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Chapter Two

What Is an Academic Paper

Definition of an academic paper

An academic paper is a written report describing original results,

which should be published.

From this short definition,

it is clear that the paper must be qualified and written in a certain way.

Academic research is meaningless unless it is published.

In practice, a large number of people

have struggled with the definition of valid publication,

from which the Council of Biology Editors (CBE),

now the Council of Science Editors (CSE),

arrived at the widely accepted definition of an academic paper

An acceptable primary scientific publication

must be the first disclosure containing sufficient information to enable peers

first to assess observations,

second to repeat experiments,

and third to evaluate intellectual processes;

moreover, it must be susceptible to sensory perception,

essentially permanent,

available to the scientific community without restriction,

and available for regular screening by one

or more of the major recognized secondary services

e.g. currently, Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts,

Index Medicus, Excerpta Medica, Bibliography of Agriculture, etc.,

in the United States and similar services in other countries

I will explain this definition in detail.

Firstly, “An acceptable primary scientific publication”

must be “the first disclosure.”

It is certain that new research data

are often disclosed in the form of presentation at an academic conference.

But the essence of the definition statement above is that

effective and efficient first disclosure takes place

and is achieved only when it takes a form

that allows the author’s peers to completely comprehend

and apply that which is disclosed.

Secondly, another point should be clarified.

This definition provides for disclosure not just in terms of printed visual materials

like printed journals but also in nonprint and nonvisual forms.

For example, if the publication,

in the form of audio recordings met the other tests provided in the definition,

would also be regarded as effective publication.

The same is applied to electronic journals meeting the definition of valid publication.

Aimed at material posted on a website,

views have varied depending on the nature of the material posted.

In this kind of situation,

the best way is to consult materials

from professional organizations and journals in your own field.

Thirdly, the publication form must be fundamentally permanent,

which means that it must be available to academic community without restriction.

For example, the journal is openly accessible online

or to which subscriptions are available,

and must be made available to information-retrieval services.

To restate the CBE definition in simpler but not more accurate terms,

primary publication is the first publication of original research results,

in a form whereby peers of the author can repeat the experiments and test the conclusions,

and in a journal or other source document readily available within the scientific community.

Next, I will talk about

ORGANIZATION OF AN ACADEMIC PAPER

An academic paper is organized

to meet the needs of valid publication

It is highly stylized,

with distinctive and clearly evident component parts

The most common labeling of the component parts,

in the basic sciences, is introduction, methods, results,

and discussion (hence the acronym IMRAD).

I will talk about the origin and history of IMRAD.

The early journals published descriptive papers,

which is featured with straightforward reporting.

Of course this style could often be used in “letters" journals,

medical case reports, geological surveys, and so forth.

By the end of the nineteenth century,

science was beginning to develop fast

and in increasingly sophisticated ways.

Microbiology is the typical example.

With the confirmation of the germ theory of disease

and micro-organisms study,

great advances were made in both science and science reporting.

At that time,

many of fanatic believers in the theory of spontaneous generation

focused on methodology and began to challenge it.

There was necessity to describe lab experiments in exquisite detail

so that experiments could be produced by some reasonably competent peers.

Under such circumstances,

the fundamental tenet of science philosophy

was the principle of experiment reproducibility,

and the highly structured IMRAD format was naturally established.

It is known that World War II prompted the development of antibiotics,

like penicillin(first described by Alexander Fleming in 1929),

streptomycin(链霉素） reported in 1944,

and soon after World War II,

the tetracyclines（四环素）and dozens of other effective antibiotics

were produced by the crazy search for "miracle drugs”.

As these advances were shown beyond medical research laboratories after World War II,

demands for paper publication are greatly needed.

At the same time,

journal editors had to be faced with great pressure to deal with journal space,

who had to require manuscripts to be concisely written and well organized.

In other words,

journal space became so precious that verbosity or redundancy must be avoided.

The IMRAD format,

the simplest and most logical way to communicate research results,

gradually came into wide use in research journals.

The logic of IMRAD can be defined in this way:

What question(or problem)was studied?

The answer is the introduction.

How was the problem studied?

The answer is the methods.

What were the findings?

The answer is the results.

What do these findings mean?

The answer is the discussion.

It now seems clear that the simple logic of IMRAD

is really helpful for the author to organize

and write the manuscript, providing an easy road map for editors, referees,

and ultimately readers to follow in paper reading.

Whether an author is writing an article about chemistry,

journalism or economics, the IMRAD format is often the best choice.

Although the IMRAD format is universally used,

it is not the only format for academic papers.

There are, of course, exceptions.

Different journals have different requirements.

To be specific,

the methods section could appear at the end of papers;

results and discussion sections could be combined;

the conclusions section could also appear at the end;

methods section and results section can alternate.

In some papers especially in the social sciences,

a long literature review section could appear at the beginning of the paper.

Therefore, other norms could also exist,

including IRDAM, IMRADC, IMRMRMRD, ILMRAD, and so on.

Since different variations of IMRAD exist,

the determination of paper organization forms

should depend on the instructions of your target journal

and look at analogous papers published in the journal.

Also, corresponding source books could make you informed.

Here, I will offer you some sources.

Formats of medical papers are described by Huth (1999),

Peat and others (2002)， Taylor(2011)，

and contributors to a multiauthor guide(Hall 2013);

formats of engineering papers and reports

by Michaelson (1990) and by Beer and McMurrey (2014).

By the way,

I have to remind you that

writing books in your own discipline can be also referred to,

including those in biomedical science by Zeiger(2000);

the health science by Lang(2010);

in chemistry by Ebel, Bliefert, and Russey(2004);

and in psychology by Sternberg and Sterberg (2010).

Generally, even though English is the international language of academic research,

for us who are not the native speakers,

the organization of an academic paper is the essential task of paper author.

Maybe this is the comfort for us.