writing the paper iii: discussion, conclusions, literature cited laura a. meyerson zhejiang...

Writing the paper III:

Discussion,Conclusions,

Literature cited

Laura A. Meyerson

Zhejiang University, Hangzhou – 15/16 December 2008 How to get published

The purpose of the Discussion:

• To interpret your results.

• To answer the question: What do the data mean?

•To explain the new understanding of the problem your results have provided.

•To put your results in the broader context of other existing research.

Discussion


Discussion

• The Discussion relates to the Introduction, but it does not simply repeat or rearrange the Introduction.

• Instead, the discussion describes how your study has advanced our knowledge of the problem, from where we were at the end of the Introduction.

• The Discussion brings a new perspective or new information, based on your results.

• Additional literature sources may be cited here.


• Do your results provide answers to your testable hypotheses?

–If so, how do you interpret your findings?

–If not, why not?

• Do your findings agree with what others have shown?

–If so, describe.

–If not, suggest an alternative explanation or an unanticipated design flaw in your experiment (or theirs?).

Discussion: Fundamental questions to answer

Discussion:Fundamental questions to answer

• Given your conclusions, what is the new understanding of the problem that you investigated and outlined in the Introduction?

• If warranted, what would be the next step in your study?

• i.e. what study would you do next?

• Do not waste space repeating your results

• Do not introduce new results in the DiscussionZhejiang University, Hangzhou – 15/16 December 2008 How to get published

ConclusionsPurpose:

– The purpose of the Conclusions section is to briefly state your major final points, based on the synthesis of your results and the introduction and discussion.

– In other words, in this section you are drawing conclusions based on the discussion of the results in the previous section

• The Conclusion section of your paper is generally the final text of your paper and emphasizes why your work is important.

• The conclusion section is usually brief and to the point.

• Not all papers have distinct Conclusions sections– Be sure to check the style of the journal that you are submitting to.


Conclusions: Example

The major implication of our work is that a species’ immigration history can have profound consequences for fundamental evolutionary processes regulating its geographic range. First, depletion of genetic diversity at the periphery of a species range is generally thought to slow down its geographic spread; but, large scale and repeated introductions may overcome genetic bottlenecks and create genetically diverse peripheral populations that have the potential for continued range expansion. Second, repeated introduction may allow the emergence of genetic novelties that are necessary to exploit new environments by increasing the probability of recombination between introduced conspecific genotypes (22, 34) or between interfertile introduced species (35). Finally, our results shed light on the relative roles of drift and natural selection after colonization events and suggest that natural selection can be stronger than drift in recently founded populations, which contrasts with the classic assumption that Fisherian evolution may be negligible during colonization processes (36, 37).

Conclusions Do’s and Don’ts

– Don’t simply repeat what you have previously stated, including over-summarizing.

– Don’t over-reach with the conclusions.

– Don’t summarize again.

– Do look at other papers to determine if including implications, or giving suggestions for future research, is appropriate - Journals differ on what they want you to include in the conclusions.

– Do read the instructions to authors carefully!Zhejiang University, Hangzhou – 15/16 December 2008 How to get published

Literature Cited

• Check that all citations appear in both the text and the reference section. – Have a hard copy of your paper and your

Literature Cited section and check them off.– Then check again.

• Check that all citations are correct. – Go to hard copies or .pdf copies of the papers

that you are citing to double check.– Then check again.


Literature cited Do’s and Don’ts• Do cite appropriate and relevant work.• Do try to be complete without overdoing it (use the most

relevant citations).• Do be meticulous with all of your citations (spelling, journal,

volume, page #’s, etc.).

• Don’t just rely on the most cited papers.• Don’t cite friends and colleagues just to raise their citation

numbers.• Don’t over-cite yourself (unless it is really appropriate).• Never cite a paper that you have not read all the way through!

– Your paper will lose credibility if you make an error.


Citation styles and what to cite

Sue Silver


Citations

Why you need to cite other authors


Citations

Why you need to cite other authors

To provide background information on what you have doneTo acknowledge the source of ideas and results upon which your work is basedTo provide support for your ideas and conclusionsTo provide information for others wishing to repeat your work


Why you need to cite other authors (continued)

To allow comparison with other results

To show that you are aware of the current state of research directly related to your study

To tell interested readers where to find to related work

Citations


Why you need to cite other authors (continued)

To save space – don’t describe a method that is described in another paper

To show how your method has been used before

If you use data from another paper, cite the source

Citations


What to cite

Any information not from your experiment and not ‘common knowledge’ should be supported by a citation Check Instructions to Authors for limit to the number of citationsEven if no limit, do not cite everything!Choose papers that can be easily accessed by readers

Citations


Reducing the number of citations

Include recent references Use two or three citations to support each point Reduce the number of citations by choosing the

most important papers If there are many important citations, cite one or

two good reviews (Yang et al. and references therein)

Citations


Citation styles

Different journals use different styles to list citations – look at the journal to see which style it uses

Change your citations to match the journal style

Two well known styles but each journal has slight variations – copy the style carefully

EndNote and Procite will convert all your citations to the style of many well-known journals

Citations


Harvard style

In the text, include the author(s) and the year• Fire suppression has been the primary

management tool in fire-prone forests (Ohlsen et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2007)

In the Reference list, put citations in alphabetical order (first by author, then by year)

Citations


Harvard style

Citations


Vancouver style

For each citation, put a number in the text: • Fire suppression has been the primary management tool in fire-prone forests (1, 2). A number of factors have probably contributed to C storage (3)

In the Reference section, list the citations in number order

Citations


Vancouver style

Citations


Many small differences within these categories

And or & (Able, Smith & Brown OR Able and Brown)

Authors initials (P Jones & LP Hartley or Jones P & Hartley LP)

Journal title in full or abbreviated: Environ Pollut or Environmental Pollution

How is punctuation used? (, ; : .)

Citations


Examples of subtle differencesClements, F.E. (1934) The relict method in dynamic ecology. Journal of Ecology, 22, 39–68.

Clements FE. 1934. The relict method in dynamic ecology. J Ecol 22: 39–68.

Copy the journal citation style before submitting

Citations


Journal title abbreviations

http://library.caltech.edu/reference/abbreviations

Citations


Citing different types of resources Book

Pim, S.L. (1982) Food Webs. Chapman and Hall, London.

Government or other reportPitcher T.J. (2005) Strategic management of marine fisheries Nice, France: NATO Advanced Study Institute on Strategic Management of Marine Ecosystems.

WebsiteGlobal (1996). Trials and tribulations. from Bradley Campus resources website. Viewed 27 September 2008 http://www.bradley.edu/campusorg/psiphi/DS9/ep/503r.html

Citations


http://www.bradley.edu/campusorg/psiphi/DS9/ep/503r.html

Writing the paper IVAbstract

Key WordsPre-review

Laura A. Meyerson


• An Abstract is a summary of the information in your paper.

• The Abstract is always the last section written.–This is because you won’t know what to include until you have completed a full version of the paper.

• Abstract lengths vary by journal:–Usually between 150 – 350 words–Usually written as a single paragraph–Check instructions to authors!

Abstract:What is its purpose?


Abstract:Why is it important?

• Usually the first part of your paper that is read

• If you cannot capture the reviewer’s or reader’s attention with your abstract, your cause is lost.

• Reviewers may make a preliminary judgment based on your abstract alone and you want this to be favorable.

• A good Abstract is usually followed by a good paper. A bad abstract often indicates a bad paper.


Abstract:How is it used?

A well-written Abstract helps readers to:

•Identify the basic content of a paper quickly and accurately•Determine its relevance to their interests•Decide whether or not they want to read the whole paper.


Abstract:What to include?

• The question(s) you investigated• State the purpose of your paper very clearly in the 1st or 2nd

sentence

• The experimental design and methods used• Clearly express the basic design or approach of the study• Name or briefly describe the basic methodology used

• The major findings, including key quantitative results, or trends• Report those results that answer your questions• Identify trends, relative change or differences, etc.

• A brief summary of your interpretations and conclusions• Clearly state the implications of your results


Abstract:What not to include?

• Don’t include any information in the abstract that is not stated in the paper

• Don’t cite references in the abstract

• Don’t include acronyms, e.g., NSF (National Science Foundation) in the abstract if possible.

• Don’t use abbreviations in the abstract. Wait until the introduction, where they can be introduced and defined.

• Don’t use 250 words when 200 are enough.Zhejiang University, Hangzhou – 15/16 December 2008 How to get published

Keywords

• What is a key word– A search term for people to use and that will help

them to find your paper– They alert the reader to elements in a paper that

might not appear in the abstract– Keywords don’t have to appear in the title– They help the paper to reach a target audience

• How used?• What for? • How to choose?• What makes a really good key word?


Acknowledgements• Contributors not on author list

• Sample and data collection • Data processing and analysis

• Granting agencies• Reviewers

• Colleagues• Anonymous reviewers?


Acknowledgements

Example:

“This work resulted from a workshop of the Collaboratory on the Population Biology of Invasive Species conducted in October 1999 at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA. The Collaboratory is funded by the National Science Foundation (supplement to DEB98-15878). The goal of the Collaboratory is to highlight both the contributions that population biology can make in studies of invasion biology, as well as the opportunities for studies of basic concepts in population biology using invasive species. We thank E. Lyons, S. Scheiner, and M. Courtney for their encouragement and J. Heacock and T. Culley for their technical assistance.”

The Value of “Pre-review”

• Pre-review simply means getting your manuscript reviewed before submitting it to a journal.

• This is common practice and very wise.

• Ask your colleagues, lab mates, students, etc. if they would be willing to read your manuscript and comment on it.


The Value of “Pre-review”

• Pre-review can greatly improve your manuscript and improve your chances of having it accepted.

• If you are writing a paper that is not in your own language, be sure to have a native speaker read and review your paper carefully for grammar and meaning.

• Be sure that you are willing to do the same for others!

Exercise 4

Who should be an author on a paper?

• With your team, spend ~15 minutes discussing the most important criteria for being included as an author on a paper

• Write down these criteria and give them to Sue or Laura

Sue Silver

Who should be an author?


Definition of “author”:

The writer of a text, article, or book



ESA Code of Ethics (www.esa.org/aboutesa/codeethics.php)

Authorship may legitimately be claimed if researchers• conceived the ideas or experimental design• participated actively in execution of the study• analyzed and interpreted the data• wrote the manuscript.

Researchers will not add or delete authors from a manuscript submitted for publication without consent of those authors.

Researchers will not include as co-author(s) any individual who has not agreed to the content of the final version of the manuscript.



Weltzin, Belote, Williams et al. (2006) Authorship in ecology: attribution, accountability, and responsibility. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4(8): 435–41.

Weltzin et al. suggest that authors include a statement in a box, somewhere in the paper, describing the contribution of each author.



Finding Co-Authors

Laura A. Meyerson


Benefits of Co-authors

• Can strengthen a paper by adding expertise or perspectives.

• Can “lighten the load” by helping to pull a paper together.

• Can increase the prestige of a paper if a co-author is well-known in the field.


Disadvantages of co-authors

• Single author papers are often highly valued by institutions.

• Authorship order does not always reflect who did the most work and who contributed original ideas.

• Can complicate and can delay writing.


Finding co-authors

• Do you have colleagues inside or outside of your institution that you would like to collaborate with?– Approach the author and ask whether they

would be interested in collaborating.

• Did you hear a paper at a meeting or read a paper that you admired?– Approach the author and ask whether they

would be interested in collaborating.Zhejiang University, Hangzhou – 15/16 December 2008 How to get published

Finding co-authors

• For students– Other students or your Major Professor can

be a great co-author

• Is there a technique that you would like to apply to your work but cannot do yourself?– Find an expert and ask them to work with you

and co-author a paper.

• Don’t be afraid to ask - people are usually flattered to be asked.


Break!

writing the paper iii: discussion, conclusions, literature cited laura a. meyerson zhejiang...

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