Writing a Scientific Paper
Title Page
On a separate page, write your title, and the names and locations of people doing
the study. Your title should summarize the question you studied. The title page
should include the information in the following example:
Effects of different host plant species on growth rates and larval survival in Danaus
plexippus
Ayan Abdinur1, De Cansler2, Janelle Firl2,
Julia Goldburg2, Mary Watson1 and Mai Phia Yang1
1 Century High School, Rochester MN 55901
2 Willow Creek Middle School, Rochester MN 55904
Abstract
Your abstract should be a concise summary of your question, methods and results.
Many people find it easiest to write the abstract last. It should contain no more
than 200 words. A useful format is to recall what you did, explain the purpose,
state the results, and finally summarize the implications of these results. Here
is a 99-word example from one of Karen Oberhauser’s papers:
We studied the relationship between the timing of mating and oogenesis in monarch
butterflies to determine 1) the potential for male nutrient input into eggs and
2) whether mating stimulates egg development. Most females mated soon after they
started maturing eggs. (this sentence tells what we did and why we did it)
One and two days after mating, females contained the same number of mature oocytes
as virgin females of the same age, while three days after mating they contained
more mature oocytes than did virgins. (this sentence summarizes the results
of the study) These results confirm the potential for male-derived nutrients to
augment oocyte production, but indicate that mating is not required for oocyte maturation
to occur. (this sentence tells the implications of the study)
Introduction
Your introduction should include a fairly detailed summary of the question you addressed,
with some background on this problem. You want to convince people that this is an
important and interesting question. You may want to do some research to learn
about related studies, and discuss them in this section. For example, one of Sonia
Altizer’s papers includes the following introduction:
I explored geographic variation in host resistance and parasite virulence among
populations of monarch butterflies infected with the neogregarine protozoan parasite,
Ophryocystis elektroscirrha. (this sentence tells what she did) Monarchs and
this parasite are distributed worldwide, and parasite prevalence is highly variable
among populations (Ackery and Vane Wright 1984, Leong et al 1997, Altizer et al.
1998). One possible cause of this variation in prevalence is that populations have
genetically diverged with respect to host susceptibility or parasite infectivity.
(these sentences give some background information, with references, and introduce
her approach to studying the cause of existing variation)
After introducing the topic, briefly describe your research procedure, and then
list your hypotheses (it is OK to have more than one hypothesis). Here is an example
of the end of Sonia’s introduction to this paper:
To test the potential for genetic differences in hosts and parasites among populations,
I conducted cross-inoculation experiments with hosts and parasites from three North
American populations. Because virulence is often associated with the degree of parasite
replication within hosts, I measured both host survival and the parasite loads of
inoculated monarchs. (this sentence explains what was done and why) I predicted
several effects of host and parasite origin, including 1) higher replication of
parasite strains on native hosts, indicating that parasites are locally adapted,
2) lower replication of parasites strains on native hosts, indicating that hosts
are resistant to local parasites, 3) higher host resistance among the longest-distance
migrants, resulting from an increased cost of infection, 4) higher parasite virulence
in non-migratory populations due to increased horizontal and vertical transmission
opportunities, or 5) no effect of either host of parasite origin on host survival
or parasite replication. (numbers 1-4 are several alternative hypotheses,
some of which are mutually exclusive (1 and 2), and 5 is the null hypothesis)
Methods
This section should be a brief, concise summary of what you did. It should be detailed
enough that someone else could repeat your study, but should not go into long, boring
detail (e.g. We obtained milkweed plants from an unmowed area behind our school
is better than During third period we walked to an unmowed area 0.5 km from our
school. We picked milkweed plants from this area, then carried them back to our
classroom). You should include locations, dates, and sample sizes in
this section.
Results
This section will summarize the answers to your question. Before you start writing
the Results section, list everything that you learned, and decide what is most important
and how to organize your results to make the important points. The section should
include tables, charts and graphs to illustrate these points. As a general rule,
graphs or charts (called figures) do a better job of making a point than tables,
but it is not always possible to get all of the information you need into a figure.
Tables and figures should both have captions. Whenever you use a table or figure,
be sure to refer to it by number in the text of the results section. Never include
a table or figure that you don’t don't discuss in the text. Look at other reports
on this site for examples.
Discussion
In this part of the report, summarize your findings, and discuss their implications
with respect to your hypotheses. If relevant, compare your results to those found
in similar studies in the past. In addition, you could suggest future directions
for research. If you feel that there were methodological problems with your work,
mention them here, and state how they might have affected your results. If you think
that your results were inconclusive, state what you might want to do differently
in the future.
Acknowledgments
In this section, acknowledge people who helped you with this work. For example,
you could say "I would like to thank my mother, Sylvia Plexippus, who checked
my cages while I was at school." Here is an example from one of Karen’s
papers:
I thank De Cansler, Ann Feitl, Rachel Hampton, Brenda Jenson and Christine Jessup
for help counting and weighing eggs. Don Alstad, Carol Boggs and Christer Wiklund
provided helpful comments on the manuscript. Research was supported by the National
Science Foundation (DEB-9220829).
Literature Cited
List all of the published sources you used to get information for your report. These
should include the author’s name, year of publication, title of article or
book, publisher or journal, and issue and pages for journal articles. Below are
examples of citations for a book and article:
Choe, J. C. & B. J. Crespi. 1997. Mating systems in insects and arachnids.
Cambridge University Press.
Oberhauser, K.S. and R. Hampton. 1995. Relationship between mating and oogenesis
in monarch butterflies. J. Ins. Behav. 8:701-713.
If you use websites, give the organization and the address of the site. (e.g. Monarch
Watch website: www.MonarchWatch.org.)