vs. Sentence Outlines" (UC Berkeley)

This resource introduces two basic approaches to outlining: the shorter topic-based approach, and the longer, more detailed sentence-based approach. This resource also contains videos on how to develop paper paragraphs from the sentence-based outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL)

The Purdue Online Writing Lab's guide is a slightly less detailed discussion of different types of outlines. It contains several sample outlines.

"Writing An Outline" (Austin C.C.)

This resource from a community college contains sample outlines from an American history class that students can use as models.

"How to Structure an Outline for a College Paper" (YouTube)

This brief (sub-2 minute) video from the ExpertVillage YouTube channel provides a model of outline writing for students who are struggling with the idea.

"Outlining" (Harvard)

This is a good resource to consult after completing a draft outline. It offers suggestions for making sure your outline avoids things like unnecessary repetition.

As with outlines, rough drafts can take on many different forms. These resources introduce teachers and students to the various approaches to writing a rough draft. This section also includes resources that will help you cite your sources appropriately according to the MLA, Chicago, and APA style manuals.

"Creating a Rough Draft for a Research Paper" (Univ. of Minnesota)

This resource is useful for teachers in particular, as it provides some suggested exercises to help students with writing a basic rough draft. 

Rough Draft Assignment (Duke of Definition)

This sample assignment, with a brief list of tips, was developed by a high school teacher who runs a very successful and well-reviewed page of educational resources.

"Creating the First Draft of Your Research Paper" (Concordia Univ.)

This resource will be helpful for perfectionists or procrastinators, as it opens by discussing the problem of avoiding writing. It also provides a short list of suggestions meant to get students writing.

Using Proper Citations

There is no such thing as a rough draft of a scholarly citation. These links to the three major citation guides will ensure that your citations follow the correct format. Please consult the LitCharts How to Cite Your Sources guide for more resources.

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Guide

Some call  The Chicago Manual of Style , which was first published in 1906, "the editors' Bible." The manual is now in its 17th edition, and is popular in the social sciences, historical journals, and some other fields in the humanities.

APA Citation Guide

According to the American Psychological Association, this guide was developed to aid reading comprehension, clarity of communication, and to reduce bias in language in the social and behavioral sciences. Its first full edition was published in 1952, and it is now in its sixth edition.

MLA Citation Guide

The Modern Language Association style is used most commonly within the liberal arts and humanities. The  MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing  was first published in 1985 and (as of 2008) is in its third edition.

Any professional scholar will tell you that the best research papers are made in the revision stage. No matter how strong your research question or working thesis, it is not possible to write a truly outstanding paper without devoting energy to revision. These resources provide examples of revision exercises for the classroom, as well as tips for students working independently.

"The Art of Revision" (Univ. of Arizona)

This resource provides a wealth of information and suggestions for both students and teachers. There is a list of suggested exercises that teachers might use in class, along with a revision checklist that is useful for teachers and students alike.

"Script for Workshop on Revision" (Vanderbilt University)

Vanderbilt's guide for leading a 50-minute revision workshop can serve as a model for teachers who wish to guide students through the revision process during classtime. 

"Revising Your Paper" (Univ. of Washington)

This detailed handout was designed for students who are beginning the revision process. It discusses different approaches and methods for revision, and also includes a detailed list of things students should look for while they revise.

"Revising Drafts" (UNC Writing Center)

This resource is designed for students and suggests things to look for during the revision process. It provides steps for the process and has a FAQ for students who have questions about why it is important to revise.

Conferencing with Writing Tutors and Instructors

No writer is so good that he or she can't benefit from meeting with instructors or peer tutors. These resources from university writing, learning, and communication centers provide suggestions for how to get the most out of these one-on-one meetings.

"Getting Feedback" (UNC Writing Center)

This very helpful resource talks about how to ask for feedback during the entire writing process. It contains possible questions that students might ask when developing an outline, during the revision process, and after the final draft has been graded.

"Prepare for Your Tutoring Session" (Otis College of Art and Design)

This guide from a university's student learning center contains a lot of helpful tips for getting the most out of working with a writing tutor.

"The Importance of Asking Your Professor" (Univ. of Waterloo)

This article from the university's Writing and Communication Centre's blog contains some suggestions for how and when to get help from professors and Teaching Assistants.

Once you've revised your first draft, you're well on your way to handing in a polished paper. These resources—each of them produced by writing professionals at colleges and universities—outline the steps required in order to produce a final draft. You'll find proofreading tips and checklists in text and video form.

"Developing a Final Draft of a Research Paper" (Univ. of Minnesota)

While this resource contains suggestions for revision, it also features a couple of helpful checklists for the last stages of completing a final draft.

Basic Final Draft Tips and Checklist (Univ. of Maryland-University College)

This short and accessible resource, part of UMUC's very thorough online guide to writing and research, contains a very basic checklist for students who are getting ready to turn in their final drafts.

Final Draft Checklist (Everett C.C.)

This is another accessible final draft checklist, appropriate for both high school and college students. It suggests reading your essay aloud at least once.

"How to Proofread Your Final Draft" (YouTube)

This video (approximately 5 minutes), produced by Eastern Washington University, gives students tips on proofreading final drafts.

"Proofreading Tips" (Georgia Southern-Armstrong)

This guide will help students learn how to spot common errors in their papers. It suggests focusing on content and editing for grammar and mechanics.

This final set of resources is intended specifically for high school and college instructors. It provides links to unit plans and classroom exercises that can help improve students' research and writing skills. You'll find resources that give an overview of the process, along with activities that focus on how to begin and how to carry out research. 

"Research Paper Complete Resources Pack" (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This packet of assignments, rubrics, and other resources is designed for high school students. The resources in this packet are aligned to Common Core standards.

"Research Paper—Complete Unit" (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This packet of assignments, notes, PowerPoints, and other resources has a 4/4 rating with over 700 ratings. It is designed for high school teachers, but might also be useful to college instructors who work with freshmen.

"Teaching Students to Write Good Papers" (Yale)

This resource from Yale's Center for Teaching and Learning is designed for college instructors, and it includes links to appropriate activities and exercises.

"Research Paper Writing: An Overview" (CUNY Brooklyn)

CUNY Brooklyn offers this complete lesson plan for introducing students to research papers. It includes an accompanying set of PowerPoint slides.

"Lesson Plan: How to Begin Writing a Research Paper" (San Jose State Univ.)

This lesson plan is designed for students in the health sciences, so teachers will have to modify it for their own needs. It includes a breakdown of the brainstorming, topic selection, and research question process. 

"Quantitative Techniques for Social Science Research" (Univ. of Pittsburgh)

This is a set of PowerPoint slides that can be used to introduce students to a variety of quantitative methods used in the social sciences.

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“The General Index”: New tool allows you to search 107 million research papers for free

• Millions of research papers get published every year, but the majority lie behind paywalls.
• A new online catalogue called the General Index aims to make it easier to access and search through the world’s research papers.
• Unlike other databases which include the full text of research papers, the General Index only allows users to access snippets of content.

A new database aims to make it easier than ever to access and search through the world’s massive trove of research papers. 

Each year, millions of scientific and academic papers get published across thousands of journals. The majority of those papers lie behind paywalls, costing $9 to $30 (or more) to read. Finding them can be difficult: Tools like Google Scholar allow you to search for paper titles and keywords, but more specialized queries are difficult. 

The General Index was designed to reduce those obstacles without breaking the law. Developed by the technologist Carl Malamud and his nonprofit foundation Public Resource, the free-to-use index contains words and phrases from more than 107 million research papers, comprising 8.5 terabytes when compressed.

The General Index includes text from paywalled papers but not the whole text — only phrases up to five words long. This cut-off point was designed to keep the project in good legal standing. (The act of uploading millions of paywalled papers may prove more legally ambiguous .)

The searchable content within the General Index includes:

• Billions of keywords (e.g., specific types of plants, genes, and materials)
• Paper titles
• Authors of research papers
• DOI article identifiers

Malamud described the index as a tool for mining the “vast ocean” of the world’s accumulated knowledge.

“This is a look-up tool, a dictionary of knowledge, a map to knowledge,” Malamud said in a video . “A tool that we believe is an essential facility for the practice of science in our modern age. […] We view this as a public utility. We assert no ownership over the General Index. It is dedicated to the Public Domain — a series of unencumbered facts with which you can do what you will. There are no rights reserved.”

Should research papers be free?

The high cost of accessing research papers has long been controversial in the scientific community. Universities sometimes pay more than $10 million for an annual subscription to a suite of academic journals. Some of that money ends up going to nonprofits like the Massachusetts Medical Society, the American Medical Association, and the American Geophysical Union, and revenue is also sometimes used to fund student travel and other costs associated with institutional research .

However, the bulk of the revenue ends up in the pockets of major publishers. These for-profit companies, like Elsevier and Wiley, do not directly produce the research they publish; in fact, researchers often have to pay thousands of dollars to get published in major journals. The value that publishers bring to the table, in theory, is quality control through curation and peer review, functions that are not free.

But some in the community argue that research should be free to the public, and that the steep cost of accessing papers holds back scientific progress. That is the ethos behind the open-access movement. One key figure in the movement is the Kazakhstani computer programmer Alexandra Elbakyan. In 2011, she created Sci-Hub , an online database, or “shadow library,” that lets anyone with an internet connection access millions of research papers and books for free. 

Some considered Sci-Hub to be an altruistic tool for advancing scientific knowledge and research. But publishers considered it scientific piracy. The general argument was that Elbakyan had not only stolen the text of journal articles but also the time and expertise of editors and reviewers, not to mention the costs associated with uploading and archiving all of the papers.

In 2015, Elsevier, which owns thousands of academic journals that generate more than $1 billion annually, sued Elbakyan for copyright infringement. She wrote a letter to the judge describing how she found it “insane” that she, as a graduate student, had to pay $32 per paper “when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research.” 

“Authors of these papers do not receive money,” Elbakyan wrote. “Why would they send their work to Elsevier then? They feel pressured to do this, because Elsevier is an owner of so-called ‘high-impact’ journals. If a researcher wants to be recognized, make a career — he or she needs to have publications in such journals.”

In an opinion piece published in The New York Times , Elbakyan was quoted citing part of the United Nations Charter: “Everyone has the right to freely share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

A more modest step toward open access

Although far from an act of piracy, it is still unclear the General Index will face any legal challenges. Malamud told Nature News that he is “very confident” in the legality of his project. Over time, he and his colleagues hope to add new features to the database, such as one that shows how important certain terms are in the overall literature, a metric known as term frequency-inverse document frequency (TFIDF) .

“If we are to stand on the shoulders of giants, we must provide these maps to that vast world of ideas,” Malamud said in a video. “The General Index is but one tool.”

• How to write a research paper

Last updated

11 January 2024

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With proper planning, knowledge, and framework, completing a research paper can be a fulfilling and exciting experience. 

Though it might initially sound slightly intimidating, this guide will help you embrace the challenge. 

By documenting your findings, you can inspire others and make a difference in your field. Here's how you can make your research paper unique and comprehensive.

• What is a research paper?

Research papers allow you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of a particular topic. These papers are usually lengthier and more detailed than typical essays, requiring deeper insight into the chosen topic.

To write a research paper, you must first choose a topic that interests you and is relevant to the field of study. Once you’ve selected your topic, gathering as many relevant resources as possible, including books, scholarly articles, credible websites, and other academic materials, is essential. You must then read and analyze these sources, summarizing their key points and identifying gaps in the current research.

You can formulate your ideas and opinions once you thoroughly understand the existing research. To get there might involve conducting original research, gathering data, or analyzing existing data sets. It could also involve presenting an original argument or interpretation of the existing research.

Writing a successful research paper involves presenting your findings clearly and engagingly, which might involve using charts, graphs, or other visual aids to present your data and using concise language to explain your findings. You must also ensure your paper adheres to relevant academic formatting guidelines, including proper citations and references.

Overall, writing a research paper requires a significant amount of time, effort, and attention to detail. However, it is also an enriching experience that allows you to delve deeply into a subject that interests you and contribute to the existing body of knowledge in your chosen field.

• How long should a research paper be?

Research papers are deep dives into a topic. Therefore, they tend to be longer pieces of work than essays or opinion pieces. 

However, a suitable length depends on the complexity of the topic and your level of expertise. For instance, are you a first-year college student or an experienced professional? 

Also, remember that the best research papers provide valuable information for the benefit of others. Therefore, the quality of information matters most, not necessarily the length. Being concise is valuable.

Following these best practice steps will help keep your process simple and productive:

1. Gaining a deep understanding of any expectations

Before diving into your intended topic or beginning the research phase, take some time to orient yourself. Suppose there’s a specific topic assigned to you. In that case, it’s essential to deeply understand the question and organize your planning and approach in response. Pay attention to the key requirements and ensure you align your writing accordingly. 

This preparation step entails

Deeply understanding the task or assignment

Being clear about the expected format and length

Familiarizing yourself with the citation and referencing requirements 

Understanding any defined limits for your research contribution

Where applicable, speaking to your professor or research supervisor for further clarification

2. Choose your research topic

Select a research topic that aligns with both your interests and available resources. Ideally, focus on a field where you possess significant experience and analytical skills. In crafting your research paper, it's crucial to go beyond summarizing existing data and contribute fresh insights to the chosen area.

Consider narrowing your focus to a specific aspect of the topic. For example, if exploring the link between technology and mental health, delve into how social media use during the pandemic impacts the well-being of college students. Conducting interviews and surveys with students could provide firsthand data and unique perspectives, adding substantial value to the existing knowledge.

When finalizing your topic, adhere to legal and ethical norms in the relevant area (this ensures the integrity of your research, protects participants' rights, upholds intellectual property standards, and ensures transparency and accountability). Following these principles not only maintains the credibility of your work but also builds trust within your academic or professional community.

For instance, in writing about medical research, consider legal and ethical norms , including patient confidentiality laws and informed consent requirements. Similarly, if analyzing user data on social media platforms, be mindful of data privacy regulations, ensuring compliance with laws governing personal information collection and use. Aligning with legal and ethical standards not only avoids potential issues but also underscores the responsible conduct of your research.

3. Gather preliminary research

Once you’ve landed on your topic, it’s time to explore it further. You’ll want to discover more about available resources and existing research relevant to your assignment at this stage. 

This exploratory phase is vital as you may discover issues with your original idea or realize you have insufficient resources to explore the topic effectively. This key bit of groundwork allows you to redirect your research topic in a different, more feasible, or more relevant direction if necessary. 

Spending ample time at this stage ensures you gather everything you need, learn as much as you can about the topic, and discover gaps where the topic has yet to be sufficiently covered, offering an opportunity to research it further. 

4. Define your research question

To produce a well-structured and focused paper, it is imperative to formulate a clear and precise research question that will guide your work. Your research question must be informed by the existing literature and tailored to the scope and objectives of your project. By refining your focus, you can produce a thoughtful and engaging paper that effectively communicates your ideas to your readers.

5. Write a thesis statement

A thesis statement is a one-to-two-sentence summary of your research paper's main argument or direction. It serves as an overall guide to summarize the overall intent of the research paper for you and anyone wanting to know more about the research.

A strong thesis statement is:

Concise and clear: Explain your case in simple sentences (avoid covering multiple ideas). It might help to think of this section as an elevator pitch.

Specific: Ensure that there is no ambiguity in your statement and that your summary covers the points argued in the paper.

Debatable: A thesis statement puts forward a specific argument––it is not merely a statement but a debatable point that can be analyzed and discussed.

Here are three thesis statement examples from different disciplines:

Psychology thesis example: "We're studying adults aged 25-40 to see if taking short breaks for mindfulness can help with stress. Our goal is to find practical ways to manage anxiety better."

Environmental science thesis example: "This research paper looks into how having more city parks might make the air cleaner and keep people healthier. I want to find out if more green spaces means breathing fewer carcinogens in big cities."

UX research thesis example: "This study focuses on improving mobile banking for older adults using ethnographic research, eye-tracking analysis, and interactive prototyping. We investigate the usefulness of eye-tracking analysis with older individuals, aiming to spark debate and offer fresh perspectives on UX design and digital inclusivity for the aging population."

6. Conduct in-depth research

A research paper doesn’t just include research that you’ve uncovered from other papers and studies but your fresh insights, too. You will seek to become an expert on your topic––understanding the nuances in the current leading theories. You will analyze existing research and add your thinking and discoveries.  It's crucial to conduct well-designed research that is rigorous, robust, and based on reliable sources. Suppose a research paper lacks evidence or is biased. In that case, it won't benefit the academic community or the general public. Therefore, examining the topic thoroughly and furthering its understanding through high-quality research is essential. That usually means conducting new research. Depending on the area under investigation, you may conduct surveys, interviews, diary studies , or observational research to uncover new insights or bolster current claims.

7. Determine supporting evidence

Not every piece of research you’ve discovered will be relevant to your research paper. It’s important to categorize the most meaningful evidence to include alongside your discoveries. It's important to include evidence that doesn't support your claims to avoid exclusion bias and ensure a fair research paper.

8. Write a research paper outline

Before diving in and writing the whole paper, start with an outline. It will help you to see if more research is needed, and it will provide a framework by which to write a more compelling paper. Your supervisor may even request an outline to approve before beginning to write the first draft of the full paper. An outline will include your topic, thesis statement, key headings, short summaries of the research, and your arguments.

9. Write your first draft

Once you feel confident about your outline and sources, it’s time to write your first draft. While penning a long piece of content can be intimidating, if you’ve laid the groundwork, you will have a structure to help you move steadily through each section. To keep up motivation and inspiration, it’s often best to keep the pace quick. Stopping for long periods can interrupt your flow and make jumping back in harder than writing when things are fresh in your mind.

10. Cite your sources correctly

It's always a good practice to give credit where it's due, and the same goes for citing any works that have influenced your paper. Building your arguments on credible references adds value and authenticity to your research. In the formatting guidelines section, you’ll find an overview of different citation styles (MLA, CMOS, or APA), which will help you meet any publishing or academic requirements and strengthen your paper's credibility. It is essential to follow the guidelines provided by your school or the publication you are submitting to ensure the accuracy and relevance of your citations.

11. Ensure your work is original

It is crucial to ensure the originality of your paper, as plagiarism can lead to serious consequences. To avoid plagiarism, you should use proper paraphrasing and quoting techniques. Paraphrasing is rewriting a text in your own words while maintaining the original meaning. Quoting involves directly citing the source. Giving credit to the original author or source is essential whenever you borrow their ideas or words. You can also use plagiarism detection tools such as Scribbr or Grammarly to check the originality of your paper. These tools compare your draft writing to a vast database of online sources. If you find any accidental plagiarism, you should correct it immediately by rephrasing or citing the source.

12. Revise, edit, and proofread

One of the essential qualities of excellent writers is their ability to understand the importance of editing and proofreading. Even though it's tempting to call it a day once you've finished your writing, editing your work can significantly improve its quality. It's natural to overlook the weaker areas when you've just finished writing a paper. Therefore, it's best to take a break of a day or two, or even up to a week, to refresh your mind. This way, you can return to your work with a new perspective. After some breathing room, you can spot any inconsistencies, spelling and grammar errors, typos, or missing citations and correct them. 

• The best research paper format 

The format of your research paper should align with the requirements set forth by your college, school, or target publication. 

There is no one “best” format, per se. Depending on the stated requirements, you may need to include the following elements:

Title page: The title page of a research paper typically includes the title, author's name, and institutional affiliation and may include additional information such as a course name or instructor's name. 

Table of contents: Include a table of contents to make it easy for readers to find specific sections of your paper.

Abstract: The abstract is a summary of the purpose of the paper.

Methods : In this section, describe the research methods used. This may include collecting data , conducting interviews, or doing field research .

Results: Summarize the conclusions you drew from your research in this section.

Discussion: In this section, discuss the implications of your research . Be sure to mention any significant limitations to your approach and suggest areas for further research.

Tables, charts, and illustrations: Use tables, charts, and illustrations to help convey your research findings and make them easier to understand.

Works cited or reference page: Include a works cited or reference page to give credit to the sources that you used to conduct your research.

Bibliography: Provide a list of all the sources you consulted while conducting your research.

Dedication and acknowledgments : Optionally, you may include a dedication and acknowledgments section to thank individuals who helped you with your research.

• General style and formatting guidelines

Formatting your research paper means you can submit it to your college, journal, or other publications in compliance with their criteria.

Research papers tend to follow the American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), or Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) guidelines.

Here’s how each style guide is typically used:

Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS):

CMOS is a versatile style guide used for various types of writing. It's known for its flexibility and use in the humanities. CMOS provides guidelines for citations, formatting, and overall writing style. It allows for both footnotes and in-text citations, giving writers options based on their preferences or publication requirements.

American Psychological Association (APA):

APA is common in the social sciences. It’s hailed for its clarity and emphasis on precision. It has specific rules for citing sources, creating references, and formatting papers. APA style uses in-text citations with an accompanying reference list. It's designed to convey information efficiently and is widely used in academic and scientific writing.

Modern Language Association (MLA):

MLA is widely used in the humanities, especially literature and language studies. It emphasizes the author-page format for in-text citations and provides guidelines for creating a "Works Cited" page. MLA is known for its focus on the author's name and the literary works cited. It’s frequently used in disciplines that prioritize literary analysis and critical thinking.

To confirm you're using the latest style guide, check the official website or publisher's site for updates, consult academic resources, and verify the guide's publication date. Online platforms and educational resources may also provide summaries and alerts about any revisions or additions to the style guide.

Citing sources

When working on your research paper, it's important to cite the sources you used properly. Your citation style will guide you through this process. Generally, there are three parts to citing sources in your research paper: 

First, provide a brief citation in the body of your essay. This is also known as a parenthetical or in-text citation. 

Second, include a full citation in the Reference list at the end of your paper. Different types of citations include in-text citations, footnotes, and reference lists. 

In-text citations include the author's surname and the date of the citation. 

Footnotes appear at the bottom of each page of your research paper. They may also be summarized within a reference list at the end of the paper. 

A reference list includes all of the research used within the paper at the end of the document. It should include the author, date, paper title, and publisher listed in the order that aligns with your citation style.

10 research paper writing tips:

Following some best practices is essential to writing a research paper that contributes to your field of study and creates a positive impact.

These tactics will help you structure your argument effectively and ensure your work benefits others:

Clear and precise language:  Ensure your language is unambiguous. Use academic language appropriately, but keep it simple. Also, provide clear takeaways for your audience.

Effective idea separation:  Organize the vast amount of information and sources in your paper with paragraphs and titles. Create easily digestible sections for your readers to navigate through.

Compelling intro:  Craft an engaging introduction that captures your reader's interest. Hook your audience and motivate them to continue reading.

Thorough revision and editing:  Take the time to review and edit your paper comprehensively. Use tools like Grammarly to detect and correct small, overlooked errors.

Thesis precision:  Develop a clear and concise thesis statement that guides your paper. Ensure that your thesis aligns with your research's overall purpose and contribution.

Logical flow of ideas:  Maintain a logical progression throughout the paper. Use transitions effectively to connect different sections and maintain coherence.

Critical evaluation of sources:  Evaluate and critically assess the relevance and reliability of your sources. Ensure that your research is based on credible and up-to-date information.

Thematic consistency:  Maintain a consistent theme throughout the paper. Ensure that all sections contribute cohesively to the overall argument.

Relevant supporting evidence:  Provide concise and relevant evidence to support your arguments. Avoid unnecessary details that may distract from the main points.

Embrace counterarguments:  Acknowledge and address opposing views to strengthen your position. Show that you have considered alternative arguments in your field.

7 research tips 

If you want your paper to not only be well-written but also contribute to the progress of human knowledge, consider these tips to take your paper to the next level:

Selecting the appropriate topic: The topic you select should align with your area of expertise, comply with the requirements of your project, and have sufficient resources for a comprehensive investigation.

Use academic databases: Academic databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and JSTOR offer a wealth of research papers that can help you discover everything you need to know about your chosen topic.

Critically evaluate sources: It is important not to accept research findings at face value. Instead, it is crucial to critically analyze the information to avoid jumping to conclusions or overlooking important details. A well-written research paper requires a critical analysis with thorough reasoning to support claims.

Diversify your sources: Expand your research horizons by exploring a variety of sources beyond the standard databases. Utilize books, conference proceedings, and interviews to gather diverse perspectives and enrich your understanding of the topic.

Take detailed notes: Detailed note-taking is crucial during research and can help you form the outline and body of your paper.

Stay up on trends: Keep abreast of the latest developments in your field by regularly checking for recent publications. Subscribe to newsletters, follow relevant journals, and attend conferences to stay informed about emerging trends and advancements. 

Engage in peer review: Seek feedback from peers or mentors to ensure the rigor and validity of your research . Peer review helps identify potential weaknesses in your methodology and strengthens the overall credibility of your findings.

• The real-world impact of research papers

Writing a research paper is more than an academic or business exercise. The experience provides an opportunity to explore a subject in-depth, broaden one's understanding, and arrive at meaningful conclusions. With careful planning, dedication, and hard work, writing a research paper can be a fulfilling and enriching experience contributing to advancing knowledge.

How do I publish my research paper? 

Many academics wish to publish their research papers. While challenging, your paper might get traction if it covers new and well-written information. To publish your research paper, find a target publication, thoroughly read their guidelines, format your paper accordingly, and send it to them per their instructions. You may need to include a cover letter, too. After submission, your paper may be peer-reviewed by experts to assess its legitimacy, quality, originality, and methodology. Following review, you will be informed by the publication whether they have accepted or rejected your paper. 

What is a good opening sentence for a research paper? 

Beginning your research paper with a compelling introduction can ensure readers are interested in going further. A relevant quote, a compelling statistic, or a bold argument can start the paper and hook your reader. Remember, though, that the most important aspect of a research paper is the quality of the information––not necessarily your ability to storytell, so ensure anything you write aligns with your goals.

Research paper vs. a research proposal—what’s the difference?

While some may confuse research papers and proposals, they are different documents. 

A research proposal comes before a research paper. It is a detailed document that outlines an intended area of exploration. It includes the research topic, methodology, timeline, sources, and potential conclusions. Research proposals are often required when seeking approval to conduct research. 

A research paper is a summary of research findings. A research paper follows a structured format to present those findings and construct an argument or conclusion.

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Writing a Research Paper

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The Research Paper

There will come a time in most students' careers when they are assigned a research paper. Such an assignment often creates a great deal of unneeded anxiety in the student, which may result in procrastination and a feeling of confusion and inadequacy. This anxiety frequently stems from the fact that many students are unfamiliar and inexperienced with this genre of writing. Never fear—inexperience and unfamiliarity are situations you can change through practice! Writing a research paper is an essential aspect of academics and should not be avoided on account of one's anxiety. In fact, the process of writing a research paper can be one of the more rewarding experiences one may encounter in academics. What is more, many students will continue to do research throughout their careers, which is one of the reasons this topic is so important.

Becoming an experienced researcher and writer in any field or discipline takes a great deal of practice. There are few individuals for whom this process comes naturally. Remember, even the most seasoned academic veterans have had to learn how to write a research paper at some point in their career. Therefore, with diligence, organization, practice, a willingness to learn (and to make mistakes!), and, perhaps most important of all, patience, students will find that they can achieve great things through their research and writing.

The pages in this section cover the following topic areas related to the process of writing a research paper:

• Genre - This section will provide an overview for understanding the difference between an analytical and argumentative research paper.
• Choosing a Topic - This section will guide the student through the process of choosing topics, whether the topic be one that is assigned or one that the student chooses themselves.
• Identifying an Audience - This section will help the student understand the often times confusing topic of audience by offering some basic guidelines for the process.
• Where Do I Begin - This section concludes the handout by offering several links to resources at Purdue, and also provides an overview of the final stages of writing a research paper.

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Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide

Published on September 24, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on March 27, 2023.

The introduction to a research paper is where you set up your topic and approach for the reader. It has several key goals:

• Present your topic and get the reader interested
• Provide background or summarize existing research
• Position your own approach
• Detail your specific research problem and problem statement
• Give an overview of the paper’s structure

The introduction looks slightly different depending on whether your paper presents the results of original empirical research or constructs an argument by engaging with a variety of sources.

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Table of contents

Step 1: introduce your topic, step 2: describe the background, step 3: establish your research problem, step 4: specify your objective(s), step 5: map out your paper, research paper introduction examples, frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.

The first job of the introduction is to tell the reader what your topic is and why it’s interesting or important. This is generally accomplished with a strong opening hook.

The hook is a striking opening sentence that clearly conveys the relevance of your topic. Think of an interesting fact or statistic, a strong statement, a question, or a brief anecdote that will get the reader wondering about your topic.

For example, the following could be an effective hook for an argumentative paper about the environmental impact of cattle farming:

A more empirical paper investigating the relationship of Instagram use with body image issues in adolescent girls might use the following hook:

Don’t feel that your hook necessarily has to be deeply impressive or creative. Clarity and relevance are still more important than catchiness. The key thing is to guide the reader into your topic and situate your ideas.

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This part of the introduction differs depending on what approach your paper is taking.

In a more argumentative paper, you’ll explore some general background here. In a more empirical paper, this is the place to review previous research and establish how yours fits in.

Argumentative paper: Background information

After you’ve caught your reader’s attention, specify a bit more, providing context and narrowing down your topic.

Provide only the most relevant background information. The introduction isn’t the place to get too in-depth; if more background is essential to your paper, it can appear in the body .

Empirical paper: Describing previous research

For a paper describing original research, you’ll instead provide an overview of the most relevant research that has already been conducted. This is a sort of miniature literature review —a sketch of the current state of research into your topic, boiled down to a few sentences.

This should be informed by genuine engagement with the literature. Your search can be less extensive than in a full literature review, but a clear sense of the relevant research is crucial to inform your own work.

Begin by establishing the kinds of research that have been done, and end with limitations or gaps in the research that you intend to respond to.

The next step is to clarify how your own research fits in and what problem it addresses.

Argumentative paper: Emphasize importance

In an argumentative research paper, you can simply state the problem you intend to discuss, and what is original or important about your argument.

Empirical paper: Relate to the literature

In an empirical research paper, try to lead into the problem on the basis of your discussion of the literature. Think in terms of these questions:

• What research gap is your work intended to fill?
• What limitations in previous work does it address?
• What contribution to knowledge does it make?

You can make the connection between your problem and the existing research using phrases like the following.

Now you’ll get into the specifics of what you intend to find out or express in your research paper.

The way you frame your research objectives varies. An argumentative paper presents a thesis statement, while an empirical paper generally poses a research question (sometimes with a hypothesis as to the answer).

Argumentative paper: Thesis statement

The thesis statement expresses the position that the rest of the paper will present evidence and arguments for. It can be presented in one or two sentences, and should state your position clearly and directly, without providing specific arguments for it at this point.

Empirical paper: Research question and hypothesis

The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.

Present your research question clearly and directly, with a minimum of discussion at this point. The rest of the paper will be taken up with discussing and investigating this question; here you just need to express it.

A research question can be framed either directly or indirectly.

• This study set out to answer the following question: What effects does daily use of Instagram have on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls?
• We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls.

If your research involved testing hypotheses , these should be stated along with your research question. They are usually presented in the past tense, since the hypothesis will already have been tested by the time you are writing up your paper.

For example, the following hypothesis might respond to the research question above:

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The final part of the introduction is often dedicated to a brief overview of the rest of the paper.

In a paper structured using the standard scientific “introduction, methods, results, discussion” format, this isn’t always necessary. But if your paper is structured in a less predictable way, it’s important to describe the shape of it for the reader.

If included, the overview should be concise, direct, and written in the present tense.

• This paper will first discuss several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then will go on to …
• This paper first discusses several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then goes on to …

Full examples of research paper introductions are shown in the tabs below: one for an argumentative paper, the other for an empirical paper.

• Argumentative paper
• Empirical paper

Are cows responsible for climate change? A recent study (RIVM, 2019) shows that cattle farmers account for two thirds of agricultural nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. These emissions result from nitrogen in manure, which can degrade into ammonia and enter the atmosphere. The study’s calculations show that agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution, accounting for 46% of the country’s total emissions. By comparison, road traffic and households are responsible for 6.1% each, the industrial sector for 1%. While efforts are being made to mitigate these emissions, policymakers are reluctant to reckon with the scale of the problem. The approach presented here is a radical one, but commensurate with the issue. This paper argues that the Dutch government must stimulate and subsidize livestock farmers, especially cattle farmers, to transition to sustainable vegetable farming. It first establishes the inadequacy of current mitigation measures, then discusses the various advantages of the results proposed, and finally addresses potential objections to the plan on economic grounds.

The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013; Meier & Gray, 2014). These studies have consistently found that the visual and interactive aspects of the platform have the greatest influence on body image issues. Despite this, highly visual social media (HVSM) such as Instagram have yet to be robustly researched. This paper sets out to address this research gap. We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that daily Instagram use would be associated with an increase in body image concerns and a decrease in self-esteem ratings.

The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:

• A hook to catch the reader’s interest
• Relevant background on the topic
• Details of your research problem

and your problem statement

• A thesis statement or research question
• Sometimes an overview of the paper

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper . A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement .

A research paper designed to present the results of empirical research tends to present a research question that it seeks to answer. It may also include a hypothesis —a prediction that will be confirmed or disproved by your research.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, March 27). Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved September 7, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-paper/research-paper-introduction/

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How to Write and Publish a Research Paper for a Peer-Reviewed Journal

Clara busse.

1 Department of Maternal and Child Health, University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, 135 Dauer Dr, 27599 Chapel Hill, NC USA

Ella August

2 Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2029 USA

Associated Data

Communicating research findings is an essential step in the research process. Often, peer-reviewed journals are the forum for such communication, yet many researchers are never taught how to write a publishable scientific paper. In this article, we explain the basic structure of a scientific paper and describe the information that should be included in each section. We also identify common pitfalls for each section and recommend strategies to avoid them. Further, we give advice about target journal selection and authorship. In the online resource 1 , we provide an example of a high-quality scientific paper, with annotations identifying the elements we describe in this article.

Electronic supplementary material

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Introduction

Writing a scientific paper is an important component of the research process, yet researchers often receive little formal training in scientific writing. This is especially true in low-resource settings. In this article, we explain why choosing a target journal is important, give advice about authorship, provide a basic structure for writing each section of a scientific paper, and describe common pitfalls and recommendations for each section. In the online resource 1 , we also include an annotated journal article that identifies the key elements and writing approaches that we detail here. Before you begin your research, make sure you have ethical clearance from all relevant ethical review boards.

Select a Target Journal Early in the Writing Process

We recommend that you select a “target journal” early in the writing process; a “target journal” is the journal to which you plan to submit your paper. Each journal has a set of core readers and you should tailor your writing to this readership. For example, if you plan to submit a manuscript about vaping during pregnancy to a pregnancy-focused journal, you will need to explain what vaping is because readers of this journal may not have a background in this topic. However, if you were to submit that same article to a tobacco journal, you would not need to provide as much background information about vaping.

Information about a journal’s core readership can be found on its website, usually in a section called “About this journal” or something similar. For example, the Journal of Cancer Education presents such information on the “Aims and Scope” page of its website, which can be found here: https://www.springer.com/journal/13187/aims-and-scope .

Peer reviewer guidelines from your target journal are an additional resource that can help you tailor your writing to the journal and provide additional advice about crafting an effective article [ 1 ]. These are not always available, but it is worth a quick web search to find out.

Identify Author Roles Early in the Process

Early in the writing process, identify authors, determine the order of authors, and discuss the responsibilities of each author. Standard author responsibilities have been identified by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) [ 2 ]. To set clear expectations about each team member’s responsibilities and prevent errors in communication, we also suggest outlining more detailed roles, such as who will draft each section of the manuscript, write the abstract, submit the paper electronically, serve as corresponding author, and write the cover letter. It is best to formalize this agreement in writing after discussing it, circulating the document to the author team for approval. We suggest creating a title page on which all authors are listed in the agreed-upon order. It may be necessary to adjust authorship roles and order during the development of the paper. If a new author order is agreed upon, be sure to update the title page in the manuscript draft.

In the case where multiple papers will result from a single study, authors should discuss who will author each paper. Additionally, authors should agree on a deadline for each paper and the lead author should take responsibility for producing an initial draft by this deadline.

Structure of the Introduction Section

The introduction section should be approximately three to five paragraphs in length. Look at examples from your target journal to decide the appropriate length. This section should include the elements shown in Fig.  1 . Begin with a general context, narrowing to the specific focus of the paper. Include five main elements: why your research is important, what is already known about the topic, the “gap” or what is not yet known about the topic, why it is important to learn the new information that your research adds, and the specific research aim(s) that your paper addresses. Your research aim should address the gap you identified. Be sure to add enough background information to enable readers to understand your study. Table ​ Table1 1 provides common introduction section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

The main elements of the introduction section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Common introduction section pitfalls and recommendations

Methods Section

The purpose of the methods section is twofold: to explain how the study was done in enough detail to enable its replication and to provide enough contextual detail to enable readers to understand and interpret the results. In general, the essential elements of a methods section are the following: a description of the setting and participants, the study design and timing, the recruitment and sampling, the data collection process, the dataset, the dependent and independent variables, the covariates, the analytic approach for each research objective, and the ethical approval. The hallmark of an exemplary methods section is the justification of why each method was used. Table ​ Table2 2 provides common methods section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Common methods section pitfalls and recommendations

Results Section

The focus of the results section should be associations, or lack thereof, rather than statistical tests. Two considerations should guide your writing here. First, the results should present answers to each part of the research aim. Second, return to the methods section to ensure that the analysis and variables for each result have been explained.

Begin the results section by describing the number of participants in the final sample and details such as the number who were approached to participate, the proportion who were eligible and who enrolled, and the number of participants who dropped out. The next part of the results should describe the participant characteristics. After that, you may organize your results by the aim or by putting the most exciting results first. Do not forget to report your non-significant associations. These are still findings.

Tables and figures capture the reader’s attention and efficiently communicate your main findings [ 3 ]. Each table and figure should have a clear message and should complement, rather than repeat, the text. Tables and figures should communicate all salient details necessary for a reader to understand the findings without consulting the text. Include information on comparisons and tests, as well as information about the sample and timing of the study in the title, legend, or in a footnote. Note that figures are often more visually interesting than tables, so if it is feasible to make a figure, make a figure. To avoid confusing the reader, either avoid abbreviations in tables and figures, or define them in a footnote. Note that there should not be citations in the results section and you should not interpret results here. Table ​ Table3 3 provides common results section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Common results section pitfalls and recommendations

Discussion Section

Opposite the introduction section, the discussion should take the form of a right-side-up triangle beginning with interpretation of your results and moving to general implications (Fig.  2 ). This section typically begins with a restatement of the main findings, which can usually be accomplished with a few carefully-crafted sentences.

Major elements of the discussion section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Next, interpret the meaning or explain the significance of your results, lifting the reader’s gaze from the study’s specific findings to more general applications. Then, compare these study findings with other research. Are these findings in agreement or disagreement with those from other studies? Does this study impart additional nuance to well-accepted theories? Situate your findings within the broader context of scientific literature, then explain the pathways or mechanisms that might give rise to, or explain, the results.

Journals vary in their approach to strengths and limitations sections: some are embedded paragraphs within the discussion section, while some mandate separate section headings. Keep in mind that every study has strengths and limitations. Candidly reporting yours helps readers to correctly interpret your research findings.

The next element of the discussion is a summary of the potential impacts and applications of the research. Should these results be used to optimally design an intervention? Does the work have implications for clinical protocols or public policy? These considerations will help the reader to further grasp the possible impacts of the presented work.

Finally, the discussion should conclude with specific suggestions for future work. Here, you have an opportunity to illuminate specific gaps in the literature that compel further study. Avoid the phrase “future research is necessary” because the recommendation is too general to be helpful to readers. Instead, provide substantive and specific recommendations for future studies. Table ​ Table4 4 provides common discussion section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Common discussion section pitfalls and recommendations

Follow the Journal’s Author Guidelines

After you select a target journal, identify the journal’s author guidelines to guide the formatting of your manuscript and references. Author guidelines will often (but not always) include instructions for titles, cover letters, and other components of a manuscript submission. Read the guidelines carefully. If you do not follow the guidelines, your article will be sent back to you.

Finally, do not submit your paper to more than one journal at a time. Even if this is not explicitly stated in the author guidelines of your target journal, it is considered inappropriate and unprofessional.

Your title should invite readers to continue reading beyond the first page [ 4 , 5 ]. It should be informative and interesting. Consider describing the independent and dependent variables, the population and setting, the study design, the timing, and even the main result in your title. Because the focus of the paper can change as you write and revise, we recommend you wait until you have finished writing your paper before composing the title.

Be sure that the title is useful for potential readers searching for your topic. The keywords you select should complement those in your title to maximize the likelihood that a researcher will find your paper through a database search. Avoid using abbreviations in your title unless they are very well known, such as SNP, because it is more likely that someone will use a complete word rather than an abbreviation as a search term to help readers find your paper.

After you have written a complete draft, use the checklist (Fig. ​ (Fig.3) 3 ) below to guide your revisions and editing. Additional resources are available on writing the abstract and citing references [ 5 ]. When you feel that your work is ready, ask a trusted colleague or two to read the work and provide informal feedback. The box below provides a checklist that summarizes the key points offered in this article.

Checklist for manuscript quality

(PDF 362 kb)

Acknowledgments

Ella August is grateful to the Sustainable Sciences Institute for mentoring her in training researchers on writing and publishing their research.

Code Availability

Not applicable.

Data Availability

Compliance with ethical standards.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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