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The Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) Structure: a fifty-year survey
Abstract
The scientific article in the health sciences evolved from the letter form and purely descriptive style in the seventeenth century to a very standardized structure in the twentieth century known as introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD). The pace in which this structure began to be used and when it became the most used standard of today's scientific discourse in the health sciences is not well established.
The purpose of this study is to point out the period in time during which the IMRAD structure was definitively and widely adopted in medical scientific writing.
In a cross-sectional study, the frequency of articles written under the IMRAD structure was measured from 1935 to 1985 in a randomly selected sample of articles published in four leading journals in internal medicine: the British Medical Journal, JAMA, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
The IMRAD structure, in those journals, began to be used in the 1940s. In the 1970s, it reached 80% and, in the 1980s, was the only pattern adopted in original papers.
Although recommended since the beginning of the twentieth century, the IMRAD structure was adopted as a majority only in the 1970s. The influence of other disciplines and the recommendations of editors are among the facts that contributed to authors adhering to it.
... Generally, academic papers are divided into title, abstract, main text, and references. The main text can further be divided into introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRaD) (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004). Although not all academic papers follow this structure, natural language processing techniques (Cohan et al., 2018a) can be employed to segment the content of the main text into these sections. ...
... The IMRaD model is a classical system, proposed earlier and widely used in scientific literature (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004;Nair and Nair, 2014). It divides the structural functions of academic articles into four parts: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. ...
Novelty is a core component of academic papers, and there are multiple perspectives on the assessment of novelty. Existing methods often focus on word or entity combinations, which provide limited insights. The content related to a paper's novelty is typically distributed across different core sections, e.g., Introduction, Methodology and Results. Therefore, exploring the optimal combination of sections for evaluating the novelty of a paper is important for advancing automated novelty assessment. In this paper, we utilize different combinations of sections from academic papers as inputs to drive language models to predict novelty scores. We then analyze the results to determine the optimal section combinations for novelty score prediction. We first employ natural language processing techniques to identify the sectional structure of academic papers, categorizing them into introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRaD). Subsequently, we used different combinations of these sections (e.g., introduction and methods) as inputs for pretrained language models (PLMs) and large language models (LLMs), employing novelty scores provided by human expert reviewers as ground truth labels to obtain prediction results. The results indicate that using introduction, results and discussion is most appropriate for assessing the novelty of a paper, while the use of the entire text does not yield significant results. Furthermore, based on the results of the PLMs and LLMs, the introduction and results appear to be the most important section for the task of novelty score prediction. The code and dataset for this paper can be accessed at https://github.com/njust-winchy/SC4ANM.
... Structural components: This category encompasses criteria pertaining to different sections and components of scientific writing. Scientific manuscripts typically follow the IMRaD structure (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion), as described by Sollaci and Pereira (2004) [67]. Original research articles followed this standardized format, with each section serving a specific function in conveying the research findings. ...
... Structural components: This category encompasses criteria pertaining to different sections and components of scientific writing. Scientific manuscripts typically follow the IMRaD structure (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion), as described by Sollaci and Pereira (2004) [67]. Original research articles followed this standardized format, with each section serving a specific function in conveying the research findings. ...
This study examines the challenge of defining quality in peer-review reports, a crucial yet underexplored aspect of academic publishing. Reviewers are vital gatekeepers of scientific knowledge, but unclear skills and a lack of standardized guidelines have led to inconsistent and subjective practices, weakening the overall efficacy of the peer-review process. To address this issue, the primary objective of this paper is to answer the research question: How has literature addressed guidance for producing quality peer-review reports? A scoping review was conducted, utilizing Scopus, Web of Science, SpringerLink, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and SAGE databases to search for records using keywords related to guidelines for scientific peer reviewing. The review identified 111 primary studies offering recommendations on how to review scientific articles. Extracted data were analysed thematically, focusing on approaches to reviewing articles, manuscript evaluation criteria, and report-writing guidelines. The findings revealed six key categories of review criteria for evaluating scientific manuscripts: structural components, research approach, style, ethical conduct, scientific value, and overall suitability. Additionally, the review provides 70 actionable recommendations for writing peer-review reports and highlights eight essential quality features expected in review texts: constructive, specific, fair, thorough, courteous, consistent, objective, and readable feedback. This study contributes to developing a standardized guide for scientific reviewing, with a particular emphasis on supporting early-career reviewers. The findings encourage academic publishers, journal editors, and professional organizations to adopt the proposed guidelines to enhance consistency, reduce bias, and improve the peer-review process. They also provide a foundation for developing new tools to support the reviewing.
... This framework evaluates the innovation of scientific papers at multiple levels: from the document level (full paper) to the paragraph level (sections) and finally to the sentence level (question-answer pairs). First, to handle the problem of long-text analysis, we divide papers into text chunks based on their original smallest sections, which are then categorized by LLMs into common scientific paper section types following the IMRaD format [10]. Specifically, we propose to divide the scientific paper into the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, Approach/Methodology/Model/Method, Analysis Theory, Experiments, Experiment Analysis, Discussion/Limitations, and Conclusion. ...
... Next, we classify k text chunks from a paper into nine predefined section types using zero-shot prompting with large language models (LLMs). We extend the classic IMRaD structure (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) [10] into nine categories: Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, Approach/Methodology/Model/Method, Analysis Theory, Experiments, Experiment Analysis, Discussion/Limitations, and Conclusion, where the number of section types is set to s = 9. While preserving the IMRaD sections for Introduction and Methods, we also include the Abstract, which is often found at the beginning of academic papers. ...
Measuring scientific paper innovation is both important and challenging. Existing content-based methods often overlook the full-paper context, fail to capture the full scope of innovation, and lack generalization. We propose HSPIM, a hierarchical and training-free framework based on large language models (LLMs). It introduces a Paper-to-Sections-to-QAs decomposition to assess innovation. We segment the text by section titles and use zero-shot LLM prompting to implement section classification, question-answering (QA) augmentation, and weighted novelty scoring. The generated QA pair focuses on section-level innovation and serves as additional context to improve the LLM scoring. For each chunk, the LLM outputs a novelty score and a confidence score. We use confidence scores as weights to aggregate novelty scores into a paper-level innovation score. To further improve performance, we propose a two-layer question structure consisting of common and section-specific questions, and apply a genetic algorithm to optimize the question-prompt combinations. Comprehensive experiments on scientific conference paper datasets show that HSPIM outperforms baseline methods in effectiveness, generalization, and interpretability.
... This section should contain all the details required for another researcher to evaluate the study or replicate the experiment since the Methods section is considered as "the narrowest part of the research paper or the laboratory report" (Swales & Feak, 2004, p. 156). It is important to note that the subheadings within this part may differ based on the discipline for which students are writing or the chosen experimental design (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004). ...
... With this content organization, they support Swales & Feak's (2004) assertion regarding the writing of the content of these sections. Moreover, with the adherence to the IMRAD pattern in structuring their reports, students of Biology at Ouargla University ensured a logical flow of information that enables readers to navigate the report effortlessly, in accordance with Sollaci & Pereira's (2004) claim. ...
Academic discourse serves as a platform for the systematic communication of scientific findings, with laboratory reports being a primary type employed by researchers and students. These reports follow specific conventions and formats, ensuring clarity and credibility in scientific communication. This study investigates the organizational structure of English-language Biology laboratory reports, focusing on students' adherence to the Introduction, Methods, Results, And Discussion (IMRAD) model. After compiling a corpus of fifty Biology students' laboratory reports from Ouargla University, Algeria, the researchers adopted a qualitative approach and a thematic analysis of data. The results revealed overall adherence to the IMRAD format, with minor variations, notably variations in subheadings within the Methods section, transitions between sections, and the structure of the Discussion section, reflecting disciplinary norms. These findings suggest opportunities for teachers to explicitly address the nuances of IMRAD structure and writing conventions within the domain of Biology. By comprehending how students apply this model, instructors can design more effective lessons and writing instructions that foster clarity and disciplinary understanding in laboratory report writing. This study emphasizes the importance of exploring the impact of explicit instruction on the quality of student writing and understanding of IMRAD conventions. It is recommended that these variations be further explored in order to enhance the comprehension of students' communication skills, thereby improving their writing quality in the academic landscape. Additionally, this research stresses the importance of exploring the impact of explicit instruction on student writing quality and understanding of IMRAD conventions.
... While the so-called IMRAD model of writing academic papers gained momentum during the 20th century (Day, 1989;Huth, 1987), before 1935 there were very few scholarly publications based on that model (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004). Only after the 1940s was IMRAD used extensively as a standard research writing format; and by the 1980s it had evolved into a universal style of reporting research output across the disciplines of arts, social and health science scholars (Day, 1989;Kumar, 2023;Oriokot et al., 2011;Sollaci and Pereira, 2004). ...
... While the so-called IMRAD model of writing academic papers gained momentum during the 20th century (Day, 1989;Huth, 1987), before 1935 there were very few scholarly publications based on that model (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004). Only after the 1940s was IMRAD used extensively as a standard research writing format; and by the 1980s it had evolved into a universal style of reporting research output across the disciplines of arts, social and health science scholars (Day, 1989;Kumar, 2023;Oriokot et al., 2011;Sollaci and Pereira, 2004). However, there were exceptions to this format that may be due to the nature of each discipline. ...
... 2 However, it was not before I started to read more recent papers on evaluation that I realized that Weiss was not only an outstanding academic, but also an excellent communicator. She let the format follow the content, in contrast to present scholars who seem to follow such guidelines as the IMRaD -originally a concept from the natural sciences (Sollaci and Pereira 2004). Papers are now structured by the components of Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion, with a dash of theory added for the sake of social sciences. ...
... During the post-war academic expansion, the format became increasingly popular and believed to both facilitate the peer-review process for the vast number of medical articles being published and to benefit readers (Huth 1987). By the 1970s, the IMRaD structure was applied by 80 percent of leading medical journals (Sollaci and Pereira 2004). ...
Academic papers in the social sciences were once more essayistic in their form. The carefree launching of concepts and ideas of academic value were the order of the day, all without the security of the present standardized paper format inspired by the natural sciences. This text draws on the most cited paper by the acclaimed scholar Carol Weiss, as an outset to discussing academic writing; why we write as we do and what we may lose by doing so. This means exploring the history of academic writing as well as discussing the complex, yet exciting, relationship between writing, identity, language, and the very process of conducting research.
... The framework of this study comprised following four steps. Firstly, a section structure classification framework was established by referencing the IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004) structure of academic papers, which fit the corpus of our study well. In order to deeply examine the impact of the quality of section structure recognition on KPE's performance, we divided all the corpus into three sets of corpora: Corpus-PH, Corpus-MH, and Corpus-ML. ...
The exponential increase in academic papers has significantly increased the time required for researchers to access relevant literature. Keyphrase Extraction (KPE) offers a solution to this situation by enabling researchers to efficiently retrieve relevant literature. The current study on KPE from academic articles aims to improve the performance of extraction models through innovative approaches using Title and Abstract as input corpora. However, the semantic richness of keywords is significantly constrained by the length of the abstract. While full-text-based KPE can address this issue, it simultaneously introduces noise, which significantly diminishes KPE performance. To address this issue, this paper utilized the structural features and section texts obtained from the section structure information of academic articles to extract keyphrase from academic papers. The approach consists of two main parts: (1) exploring the effect of seven structural features on KPE models, and (2) integrating the extraction results from all section texts used as input corpora for KPE models via a keyphrase integration algorithm to obtain the keyphrase integration result. Furthermore, this paper also examined the effect of the classification quality of section structure on the KPE performance. The results show that incorporating structural features improves KPE performance, though different features have varying effects on model efficacy. The keyphrase integration approach yields the best performance, and the classification quality of section structure can affect KPE performance. These findings indicate that using the section structure information of academic articles contributes to effective KPE from academic articles. The code and dataset supporting this study are available at https://github.com/yan-xinyi/SSB_KPE.
... Additionally, we analyzed the headings associated with the visual topics and manually coded them into one of categories of the IMRaD structure-Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion-to better understand the argumentative functions these visual topics serve within an article (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004). We also manually distinguished and annotated the nature of articles as empirical, conceptual, or methods-oriented to provide more context regarding the likely concentrations of visual topics within speci c IMRaD sections. ...
Digital humanities, as an interdisciplinary research domain, has been significantly impacted by emerging technological innovations. In recent years, visualizations have played an increasingly prominent role in digital humanities scholarship, gradually driving the field away from its traditionally text-centric orientation. This paper examines how visual topics and themes are addressed in two leading digital humanities journals— Digital Scholarship in the Humanities and Digital Humanities Quarterly —through full-text analysis of their published articles. Using BERTopic and network analysis, we identify key visual topics in each journal and investigate how these are integrated into scholarly narratives. Our findings show that, while visual discussions are diverse and often idiosyncratic, they remain deeply embedded in digital humanities discourse. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities tends to emphasize a more methodologically oriented visual discourse, focusing on visualization as a research method or as part of broader methodological debates. In contrast, Digital Humanities Quarterly offers a more balanced integration of conceptual and methodological perspectives. Building on the notion of visualizations as inscriptions, this study demonstrates how visual elements mobilize humanities ideas and scholarship, offering a foundation for further empirical investigations into visual discourse in digital humanities.
... This acronym stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion and represents a summary of the different sections of research articles (Fraser, 2002). Since the 20 th century, the IMRaD structure has been used to write scientific abstracts to the point that it has become standardized in certain fields (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004). In fact, "editors and scientists agree that IMRaD provides a consistent framework that guides the author to address several questions essential to understanding a scientific study" (Wu, 2010(Wu, : 1346. ...
This document is downloadable from www.tradulex.com and www.asling.org 3 Acknowledgements AsLing wishes to thank and acknowledge the support of the sponsors of TC45: Gold Sponsors Silver Sponsors Bronze Sponsors 4 The Executive Committee of AsLing establishes several bodies each year, to organise and carry out the annual conference. Membership in these bodies overlap. The tables below show membership in these bodies for TC45.
... Perhaps this intervention could also be attributed to the way in which IMRAD articles are expected to be written. It is useful to note that major medical journals, including the Lancet and the BMJ adopted IMRAD between the 1950s and 60s and the New England Journal of Medicine slightly later in the 1960s (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004). For example, the University of Minnosota guidelines suggest that the results section should: ...
The full thesis can be downloaded from:
http://hdl.handle.net/10362/177821
Abstract
Translation has played a central role in the publication of the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology (RPC) since 1999 when the Journal first began to be published in bilingual format. This thesis tracks and traces the role of the agents in translation in a text-oriented ethnographic study of translations published by the RPC between 2017 and 2021. It focuses specifically on the role of peer reviewers and the principal translator (Translator A). It answers two research questions: is it possible to quantify and qualify interventions in the text and if so, how?
It is framed theoretically in the context of actor-network theory (ANT) and methodologically, it is divided into two parts. Study 1 relates to the textual and paratextual analysis of translator and peer reviewer interventions in 62 translations published by the RPC. The results reveal there were overwhelmingly more translation-related interventions in the text compared to peer review; the majority of peer review interventions were in Content, whereas Translator A intervened more at a Sentence Structure level. However, when Translator A intervened in Content, these changes were more likely to have a major impact on the text.
In Study 2, six actors at the RPC were interviewed regarding their experiences of working within the network, how they perceive their involvement, their interaction and social relations with others, their own goals and how these contribute to the overriding objective – the translation and publication of the RPC. The results showed that the role of Translator A was not fully understood by non-translators in the network and that in the period in question, Translator A acted as a (linguistic) gatekeeper for the Journal. As one of the central figures in the translation and publication network, Translator A fulfils various roles in addition to translation (as linguistic editor, proofreader, plagiarism-checker, reference checker and content accuracy checker), ensuring that all articles translated into English meet target audience expectations for a high-quality English language journal. As regards the peer reviewers, it was clear they play a major role, yet one that is often undervalued and exploited.
It is hoped this thesis will give stakeholders, specifically non-translators involved in the translation processes at journals, a greater understanding of how translators intervene in text production. In addition, it aims to contribute to a body of measurable evidence on the role and relevance of translators in the production of scientific knowledge and even empower translators to gain recognition for their work, especially in the wake of the development of artificial intelligence and advanced machine translation models.
... Analyzing these citations (with context) based on their location in the text provides valuable insights into the contextual relevance of cited works (Sandra & Rupesh, 2024). Scholarly articles typically follow the widely recognized IMRaD structure comprising the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004). Scite.ai ...
This study explores citation context in DAE-funded research publications from 2015 to 2024, analyzing patterns of scholarly engagement across various disciplines and sections of scholarly articles. Over the decade, 15,582 publications received 273,825 citations, with an average of 18 citations per paper. While publication numbers fluctuated, 2024 marked a record high of 1,930 publications, signaling a potential upward trend. Citation contexts were categorized into supporting, contrasting, and mentioning types according to Scite.ai. Results reveal a predominance of mentioning citations (95.42%), suggesting a tendency towards neutral referencing while supporting citations (4.31%) and contrasting citations (0.27%) offered insights into scholarly validation and critique. Disciplinary analysis highlighted contrasting citations’ prevalence in dynamic fields like Materials Science and Physics, while supportive citations were most common in Life Sciences & Biomedicine. Sectional analysis based on the IMRaD structure underscored the “Other” category's significance, leading in all citation types and showcasing interdisciplinary engagement. These findings enhance understanding of citation intent, influence, and distribution, offering actionable insights into academic impact and the evolving nature of scholarly discourse.
... Existen muchas formas y sugerencias para escribir el artículo final. Una forma fácil de recordar cómo realizar una publicación científica es con la sigla IMRAD (introducción, métodos, resultados análisis y discusión), iniciando con el resumen en español y en inglés, junto con las palabras clave para facilitar la indexación (4) . Es importante saber que la estructura y organización del artículo debe cambiar de acuerdo con el tipo y naturaleza del estudio y la revista donde se va a publicar, teniendo en cuenta que cada revista tiene sus propias reglas de publicación. ...
Introducción: los resultados de una investigación son parte central de una publicación y deben responder a los objetivos propuestos con un razonamiento explícito que dé respuesta a la pregunta de investigación. Objetivo: mostrar los elementos centrales de un artículo a publicar como resultado de una investigación. Resultados: se revisa la literatura con el fin de buscar los elementos centrales, prácticos y de mayor utilidad para la presentación de los resultados de un trabajo de investigación que se va a publicar, también destacando algunos errores que se deben evitar en su presentación. Conclusiones: se destacan los aspectos prácticos dentro del contexto de una publicación científica, que faciliten la misma o eviten errores en la presentación de los resultados de una investigación.
... In this paper, the approach consisted of measuring the text similarity using the IMRaD standardised structure (Introduction, Methodology, Results and Discussion) to exploit the full-text of articles according to the organization of the scientific discourse in it. IMRaD was introduced for the health articles in the 1940s (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004) and it is the format accepted for most of biomedical articles (ICMJE, 2010). IMRaD provides a structure for the organization of research and argumentation of articles, which involves different communicative purposes and discursive functions for each rhetorical category. ...
Doctoral theses are an important source of publication in universities, although little research has been carried out on the publications resulting from theses, on so-called derivative articles. This study investigates how derivative articles can be identified through a text analysis based on the full-text of a set of medical theses and the full-text of articles, with which they shared authorship. The text similarity analysis methodology applied consisted in exploiting the full-text articles according to organization of scientific discourse (IMRaD) using the TurnItIn plagiarism tool. The study found that the text similarity rate in the Discussion section can be used to discriminate derivative articles from non-derivative articles. Additional findings were: the first position of the thesis's author dominated in 85% of derivative articles, the participation of supervisors as coauthors occurred in 100% of derivative articles, the authorship credit retained by the thesis's author was 42% in derivative articles, the number of coauthors by article was 5 in derivative articles versus 6.4 coauthors, as average, in non-derivative articles and the time differential regarding the year of thesis completion showed that 87.5% of derivative articles were published before or in the same year of thesis completion.
... Our list of questions follows the structure of a typical research manuscript, that is, IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion), which was recommended in the early 20th century and became almost universally adopted, especially in biomedical journals, in the 1970s. 7 We chose two questions per section, in order to not overburden the reviewers while directing their focus on the core aspects needed for assessing the quality of evidence and the quality of reporting of the study. We encourage editors to treat the list as highly adaptable by removing or adding specific questions specifically needed in their fields, for example, questions on theory, code or data sharing, computational reproducibility, etc. ...
To address the low overlap between reviewer comments and the publication recommendations they make, as well as to suggest guidance on what kind of peer review report would benefit journals and editors the most, we introduced structured peer review to Elsevier journals and analyzed its effect in our June 2024 paper: peerj.com/articles/17514/ . To further promote the implementation of the structured peer review process and help reviewers prepare thorough review reports, in this paper, we present our set of structured peer review questions in a checklist format.
... This acronym stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion and represents a summary of the different sections of research articles (Fraser, 2002). Since the 20 th century, the IMRaD structure has been used to write scientific abstracts to the point that it has become standardized in certain fields (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004). In fact, "editors and scientists agree that IMRaD provides a consistent framework that guides the author to address several questions essential to understanding a scientific study" (Wu, 2010(Wu, : 1346. ...
The improvement in quality and precision of machine translation (MT) outputs has captured the attention of both the academic research community and industry professionals. This has led to a focus on optimising post-editing (PE) tasks to enhance the training of translation engines and improve the workflow of post-editors. However, translation environments, PE tasks, and quality assessment processes are still dependent on computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools. The neural MT paradigm requires a workstation specifically designed for PE tasks, as the requirements for PE differ from those of translation, particularly in areas such as PE process analysis, PE guidelines, and PE skill sets. The aim of this paper is to establish a path for the development of a workstation (WS) specifically customised for the needs of PE tasks. To achieve this objective, an analysis of the main Translator’s WS initiatives has been conducted, via literature review, to identify the functions that were initially developed to enhance the translator’s workflow and that, subsequently, were employed for the development of present-day CAT tools. Then, we will identify the common requirements in PE tasks, which will serve as the basis for presenting a prototype tool tailored to meet the needs of PE.
... 5,6 In order to assist researchers in producing comprehensible and influential articles, this article offers a structured method for writing scientific for clinical presentation is that papers which follow the IMRAD format (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion). 7 It also highlights important therapeutic areas, such as medicine, basic sciences etc. ...
In today's informative age, producing a well-structured scientific paper is critical for ensuring that research is read, well understood, and valued. This work focuses on the key components of a modern scientific article, providing practical advice on structure, writing, and formatting in the classical IMRAD style (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion). By following this methodology and resolving frequent issues, researchers can create clear and impactful papers that stand out in a academic orbit.
Target writing for a scientific paper: When you begin writing about your research, begin with a specific target journal in mind. The ability to accurately describe ideas, protocols/procedures, and outcomes are the pillars of scientific writing.
... Most data sources, however, used different IMRAD patterns despite their unsymmetrical image. This variation aligns with assertions that IMRAD is a standardized structure for scientific articles (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004), is widely used in research articles (Nair & Nair, 2014), and is the most prominent norm for scientific journal articles (Prayag, 2019). ...
This paper examines IMRAD, synthesis, and hedging within expert academic writing to encourage a world discussion platform and to enhance manuscript writing for internationally reputable journals. The research utilized 25 Quartile-1 Scopus-indexed articles from 25 scholarly journals from 2022 and 2023 publications across different subject areas. Through online searching, observation, and interpretive techniques, the patterns of IMRAD, its synthesis, and the use of hedging within the synthesis were analyzed and identified as crucial elements for creating a manuscript that serves as a world discussion platform. Based on the systematic observation and interpretation of the 25 data sources, the research findings were discussed across three aspects: the IMRAD pattern, synthesis, and hedging. The findings revealed that symmetrical IMRAD patterns were rarely employed by authors of Quartile-1 Scopus-indexed journals, with various patterns being applied and the largest proportion focusing on different aspects. Synthesis was utilized by all authors of the 25 journal articles, and hedging or cautious language was used by most authors. Authors worldwide may benefit from the results of this research when writing manuscripts to be submitted to internationally reputable journals. Additionally, academic writing teachers can use the proposed interpretive model and research results to teach expert academic writing to their students, thus enhancing the quality of student academic writing and enabling the publication of their papers in internationally reputable journals.
... In addition, the IMRAD structure seems to be more grounded in the thinking than the feeling, and we'd like to explore feelthinking-doing writing, to challenge ourselves (and a colonial staple). A review of IMRAD papers in medicine (Sollaci and Pereira 2004), shows that the structure was fully adopted in 1975, and that before that, many different structures could co-exist with it. We're not challenging the structure itself, nor questioning its strengths, yet we see cracks that could be filled with different outlooks. ...
... Second, for many critical reviews, including all relevant primary studies is impossible and unnecessary. For example, a critical review of adherence to the Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion framework (IMRaD) framework (Sollaci and Pereira, 2004) could include all software engineering papers ever written. Instead, a random sample of papers from a selection of leading journals and conferences is sufficient because critical reviews do not assess causal claims, therefore publication bias-"what if significant results were published but non-significant results were not?"-is irrelevant. ...
The goal of this chapter is to support teachers in holistically introducing graduate students to literature reviews, with a particular focus on secondary research. It provides an overview of the overall literature review process and the different types of literature review before diving into guidelines for selecting and conducting different types of literature review. The chapter also provides recommendations for evaluating the quality of existing literature reviews and concludes with a summary of our learning goals and how the chapter supports teachers in addressing them.
... Medicine falls within the realm of sciences where scientific knowledge is constructed through experimental observation and evidence (Gotti, 2016). Medical RAs are "content-oriented and informative" (Yang et al., 2015, p. 2), which seems to be even more evident when there has been a greater shift towards experimentalbased medicine where knowledge has been increasingly built on randomized-controlled trials and laboratory analysis (Rowley-Jolivet, 2018), as evidenced by the domination of the IMRD structure (introduction, methods, results, and discussion) in medical RAs since the 1970s (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004). Mechanical engineering research is inherently problemsolving and application-oriented, and centers on practical solutions to real-world problems (Khaw & Tan, 2018). ...
This study investigated the phrasal complexity of academic writing from a diachronic perspective. Specifically, based on a corpus of 1,920 research articles (RAs) from soft disciplines (education and economics) and hard disciplines (medicine and mechanical engineering), this study examined the diachronic changes and disciplinary variations in the phrasal complexity of RAs from 1970 to 2020. Nine noun phrase modifiers from Biber et al.’s (2011) framework were adopted for the measurement of phrasal complexity. Results of diachronic analysis reveal an increasing trend in the phrasal complexity of RAs in the four disciplines over the past 50 years, and this trend is more pronounced in the hard disciplines than in the soft disciplines. In addition, the results show significant disciplinary differences in the use of noun phrase modifiers at most time points, with more clausal modifiers in the soft disciplines and more phrasal modifiers in the hard disciplines. These observed diachronic and disciplinary patterns of use of noun phrase modifiers in RAs are possibly associated with the evolving discipline-related epistemological characteristics. These findings have useful implications for EAP writing research and pedagogy.
... The right edge is the end of the text, namely the discussion section. Considering that the standard organization of the research paper genre follows the general schematic IMRD structure (Huth, 1987;Swales, 1990Swales, , 2004Sollaci & Pereira, 2004), Introduction -Method -Results -Discussion, the frequency, and the position of a word across the sections of an article is a meaningful piece of information. Whether the mention of the topic occurs uniformly across the text, or there is a concentration in the introductory or conclusive sections, the evidence might reveal the author/s' behaviour. ...
must not exceed 300 words (among other reasons, because the text box will not accommodate it) The existing literature on newspaper discourse from a CAD (Critical Discourse Analysis) or CADS (Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies) perspective is extensive and there is a large volume of published studies that mention the noun representation in their titles or who put the representation in the press as the main object of investigation. Generally, these works focus on the use of language to represent a social phenomenon like migration, Islam, Europe, homelessness, obesity, and many other events. However, except for some works, the explanation of what the act of representation means is often not directly and overtly addressed. However, the fact that the notion of representation is not often clearly defined in many works (generally for a matter of space) does not mean that the notion is taken for granted or the implications are not considered. For this reason, this paper investigates how the notion of representation is presented. On the basis that the meaning of an expression derives from its use in context, which is intended as all its manifestations through which the expression itself acquires its meaning, the aim of this work is to give a corpus-assisted discourse perspective on the use of the lexical item representation in the academic discourse focused on the news media.
... Si parte da aspetti squisitamente linguistici -come l'apprendimento delle lingue straniere -per approdare a questioni che non riguardano i testi in quanto testi, bensì in quanto manifestazione di una logica della scoperta e che possano adeguatamente rifletterla agli occhi del lettore. Tutto ciò, da svolgersi secondo i protocolli ormai consolidati, che vanno dall'organizzazione di base di un testo scientifico secondo il modello IMRaD (Sollaci, Pereira, 2004) fino alle più delicate questioni comunicative che coinvolgono le meccaniche, non sempre bene oliate, della revisione tra pari in un contesto editoriale che vede uno scontro aperto tra tentativi di cartello e monopolizzazione dei prodotti della scienza e movimento Open Science (Schönbrodt, 2019). ...
La formazione dottorale italiana in ambito pedagogico si scontra con la condizione generale dei laureati nell’ambito delle scienze sociali: i corsi EQF 6 ed EQF 7 (triennale e magistrale) non sempre formano alla ricerca. Quest’ultima carenza formativa non si ripropone in termini di scrittura scientifica, bensì di comunicazione. Quest’ultima avviene in un contesto accademico dominato da quella che il presente contributo definisce ‘la maniera’, cioè il modus operandi neopositivistico per la redazione e distribuzione degli studi scientifici. Di qui, i due corni della questione: se non apprende a essere manierista, il dottorando rischia l’esclusione; la maniera stessa, però, marginalizza la creatività e l’eccentricità tipica dei fenomeni euristici nella scienza. Ricollocando tale problematica alla luce delle svolte epistemologiche del Ventesimo Secolo, è possibile ridefinire la formazione dottorale alla luce di un’idea di scienza come risultato di un esercizio di razionalità discorsiva.
... After the mentioned stages, students started to experiment, test or shape the form of the final paper. The instructor in class 4 introduced the structure of a research paper, the popular concept of IMRaD [31] and explained how to conduct research. The next two exercises (classes 5 and 6) were devoted to thematic consultations-the so-called Montessori silence lessons [32]. ...
Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is one of the most effective teaching methods to follow the trend of constructivism. Its main premise is the dominant role of the cognitively activated student, who, like the researcher, has the opportunity to pose questions, test hypotheses and solve problems by using a wide range of tools and techniques. The output of the IBL method is usually a presentation or a piece of work. In the experiment carried out, the IBL method was used during the interdisciplinary course “Building Information Modelling (BIM)”, taught at the master’s degree programme majoring in spatial management at the Warsaw University of Technology. The aim of the class was to solve a specific problem and develop a scientific and technical manuscript, which at the same time could form the basis of a scientific publication. The class was first experimentally implemented with a mixed-methods approach based mainly on IBL. Students were introduced to IBL techniques and tools as part of a project exercise, then were presented with problem and research topics. Participants in the classes chose an issue from those presented or created a topic of interest themselves. Peer learning, Montessori silent lessons or supervision were used during the implementation of the activities. Students were not assessed digitally, but their activity was marked in the form of pluses (+) and the focus was on providing quick and complete feedback (always individually to the individual or group). The class concluded with a self-assessment and a research questionnaire, which concluded that an authoritative teaching process was a far better choice than an authoritarian or liberal process.
... The text section variable was annotated based on the IMRaD structure of a RA (e.g., Wu 2011, Sollaci, Pereira 2004. However, in most cases, the RAs in our corpus did not adhere to a clear IMRaD structure. ...
A crise climática, provocada pela emissão de gases de efeito estufa, requer atenção urgente e implementação de medidas eficazes para sua mitigação. Dentro deste cenário, a Transição Energética, mudança da matriz energética baseada em combustíveis fósseis para uma com baixa ou zero emissões de carbono, emerge como uma estratégia fundamental para a neutralização dessas emissões. Na conjuntura atual de transição energética, a descarbonização é predominantemente alcançada por meio da geração de energia elétrica de fontes renováveis e da eletrificação de diversas atividades. Nesta perspectiva, os Veículos Elétricos, a Geração Distribuída, o Armazenamento de Energia e a Resposta da Demanda são elementos-chave nesse processo. Diante desse cenário, o setor elétrico, particularmente a distribuição de energia elétrica, detém um papel essencial na habilitação da Transição Energética. O sistema elétrico brasileiro apresenta características que são referências globais e elementos favoráveis ao contexto da Transição Energética, como uma matriz energética predominantemente limpa e um dos maiores sistemas de transmissão interligados e robustos do mundo. Contudo, a distribuição de energia elétrica enfrenta desafios significativos, desde a capacidade de investimento até a qualidade do serviço prestado. Diante do exposto, o objetivo central deste estudo é fazer uma estimativa do investimento requerido na infraestrutura de distribuição para possibilitar o desenvolvimento eficaz da Transição Energética no Brasil. Para tanto, foi conduzida uma Revisão Sistemática de Escopo que proporcionou a fundamentação necessária para a elaboração de um modelo destinado a estimar o investimento exigido na distribuição de energia elétrica no Brasil, com base nas variáveis identificadas na literatura. Através do Método Delphi, o referido modelo foi validado por especialistas no assunto. Posterior à coleta de dados das variáveis associadas, simulações foram executadas e o volume de investimento indicado entre 110 e 130 bilhões de reais, no período de 2022 até 2032, considerando um nível de certeza de 80%. A principal contribuição deste estudo para o conhecimento científico reside na proposição e subsequente validação de um modelo integrado destinado à previsão de investimentos em infraestrutura de distribuição de energia elétrica no âmbito das estratégias voltadas para viabilizar a transição energética.
Evaluation of summary quality is particularly crucial within the scientific domain, because it facilitates efficient knowledge dissemination and automated scientific information retrieval. This paper presents conceptual and experimental analyses of scientific summarization, highlighting the inadequacies of traditional evaluation methods. These methods, including n -gram overlap calculations, embedding comparisons, verification, and QA-based approaches, often fall short in providing explanations, grasping scientific concepts, or identifying key content. Correspondingly, we introduce the Facet-aware Metric (FM), employing LLMs for advanced semantic matching to evaluate summaries based on different facets. The facet granularity is tailored to the structure of scientific abstracts, offering an integrated evaluation approach that is not fragmented, while also providing fine-grained interpretability. Recognizing the absence of an evaluation benchmark in the scientific domain, we curate a Scientific abstract summary evaluation Dataset (ScholarSum) with facet-level annotations. Our findings confirm that FM offers a more logical approach to evaluating scientific summaries. In addition, fine-tuned smaller models can compete with LLMs in scientific contexts, while LLMs have limitations in learning from in-context information in scientific domains. We hope our benchmark inspires better evaluation metrics and future enhancements to LLMs: https://github.com/iriscxy/ScholarSum .
Knowledge of history belongs to the general knowledge of all researchers and is, therefore, essential for understanding the present and envisioning the future. We present the history of information retrieval and the writing of scientific papers. Many modern concepts were invented before the scientific revolution of the 1600s, but their significance was not widely understood. Galileo, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, and Isaac Newton developed the modern analytical thinking combining rationalism and empiricism. The newest idea is the system concept of the last century by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Norbert Wiener, Kenneth E. Boulding, and many others since about 1950. Analytical thinking is about 400 years old, but systems thinking is about 75 years old.
Abstract
Brain drain poses a substantial challenge to Nigerian higher education, impacting faculty retention and educational standards. Guided by SET and PPFT theories, this basic qualitative study explored administrative strategies to mitigate brain drain. Ten people, including deans and faculty members, participated in virtual interviews for the study. The data analysis used open coding, which found 303 code segments. These were grouped into 12 subthemes and then combined into five main themes: institutional responses to migration, drivers of brain drain, administrative and structural challenges, effective retention strategies, and leadership roles and strategies. Key findings highlighted diverse institutional responses, emphasizing recruitment improvements, competitive compensation, and international partnerships. Economic factors, inadequate working conditions, and limited professional growth opportunities emerged as primary factors driving faculty migration. Participants stressed the critical need for competitive salaries, improved working conditions, and better career prospects to retain faculty. The study also identified significant administrative hurdles, such as chronic underfunding and bureaucratic obstacles, that impede effective leadership strategies. Effective retention strategies, including incentives, supportive work environments, and professional development opportunities, are crucial for mitigating brain drain. Similarly, leadership support was significant, highlighting the importance of having a clear strategy and open communication. This study proposes a framework for addressing brain drain in Nigerian higher education through administrative reforms, institutional enhancements, leadership development, and effective retention strategies. It underscores the urgency of policies promoting inclusive and supportive educational environments. Further research is recommended to deepen understanding and evaluate interventions aimed at sustaining quality higher education in Nigeria.
Citation:
Citation: Akaeze, C. (2024). Strategies for reducing brain drain to sustain quality higher education in Nigeria (Order No. 31559998). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (3160666692). Retrieved from: http://www.proquest.com
The exponential increase in academic papers has significantly increased the time required for researchers to access relevant literature. Keyphrase extraction (KPE) offers a solution to this situation by enabling researchers to efficiently retrieve relevant literature. The current study on KPE from academic articles aims to improve the performance of extraction models through innovative approaches using Title and Abstract as input corpora. However, the semantic richness of keywords is significantly constrained by the length of the abstract. While full-text-based KPE can address this issue, it simultaneously introduces noise, which significantly diminishes KPE performance. To address this issue, this paper utilized the structural features and section texts obtained from the section structure information of academic articles to extract keyphrase from academic papers. The approach consists of two main parts: (1) exploring the effect of seven structural features on KPE models, and (2) integrating the extraction results from all section texts used as input corpora for KPE models via a keyphrase integration algorithm to obtain the keyphrase integration result. Furthermore, this paper also examined the effect of the classification quality of section structure on the KPE performance. The results show that incorporating structural features improves KPE performance, though different features have varying effects on model efficacy. The keyphrase integration approach yields the best performance, and the classification quality of section structure can affect KPE performance. These findings indicate that using the section structure information of academic articles contributes to effective KPE from academic articles. The code and dataset supporting this study are available at https://github.com/yan-xinyi/SSB_KPE.
Historiography is a vital perspective of our scientific literature that charts the evolution
of scientific publishing, from its early origins to the present status. The key trans-
formations including the shift from a limited self-published legacy to specialized and
professional peer-reviewed journals, the impact of technological advancements, and
the emergence of new profitable business models are learning points for the future
course and couture. Science is pursued and persevered by real humans in social and
cultural contexts and not in isolation of laboratories or clinics. Survival of the impartial
pure scientific bent of mind and its translation into tangible works has not been easy
through the turmoil of various forms of force majeure. The lack of gender parity and
even its divergence in some ways was palpable in the discourse of scientific research.
Despite that, when provided with a common platform with comparable impact factors
and rates of publications, gender inequality seems to vanish and equivalence in
academia is discernible. The roles of authors, publishers, and readers have also evolved
chronologically, adapting to the influence of cultural and disciplinary factors through
the ages. The challenges of predatory publishing, open access, plagiarism, and data
capitalization are also growing alongside. Ultimately, understanding the historical
context and persistence of the predecessors in the course of scientific publishing can
enhance modern scientific research and communication.
At the November 2024 regular meeting of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), predatory journals emerged as a major agenda item. Earlier, in August 2024, the Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors (APAME) held in Sydney also issued a statement addressing predatory journals. The issue of predatory journals is becoming increasingly serious. In line with the ICMJE's declaration, this review discusses predatory journals in general, suggests how researchers, journal publishers, and editors should address them, and presents an outlook for the future.
The goal of this chapter is to support teachers in holistically introducing graduate students to literature reviews, with a particular focus on secondary research. It provides an overview of the overall literature review process and the different types of literature review before diving into guidelines for selecting and conducting different types of literature review. The chapter also provides recommendations for evaluating the quality of existing literature reviews and concludes with a summary of our learning goals and how the chapter supports teachers in addressing them.
The summarization capabilities of pretrained and large language models (LLMs) have been widely validated in general areas, but their use in scientific corpus, which involves complex sentences and specialized knowledge, has been less assessed. This paper presents conceptual and experimental analyses of scientific summarization, highlighting the inadequacies of traditional evaluation methods, such as n-gram, embedding comparison, and QA, particularly in providing explanations, grasping scientific concepts, or identifying key content. Subsequently, we introduce the Facet-aware Metric (FM), employing LLMs for advanced semantic matching to evaluate summaries based on different aspects. This facet-aware approach offers a thorough evaluation of abstracts by decomposing the evaluation task into simpler subtasks. Recognizing the absence of an evaluation benchmark in this domain, we curate a Facet-based scientific summarization Dataset (FD) with facet-level annotations. Our findings confirm that FM offers a more logical approach to evaluating scientific summaries. In addition, fine-tuned smaller models can compete with LLMs in scientific contexts, while LLMs have limitations in learning from in-context information in scientific domains. This suggests an area for future enhancement of LLMs¹.
Considerando: 1) temas da sociedade contemporânea, sobretudo os relacionados com os três riscos globais (WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, 2024) que ameaçarão o mundo com mais gravidade a curto prazo (a informação falsa e a desinformação, os eventos climáticos e a polarização societal); 2) as exigências da leitura e da escrita na Universidade; 3) a diferença entre interpretação e reprodução na escrita académica; 4) a não necessária coincidência nos artigos científicos entre as fases da criação e a estrutura da sua apresentação escrita; 5) os futuros da Educação (UNESCO, 2022); e 6) a distinção entre originalidade, criatividade e inovação na pesquisa científica, discute-se o desenvolvimento do pensamento em direção ao pensamento do adulto, dada a idade do público a que este periódico se destina, por se considerar que nos vários cenários traçados é reclamada a necessária transição de um modo de pensar absoluto e dual para um mais maduro que inclua, entre outros, a relatividade, a contradição e a síntese dialética.
The purpose of this study was to investigate common mistakes that postgraduates make in writing dissertation chapters at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, then propose corrective measures. Using a desk research design, the study reviewed 200 randomly selected master’s degree dissertations. The document review guidelines also facilitated the study’s review of examiners’ reports on the dissertations under review. The information collected was subjected to content analysis. The study found that postgraduate students struggled in stating explicitly the research problems and ended up with vague problem statements. In the limitations section, most of the postgraduates mention trivial issues that the researcher could otherwise address during the planning of logistics. Moreover, the students struggled to critically review literature and, instead, simply described the details or provided summaries of findings from other empirical studies. As a result, the literature review is usually devoid of their respective voices. Students also found difficulties in describing the relationship between the proposed methodology and their study specifically by failing to explain adequately the coherence between the methodology and the nature of the study. Furthermore, some postgraduates failed to analyse data with the required precision; for instance, they use codes and themes interchangeably. Based on the findings, the study recommends intensive and adequate orientation and training of postgraduate students both theoretically and practically on fundamental academic skills for effective writing of quality dissertations.
With the rapid development of the internet in the past decade, it has become increasingly important to extract valuable information from vast resources efficiently, which is crucial for establishing a comprehensive digital ecosystem, particularly in the context of research surveys and comprehension. The foundation of these tasks focuses on accurate extraction and deep mining of data from scientific documents, which are essential for building a robust data infrastructure. However, parsing raw data or extracting data from complex scientific documents have been ongoing challenges. Current data extraction methods for scientific documents typically use rule-based (RB) or machine learning (ML) approaches. However, using rule-based methods can incur high coding costs for articles with intricate typesetting. Conversely, relying solely on machine learning methods necessitates annotation work for complex content types within the scientific document, which can be costly. Additionally, few studies have thoroughly defined and explored the hierarchical layout within scientific documents. The lack of a comprehensive definition of the internal structure and elements of the documents indirectly impacts the accuracy of text classification and object recognition tasks. From the perspective of analyzing the standard layout and typesetting used in the specified publication, we propose a new document layout analysis framework called Compartment and Text Blocks Refinement (CTBR). Firstly, we define scientific documents into hierarchical divisions: base domain, compartment, and text blocks. Next, we conduct an in-depth exploration and classification of the meanings of text blocks. Finally, we utilize the results of text block classification to implement object recognition within scientific documents based on rule-based compartment segmentation. For the experiment, we used the well-known ACL format proceeding articles as experimental data for the validation experiment. The experiment shows that our approach achieved over 95% text block classification accuracy and 90% object recognition accuracy for tables and figures.
Background
Poor reporting quality and spin in randomized controlled trial (RCT) abstracts can lead to misinterpretation and distorted interpretation of results.
Objectives
This methodological study aimed to assess the reporting quality and spin among RCT abstracts on splint therapy for temporomandibular disorders (TMD) and explore the association between spin and potentially related factors.
Methods
The authors searched PubMed for RCTs on splint therapy for TMD. The reporting quality of each abstract was assessed using the original 16‐item CONSORT for abstracts checklist. The authors evaluated the presence and characteristics of spin only in abstracts with nonsignificant primary outcomes according to pre‐determined spin strategies. Logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors associated with the presence of spin.
Results
A total of 148 abstracts were included in the reporting quality evaluation. The mean overall CONSORT score (OCS) was 5.86 (score range: 0–16). Only interventions, objectives and conclusions were adequately reported. Of the 61 RCT abstracts included for spin analysis, spin was identified in 38 abstracts (62.3%), among which 32 abstracts (52.3%) had spin in the Results section and 21 (34.4%) had spin in the Conclusions section. A significantly lower presence of spin was found in studies with exact p ‐value reporting (OR: 0.170; 95% CI: 0.032–0.887; p = .036) and a two‐arm comparison design (OR: 11.777; 95% CI: 2.171–63.877; p = .004).
Conclusions
The reporting quality of RCT abstracts on splint therapy for TMD is suboptimal and the prevalence of spin is high. More awareness and joint efforts are needed to improve reporting quality and minimize spin.
Históricamente, la producción de granos en México ha sido insuficiente para atender su demanda interna. Por eso, esta investigación, secuencial mixta, tiene como objetivo analizar el déficit de la producción nacional de granos, la dependencia a su importación (desde los últimos 40 años) y pronosticar su alcance en la próxima década. Para ello, se demuestra que de 1980 al 2021 la superficie dedicada a la producción de arroz, avena, cebada, frijol, maíz, soya, sorgo y trigo se redujo 7 %, su producción incrementó 72 % y la productividad (toneladas/hectárea) acumulada de los 8 productos aumentó 47 %; en contraste, las importaciones aumentaron 210 % (en 1980 representaron el 36 % respecto a la producción nacional, y para el 2020 fue del 66 %). Con el software Minitab se aplicaron modelos predictivos de series de tiempo de las variables en estudio para pronosticar su desempeño para el año 2030. Los resultados demuestran (respecto a 1980) la reducción del 12 % de la superficie total para esta actividad en el territorio nacional, el incremento de la producción del 96 % y la escalada total de sus importaciones hasta del 253 %.
This chapter provides a brief overview of linguistic information, and its relevance to clinical text processing. The contents of this chapter will be familiar to the readers who had to identify the words that form a unit with specific function within a hierarchical structure in the sentences and draw parse trees to describe the hierarchical syntactic structure. The chapter serves as a guide, provides references to in-depth studies of specific linguistic topics, and ties the well-known linguistic notions to clinical text, while emphasizing the importance of linguistic knowledge in clinical text processing. The chapter starts with the description of medical sublanguages.
Researchers adopt keywords to signify the core content of papers, and the spatial distribution of these keywords within the paper can provide insight into researchers’ adoption behavior patterns. In this study, the primary purpose was to investigate how keyword adoption patterns affect academic papers’ perceived value. First, we collected 5,739 papers from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) to extract the first-level subtitles for statistically characterizing the functional structure of papers in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field. Second, we introduce a balance degree indicator to measure the keywords’ spatial distribution. Next, we identify researchers’ keyword adoption behavior patterns based on the keyword spatial distribution in the functional structure. Finally, we investigate the effect of keyword adoption behavior patterns on paper impact. The findings of our study reveal that: (1) In the Library and Information Science field, the balance degree values exhibit a normal distribution and are verified to be valid. (2) Depending on the keyword distribution across the four segments, the keyword adoption behaviors of researchers can be categorized into 24 distinct types. (3) The balance degree is positively correlated with both the citation and download count, and notably, the keyword spatial distribution of the Introduction and Results & Discussion sections have a significant effect on a paper’s impact. These findings have significant implications for keyword selection and the early prediction of a paper’s citation and download frequency.
Recent studies of scientific texts need to be set against the history of the genre, which in part establishes the institutional framework within which any individual text is created. The definition of the appropriate form of communication is part of how a discipline constitutes itself, and is part of the achievement of that discipline. This paper examines the changing features of spectroscopic articles in Physical Review since its founding. Analyses of article length, use of references, sentence length and syntax, vocabulary, graphic features, organization and argument indicate that articles become increasingly theory-based and knowledge-embedded through time. Self-consciousness about the theoretical character of argument also increases. The changing character of communication within a scientific community also has implications for the social structure of that community.
Scientific research is typically communicated via papers in journals. To an outsider, the contents of these papers appear to by mystic and wonderful: to an insider, they convey rapidly and efficiently information about the research that has been done. Even to scientists, it may not be obvious that their papers provide the simplest way of communicating research. However, a detailed study of why papers are constructed as they are suggests that the lay-out is a consequence of a long evolution aimed at simplifying the complexity of scientific communica tion.