Residents, Center for Family Medicine - Bismarck

Article Types

Guidelines

Reporting Guidelines list out many of the smaller details of publishing. While you may not have every single check point, it is good to read through some of the guidelines available in order to make yourself aware of all the information points to include in your manuscript.

Case Reports

Clinical Practice Guidelines

Observational Studies

Randomized Trials

Scoping Reviews

Systematic Reviews

 

Parts of a research paper

Think of articles you enjoy reading. Being an active, engaged reader yourself makes you a better writer.

Well written articles match readers' expectation. Easy to read articles are structured for parsing technical literature.

Title and Abstract

Body

  • Introduction: Present an argument for the need for your study. What is your "elevator speech?" End this section with explicit study objectives.
    • Funnel technique:
      • Paragraph 1 - high level problem
      • Paragraph 2 - Narrow the topic to what is the unknown or complexity of the issue
      • Paragraph 3 - Specific study objectives
  • Literature Review: What has been said about this topic before?
  • Methods: How did you conduct the study? The goal is for someone else to be able to replicate your work. Describe in roughly temporal order a timeline for your study. Section headings are helpful. Include a description of the statistical analysis.
    • A very robust protocol makes methods section easier to write.
  • Results: What answer did you get?  (Note: for this part you only address the results directly associated with  your study. If you discovered some other profound information, discuss that at the end of your paper.)
    • NOT Methodology
    • NOT interpretation - that goes in the discussion
  • Discussion: What does it all mean?
    • Interpret your results in context of existing knowledge
    • How do your findings confirm/conflict with current knowledge
    • How can results be put into practice
    • Discuss limitations

References

Tables

Figures

Appendices

Write your manuscript from the inside out

1. Figures and Tables - remember: a picture is worth a thousand words. If you have informative, readable figures and tables, let that do the "talking."

2. Methods and Results

3. Discussion and Introduction

4. Abstract and Title (Be sure to think of the readers' expectations when writing this section. Don't use a bait and switch just to get clicks.)

 

Great article: 11 steps to structuring a science paper editors will take seriously

Keep in mind any specific journal's instructions to authors as you write your manuscript.

Writing the paper

How to write a great research paper

Equator - Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Research - article on writing a great research paper

Research publication advice from a JAMA editor

BMJ Cases Reports

UND SMHS Library Resources pays for a BMJ Case Reports institutional fellowship. This fellowship allows UND-affiliated students, residents, faculty, and staff to publish case reports without having to pay article processing charges. Contact a librarian to receive the UND fellowship code.

You must use the BMJ Case Reports patient consent form.

BMJ Case Reports articles must be submitted using one of these templates:

References

The information on this page was compiled from webinars conducted by editors from the Journal of the Medical Library Association and Wolters Kluwer.