Components of a Manuscript/ Research Paper (PART II)- Key words , Introduction, Materials & Methods

1.   Key words

Importance of Key words:

1.   Allow readers to judge whether or not an article contains material relevant to their interests

2.   Provide readers with suitable terms to use in web-based searches to find out other materials on the same or similar topics

3.   Help indexers/editors to group together related materials. For eg: the end of-year issues of a particular journal or a set of conference proceedings etc.

A wise choice of key words might increase the probability of retrieval and reading of that particular paper and thereby potentially improve its citation counts and thus journal impact factors.

2.   Introduction

First section of a paper is introduction. Purpose of the introduction is to provide the reader with sufficient background information to understand and evaluate results of the present study without the need to refer previous publications in the concerned field. Carefully choose and add references in introduction to provide the most important and relevant background information. Introduction should state the rationale of the present study. Author should briefly and clearly state the purpose of writing this paper. Introduction should be written in present tense as we are discussing the present investigation and correlating it with previous literature. A good introduction should follow the rules like:

·         Should clearly state the nature and scope of the problem investigated

·         Should review the pertinent literature to orient the reader

·         Should briefly state the method of investigation

·         Should state the principal results of the study

·         Should state the principal conclusions as suggested by the results.

3.   Materials & Methods

In this section, full details about the methodology followed is to be given and should be written in past tense. The main purpose of the section is to describe the experimental design with enough details so a competent worker can repeat the experiments. When your paper is subjected to peer review, the good reviewer will carefully go through the materials & methods. Authors are supposed to write their method sections in such a way that readers can repeat the method from the descriptions given. Means, the methods mentioned should be repeatable and should reproduce the same results. If not so, then the reviewer will suggest the rejection of paper.

Most method sections are usually subdivided into three sections, as follows:

1. Participants

2. Measures

3. Procedure(s).

If no participants are involved, then the method simply describes the measures and procedures. Method sections may be brief and succinct when the methods used are well known and standardized or quite lengthy, when the methods used are new or different and thus require careful elaboration.

References:

1.             James Hartely, 2008. Academic writing and publishing-A practical handbook (ISBN 0-203-92798-2), Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York

2.             Robert A Day and Barbara Gastel, 2012. How to write and publish a scientific paper (ISBN 978-1-107-67074-7), Cambridge University press, UK.