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How to write an introduction section of a scientific article?

An article primarily includes the following sections: introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Before writing the introduction, the main steps, the heading and the familiarity level of the readers should be considered. Writing should begin when the experimental system and the equipment are available. The introduction section comprises the first portion of the manuscript, and it should be written using the simple present tense. Additionally, abbreviations and explanations are included in this section. The main goal of the introduction is to convey basic information to the readers without obligating them to investigate previous publications and to provide clues as to the results of the present study. To do this, the subject of the article should be thoroughly reviewed, and the aim of the study should be clearly stated immediately after discussing the basic references. In this review, we aim to convey the principles of writing the introduction section of a manuscript to residents and young investigators who have just begun to write a manuscript.

Introduction

When entering a gate of a magnificent city we can make a prediction about the splendor, pomposity, history, and civilization we will encounter in the city. Occasionally, gates do not give even a glimpse of the city, and it can mislead the visitors about inner sections of the city. Introduction sections of the articles are like gates of a city. It is a presentation aiming at introducing itself to the readers, and attracting their attention. Attractiveness, clarity, piquancy, and analytical capacity of the presentation will urge the reader to read the subsequent sections of the article. On the other hand as is understood from the motto of antique Greek poet Euripides “a bad beginning makes a bad ending”, ‘Introduction’ section of a scientific article is important in that it can reveal the conclusion of the article. [ 1 ]

It is useful to analyze the issues to be considered in the ‘Introduction’ section under 3 headings. Firstly, information should be provided about the general topic of the article in the light of the current literature which paves the way for the disclosure of the objective of the manuscript. Then the specific subject matter, and the issue to be focused on should be dealt with, the problem should be brought forth, and fundamental references related to the topic should be discussed. Finally, our recommendations for solution should be described, in other words our aim should be communicated. When these steps are followed in that order, the reader can track the problem, and its solution from his/her own perspective under the light of current literature. Otherwise, even a perfect study presented in a non-systematized, confused design will lose the chance of reading. Indeed inadequate information, inability to clarify the problem, and sometimes concealing the solution will keep the reader who has a desire to attain new information away from reading the manuscript. [ 1 – 3 ]

First of all, explanation of the topic in the light of the current literature should be made in clear, and precise terms as if the reader is completely ignorant of the subject. In this section, establishment of a warm rapport between the reader, and the manuscript is aimed. Since frantic plunging into the problem or the solution will push the reader into the dilemma of either screening the literature about the subject matter or refraining from reading the article. Updated, and robust information should be presented in the ‘Introduction’ section.

Then main topic of our manuscript, and the encountered problem should be analyzed in the light of the current literature following a short instance of brain exercise. At this point the problems should be reduced to one issue as far as possible. Of course, there might be more than one problem, however this new issue, and its solution should be the subject matter of another article. Problems should be expressed clearly. If targets are more numerous, and complex, solutions will be more than one, and confusing.

Finally, the last paragraphs of the ‘Introduction’ section should include the solution in which we will describe the information we generated, and related data. Our sentences which arouse curiosity in the readers should not be left unanswered. The reader who thinks to obtain the most effective information in no time while reading a scientific article should not be smothered with mysterious sentences, and word plays, and the readers should not be left alone to arrive at a conclusion by themselves. If we have contrary expectations, then we might write an article which won’t have any reader. A clearly expressed or recommended solutions to an explicitly revealed problem is also very important for the integrity of the ‘Introduction’ section. [ 1 – 5 ]

We can summarize our arguments with the following example ( Figure 1 ). The introduction section of the exemplary article is written in simple present tense which includes abbreviations, acronyms, and their explanations. Based on our statements above we can divide the introduction section into 3 parts. In the first paragraph, miniaturization, and evolvement of pediatric endourological instruments, and competitions among PNL, ESWL, and URS in the treatment of urinary system stone disease are described, in other words the background is prepared. In the second paragraph, a newly defined system which facilitates intrarenal access in PNL procedure has been described. Besides basic references related to the subject matter have been given, and their outcomes have been indicated. In other words, fundamental references concerning main subject have been discussed. In the last paragraph the aim of the researchers to investigate the outcomes, and safety of the application of this new method in the light of current information has been indicated.

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Object name is TJU-39-Supp-8-g01.jpg

An exemplary introduction section of an article

Apart from the abovementioned information about the introduction section of a scientific article we will summarize a few major issues in brief headings

Important points which one should take heed of:

  • Abbreviations should be given following their explanations in the ‘Introduction’ section (their explanations in the summary does not count)
  • Simple present tense should be used.
  • References should be selected from updated publication with a higher impact factor, and prestigous source books.
  • Avoid mysterious, and confounding expressions, construct clear sentences aiming at problematic issues, and their solutions.
  • The sentences should be attractive, tempting, and comjprehensible.
  • Firstly general, then subject-specific information should be given. Finally our aim should be clearly explained.

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Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide

Published on September 24, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on March 27, 2023.

Writing a Research Paper Introduction

The introduction to a research paper is where you set up your topic and approach for the reader. It has several key goals:

  • Present your topic and get the reader interested
  • Provide background or summarize existing research
  • Position your own approach
  • Detail your specific research problem and problem statement
  • Give an overview of the paper’s structure

The introduction looks slightly different depending on whether your paper presents the results of original empirical research or constructs an argument by engaging with a variety of sources.

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Table of contents

Step 1: introduce your topic, step 2: describe the background, step 3: establish your research problem, step 4: specify your objective(s), step 5: map out your paper, research paper introduction examples, frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.

The first job of the introduction is to tell the reader what your topic is and why it’s interesting or important. This is generally accomplished with a strong opening hook.

The hook is a striking opening sentence that clearly conveys the relevance of your topic. Think of an interesting fact or statistic, a strong statement, a question, or a brief anecdote that will get the reader wondering about your topic.

For example, the following could be an effective hook for an argumentative paper about the environmental impact of cattle farming:

A more empirical paper investigating the relationship of Instagram use with body image issues in adolescent girls might use the following hook:

Don’t feel that your hook necessarily has to be deeply impressive or creative. Clarity and relevance are still more important than catchiness. The key thing is to guide the reader into your topic and situate your ideas.

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how to write scientific article introduction

This part of the introduction differs depending on what approach your paper is taking.

In a more argumentative paper, you’ll explore some general background here. In a more empirical paper, this is the place to review previous research and establish how yours fits in.

Argumentative paper: Background information

After you’ve caught your reader’s attention, specify a bit more, providing context and narrowing down your topic.

Provide only the most relevant background information. The introduction isn’t the place to get too in-depth; if more background is essential to your paper, it can appear in the body .

Empirical paper: Describing previous research

For a paper describing original research, you’ll instead provide an overview of the most relevant research that has already been conducted. This is a sort of miniature literature review —a sketch of the current state of research into your topic, boiled down to a few sentences.

This should be informed by genuine engagement with the literature. Your search can be less extensive than in a full literature review, but a clear sense of the relevant research is crucial to inform your own work.

Begin by establishing the kinds of research that have been done, and end with limitations or gaps in the research that you intend to respond to.

The next step is to clarify how your own research fits in and what problem it addresses.

Argumentative paper: Emphasize importance

In an argumentative research paper, you can simply state the problem you intend to discuss, and what is original or important about your argument.

Empirical paper: Relate to the literature

In an empirical research paper, try to lead into the problem on the basis of your discussion of the literature. Think in terms of these questions:

  • What research gap is your work intended to fill?
  • What limitations in previous work does it address?
  • What contribution to knowledge does it make?

You can make the connection between your problem and the existing research using phrases like the following.

Now you’ll get into the specifics of what you intend to find out or express in your research paper.

The way you frame your research objectives varies. An argumentative paper presents a thesis statement, while an empirical paper generally poses a research question (sometimes with a hypothesis as to the answer).

Argumentative paper: Thesis statement

The thesis statement expresses the position that the rest of the paper will present evidence and arguments for. It can be presented in one or two sentences, and should state your position clearly and directly, without providing specific arguments for it at this point.

Empirical paper: Research question and hypothesis

The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.

Present your research question clearly and directly, with a minimum of discussion at this point. The rest of the paper will be taken up with discussing and investigating this question; here you just need to express it.

A research question can be framed either directly or indirectly.

  • This study set out to answer the following question: What effects does daily use of Instagram have on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls?
  • We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls.

If your research involved testing hypotheses , these should be stated along with your research question. They are usually presented in the past tense, since the hypothesis will already have been tested by the time you are writing up your paper.

For example, the following hypothesis might respond to the research question above:

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The final part of the introduction is often dedicated to a brief overview of the rest of the paper.

In a paper structured using the standard scientific “introduction, methods, results, discussion” format, this isn’t always necessary. But if your paper is structured in a less predictable way, it’s important to describe the shape of it for the reader.

If included, the overview should be concise, direct, and written in the present tense.

  • This paper will first discuss several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then will go on to …
  • This paper first discusses several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then goes on to …

Full examples of research paper introductions are shown in the tabs below: one for an argumentative paper, the other for an empirical paper.

  • Argumentative paper
  • Empirical paper

Are cows responsible for climate change? A recent study (RIVM, 2019) shows that cattle farmers account for two thirds of agricultural nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. These emissions result from nitrogen in manure, which can degrade into ammonia and enter the atmosphere. The study’s calculations show that agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution, accounting for 46% of the country’s total emissions. By comparison, road traffic and households are responsible for 6.1% each, the industrial sector for 1%. While efforts are being made to mitigate these emissions, policymakers are reluctant to reckon with the scale of the problem. The approach presented here is a radical one, but commensurate with the issue. This paper argues that the Dutch government must stimulate and subsidize livestock farmers, especially cattle farmers, to transition to sustainable vegetable farming. It first establishes the inadequacy of current mitigation measures, then discusses the various advantages of the results proposed, and finally addresses potential objections to the plan on economic grounds.

The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013; Meier & Gray, 2014). These studies have consistently found that the visual and interactive aspects of the platform have the greatest influence on body image issues. Despite this, highly visual social media (HVSM) such as Instagram have yet to be robustly researched. This paper sets out to address this research gap. We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that daily Instagram use would be associated with an increase in body image concerns and a decrease in self-esteem ratings.

The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:

  • A hook to catch the reader’s interest
  • Relevant background on the topic
  • Details of your research problem

and your problem statement

  • A thesis statement or research question
  • Sometimes an overview of the paper

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper . A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement .

A research paper designed to present the results of empirical research tends to present a research question that it seeks to answer. It may also include a hypothesis —a prediction that will be confirmed or disproved by your research.

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Writing an Introduction for a Scientific Paper

Dr. michelle harris, dr. janet batzli, biocore.

This section provides guidelines on how to construct a solid introduction to a scientific paper including background information, study question , biological rationale, hypothesis , and general approach . If the Introduction is done well, there should be no question in the reader’s mind why and on what basis you have posed a specific hypothesis.

Broad Question : based on an initial observation (e.g., “I see a lot of guppies close to the shore. Do guppies like living in shallow water?”). This observation of the natural world may inspire you to investigate background literature or your observation could be based on previous research by others or your own pilot study. Broad questions are not always included in your written text, but are essential for establishing the direction of your research.

Background Information : key issues, concepts, terminology, and definitions needed to understand the biological rationale for the experiment. It often includes a summary of findings from previous, relevant studies. Remember to cite references, be concise, and only include relevant information given your audience and your experimental design. Concisely summarized background information leads to the identification of specific scientific knowledge gaps that still exist. (e.g., “No studies to date have examined whether guppies do indeed spend more time in shallow water.”)

Testable Question : these questions are much more focused than the initial broad question, are specific to the knowledge gap identified, and can be addressed with data. (e.g., “Do guppies spend different amounts of time in water <1 meter deep as compared to their time in water that is >1 meter deep?”)

Biological Rationale : describes the purpose of your experiment distilling what is known and what is not known that defines the knowledge gap that you are addressing. The “BR” provides the logic for your hypothesis and experimental approach, describing the biological mechanism and assumptions that explain why your hypothesis should be true.

The biological rationale is based on your interpretation of the scientific literature, your personal observations, and the underlying assumptions you are making about how you think the system works. If you have written your biological rationale, your reader should see your hypothesis in your introduction section and say to themselves, “Of course, this hypothesis seems very logical based on the rationale presented.”

  • A thorough rationale defines your assumptions about the system that have not been revealed in scientific literature or from previous systematic observation. These assumptions drive the direction of your specific hypothesis or general predictions.
  • Defining the rationale is probably the most critical task for a writer, as it tells your reader why your research is biologically meaningful. It may help to think about the rationale as an answer to the questions— how is this investigation related to what we know, what assumptions am I making about what we don’t yet know, AND how will this experiment add to our knowledge? *There may or may not be broader implications for your study; be careful not to overstate these (see note on social justifications below).
  • Expect to spend time and mental effort on this. You may have to do considerable digging into the scientific literature to define how your experiment fits into what is already known and why it is relevant to pursue.
  • Be open to the possibility that as you work with and think about your data, you may develop a deeper, more accurate understanding of the experimental system. You may find the original rationale needs to be revised to reflect your new, more sophisticated understanding.
  • As you progress through Biocore and upper level biology courses, your rationale should become more focused and matched with the level of study e ., cellular, biochemical, or physiological mechanisms that underlie the rationale. Achieving this type of understanding takes effort, but it will lead to better communication of your science.

***Special note on avoiding social justifications: You should not overemphasize the relevance of your experiment and the possible connections to large-scale processes. Be realistic and logical —do not overgeneralize or state grand implications that are not sensible given the structure of your experimental system. Not all science is easily applied to improving the human condition. Performing an investigation just for the sake of adding to our scientific knowledge (“pure or basic science”) is just as important as applied science. In fact, basic science often provides the foundation for applied studies.

Hypothesis / Predictions : specific prediction(s) that you will test during your experiment. For manipulative experiments, the hypothesis should include the independent variable (what you manipulate), the dependent variable(s) (what you measure), the organism or system , the direction of your results, and comparison to be made.

If you are doing a systematic observation , your hypothesis presents a variable or set of variables that you predict are important for helping you characterize the system as a whole, or predict differences between components/areas of the system that help you explain how the system functions or changes over time.

Experimental Approach : Briefly gives the reader a general sense of the experiment, the type of data it will yield, and the kind of conclusions you expect to obtain from the data. Do not confuse the experimental approach with the experimental protocol . The experimental protocol consists of the detailed step-by-step procedures and techniques used during the experiment that are to be reported in the Methods and Materials section.

Some Final Tips on Writing an Introduction

  • As you progress through the Biocore sequence, for instance, from organismal level of Biocore 301/302 to the cellular level in Biocore 303/304, we expect the contents of your “Introduction” paragraphs to reflect the level of your coursework and previous writing experience. For example, in Biocore 304 (Cell Biology Lab) biological rationale should draw upon assumptions we are making about cellular and biochemical processes.
  • Be Concise yet Specific: Remember to be concise and only include relevant information given your audience and your experimental design. As you write, keep asking, “Is this necessary information or is this irrelevant detail?” For example, if you are writing a paper claiming that a certain compound is a competitive inhibitor to the enzyme alkaline phosphatase and acts by binding to the active site, you need to explain (briefly) Michaelis-Menton kinetics and the meaning and significance of Km and Vmax. This explanation is not necessary if you are reporting the dependence of enzyme activity on pH because you do not need to measure Km and Vmax to get an estimate of enzyme activity.
  • Another example: if you are writing a paper reporting an increase in Daphnia magna heart rate upon exposure to caffeine you need not describe the reproductive cycle of magna unless it is germane to your results and discussion. Be specific and concrete, especially when making introductory or summary statements.

Where Do You Discuss Pilot Studies? Many times it is important to do pilot studies to help you get familiar with your experimental system or to improve your experimental design. If your pilot study influences your biological rationale or hypothesis, you need to describe it in your Introduction. If your pilot study simply informs the logistics or techniques, but does not influence your rationale, then the description of your pilot study belongs in the Materials and Methods section.  

How will introductions be evaluated? The following is part of the rubric we will be using to evaluate your papers.

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What is a "good" introduction?

Citing sources in the introduction, "introduction checklist" from: how to write a good scientific paper. chris a. mack. spie. 2018..

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This is where you describe briefly and clearly why you are writing the paper. The introduction supplies sufficient background information for the reader to understand and evaluate the experiment you did. It also supplies a rationale for the study.

  • Present the problem and the proposed solution
  • Presents nature and scope of the problem investigated
  • Reviews the pertinent literature to orient the reader
  • States the method of the experiment
  • State the principle results of the experiment

It is important to cite sources in the introduction section of your paper as evidence of the claims you are making. There are ways of citing sources in the text so that the reader can find the full reference in the literature cited section at the end of the paper, yet the flow of the reading is not badly interrupted. Below are some example of how this can be done:     "Smith (1983) found that N-fixing plants could be infected by several different species of Rhizobium."     "Walnut trees are known to be allelopathic (Smith 1949,  Bond et al. 1955, Jones and Green 1963)."     "Although the presence of Rhizobium normally increases the growth of legumes (Nguyen 1987), the opposite effect has been observed (Washington 1999)." Note that articles by one or two authors are always cited in the text using their last names. However, if there are more than two authors, the last name of the 1st author is given followed by the abbreviation et al. which is Latin for "and others". 

From:  https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/guides/imrad-reports-introductions

  • Indicate the field of the work, why this field is important, and what has already been done (with proper citations).
  • Indicate a gap, raise a research question, or challenge prior work in this territory.
  • Outline the purpose and announce the present research, clearly indicating what is novel and why it is significant.
  • Avoid: repeating the abstract; providing unnecessary background information; exaggerating the importance of the work; claiming novelty without a proper literature search. 
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How to Practice Academic Medicine and Publish from Developing Countries? pp 193–199 Cite as

How to Write the Introduction to a Scientific Paper?

  • Samiran Nundy 4 ,
  • Atul Kakar 5 &
  • Zulfiqar A. Bhutta 6  
  • Open Access
  • First Online: 24 October 2021

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An Introduction to a scientific paper familiarizes the reader with the background of the issue at hand. It must reflect why the issue is topical and its current importance in the vast sea of research being done globally. It lays the foundation of biomedical writing and is the first portion of an article according to the IMRAD pattern ( I ntroduction, M ethodology, R esults, a nd D iscussion) [1].

I once had a professor tell a class that he sifted through our pile of essays, glancing at the titles and introductions, looking for something that grabbed his attention. Everything else went to the bottom of the pile to be read last, when he was tired and probably grumpy from all the marking. Don’t get put at the bottom of the pile, he said. Anonymous

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1 What is the Importance of an Introduction?

An Introduction to a scientific paper familiarizes the reader with the background of the issue at hand. It must reflect why the issue is topical and its current importance in the vast sea of research being done globally. It lays the foundation of biomedical writing and is the first portion of an article according to the IMRAD pattern ( I ntroduction, M ethodology, R esults, a nd D iscussion) [ 1 ].

It provides the flavour of the article and many authors have used phrases to describe it for example—'like a gate of the city’ [ 2 ], ‘the beginning is half of the whole’ [ 3 ], ‘an introduction is not just wrestling with words to fit the facts, but it also strongly modulated by perception of the anticipated reactions of peer colleagues’, [ 4 ] and ‘an introduction is like the trailer to a movie’. A good introduction helps captivate the reader early.

figure a

2 What Are the Principles of Writing a Good Introduction?

A good introduction will ‘sell’ an article to a journal editor, reviewer, and finally to a reader [ 3 ]. It should contain the following information [ 5 , 6 ]:

The known—The background scientific data

The unknown—Gaps in the current knowledge

Research hypothesis or question

Methodologies used for the study

The known consist of citations from a review of the literature whereas the unknown is the new work to be undertaken. This part should address how your work is the required missing piece of the puzzle.

3 What Are the Models of Writing an Introduction?

The Problem-solving model

First described by Swales et al. in 1979, in this model the writer should identify the ‘problem’ in the research, address the ‘solution’ and also write about ‘the criteria for evaluating the problem’ [ 7 , 8 ].

The CARS model that stands for C reating A R esearch S pace [ 9 , 10 ].

The two important components of this model are:

Establishing a territory (situation)

Establishing a niche (problem)

Occupying a niche (the solution)

In this popular model, one can add a fourth point, i.e., a conclusion [ 10 ].

4 What Is Establishing a Territory?

This includes: [ 9 ]

Stating the general topic and providing some background about it.

Providing a brief and relevant review of the literature related to the topic.

Adding a paragraph on the scope of the topic including the need for your study.

5 What Is Establishing a Niche?

Establishing a niche includes:

Stating the importance of the problem.

Outlining the current situation regarding the problem citing both global and national data.

Evaluating the current situation (advantages/ disadvantages).

Identifying the gaps.

Emphasizing the importance of the proposed research and how the gaps will be addressed.

Stating the research problem/ questions.

Stating the hypotheses briefly.

Figure 17.1 depicts how the introduction needs to be written. A scientific paper should have an introduction in the form of an inverted pyramid. The writer should start with the general information about the topic and subsequently narrow it down to the specific topic-related introduction.

figure 1

Flow of ideas from the general to the specific

6 What Does Occupying a Niche Mean?

This is the third portion of the introduction and defines the rationale of the research and states the research question. If this is missing the reviewers will not understand the logic for publication and is a common reason for rejection [ 11 , 12 ]. An example of this is given below:

Till date, no study has been done to see the effectiveness of a mesh alone or the effectiveness of double suturing along with a mesh in the closure of an umbilical hernia regarding the incidence of failure. So, the present study is aimed at comparing the effectiveness of a mesh alone versus the double suturing technique along with a mesh.

7 How Long Should the Introduction Be?

For a project protocol, the introduction should be about 1–2 pages long and for a thesis it should be 3–5 pages in a double-spaced typed setting. For a scientific paper it should be less than 10–15% of the total length of the manuscript [ 13 , 14 ].

8 How Many References Should an Introduction Have?

All sections in a scientific manuscript except the conclusion should contain references. It has been suggested that an introduction should have four or five or at the most one-third of the references in the whole paper [ 15 ].

9 What Are the Important Points Which Should be not Missed in an Introduction?

An introduction paves the way forward for the subsequent sections of the article. Frequently well-planned studies are rejected by journals during review because of the simple reason that the authors failed to clarify the data in this section to justify the study [ 16 , 17 ]. Thus, the existing gap in knowledge should be clearly brought out in this section (Fig. 17.2 ).

figure 2

How should the abstract, introduction, and discussion look

The following points are important to consider:

The introduction should be written in simple sentences and in the present tense.

Many of the terms will be introduced in this section for the first time and these will require abbreviations to be used later.

The references in this section should be to papers published in quality journals (e.g., having a high impact factor).

The aims, problems, and hypotheses should be clearly mentioned.

Start with a generalization on the topic and go on to specific information relevant to your research.

10 Example of an Introduction

figure b

11 Conclusions

An Introduction is a brief account of what the study is about. It should be short, crisp, and complete.

It has to move from a general to a specific research topic and must include the need for the present study.

The Introduction should include data from a literature search, i.e., what is already known about this subject and progress to what we hope to add to this knowledge.

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Polit DF, Beck CT. Generalization in quantitative and qualitative research: myths and strategies. Int J Nurs Stud. 2010;47(11):1451–8.

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Jawaid SA, Baig M. How to write an original article. In: Jawaid SA, Jawaid M, editors. Scientific writing: a guide to the art of medical writing and scientific publishing. Karachi: Published by Med-Print Services; 2018. p. 135–50.

Hall GM, editor. How to write a paper. London: BMJ Books, BMJ Publishing Group; 2003. Structure of a scientific paper. p. 1–5.

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Nundy, S., Kakar, A., Bhutta, Z.A. (2022). How to Write the Introduction to a Scientific Paper?. In: How to Practice Academic Medicine and Publish from Developing Countries?. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5248-6_17

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How to Write an Effective Introduction Section of a Scientific Article

An effective introduction section of a scientific article will form a good first impression by the readers or reviewers. This introduction section contains background information about your research.

Tips for writing your scientific introduction section in this free manuscript writing handbook

For many journals with the IMRAD (introduction, methods, results, and discussion) structure, the purpose of the introduction is to answer these questions:

  • What is the study about?
  • Why is this study important for the scientific community?

If the reviewers don’t understand your study and the significant contribution of the research, they are more likely to reject it (Ahlstrom, 2017).

The IMRAD structuring of a scientific manuscript commonly frames the introduction this way (Nadim, 2005):

  • The background information of the study
  • The reasoning that leads to experimental hypothesis (gap analysis)
  • The goal of the study and research hypothesis
  • The results and the significance of the findings

Familiarize yourself with the introduction of other published works within your journal of interest before you start writing your introduction section.

Some Helpful Steps to Write the Introduction Section of your Scientific Article

1. complete a rough draft of your other sections of the manuscript..

Make sure you have a rough draft of your manuscript with your methods, results and discussions. This draft will guide you when you organize the entire content of your introduction.

2. Perform your literature review. Search by focusing on specific questions.

Your literature search will help shape a foundation for your introduction. The references that you use in your background information should be relevant to your research topic and up to date. This background information contains all information you need to know about your study.

When searching supplemental literature, try to answer these specific questions:

  • What is the background of my study?
  • What are published works related to my study?
  • Why are those studies relevant to my study?
  • What is the background information for my methods?

3. Search more literature to answer questions that are more extensive.

After you search relevant literature to provide basic information that you need to know about your own research, search more literature to answer broader questions.

For this step, your literature search should be focused on collecting additional background information that your readers need to know. This information will help your readers to understand more about your research.

For this part, try to answer these questions:

  • What are the gaps in our present understanding of my field of study?
  • Why is it important for researchers in my field of study to fill in the gaps?
  • What did other published studies find and what did I discover?
  • How would my findings fill in those gaps?

4. Start to write an outline of your introduction section.

The goal on this step is to organize your introduction section by using an outline. Before you start, make sure you check and include commonly used structures of the introduction section for the journal of interest. Use information from your literature reviews to create the background portion of your outline.

Introduction section, Outline

5. Begin writing a list of important keywords for your first paragraph.

To start, list keywords that will be relevant to your first paragraph(s). Keywords are words that represent your research topic and the content of your manuscript. They act like a code, helping readers connect context to commonly used terms.

For example: the name of the human disease and the virus in your study are keywords.

This approach will grab the attention of the readers and help you to focus on your topic. In addition, these keywords will help your paper get entered into various research databases (including Google Scholar).

Introduction section, keywords for scientific article

6. Write the background information of your study using your keywords and important, relevant articles as references.

The purpose of this step is to provide guidance for your readers who are not familiar with your study. Use information gathered from your literature reviews in step 3 and step 2 in the first three sentences of your first paragraph. Also include relevant keywords from step 5.

Readers generally have an expectation that information presented will move from broadly presented to narrowly presented. Consider a funnel as you being writing - broad at the top, and very narrow at the bottom (A. Hofmann, 2013).

Common structures of Introduction Section of a Scientific Article

7. Purge irrelevant sentences and references from your introduction’s background.

Include only important articles related to your research topic in the background. For example, if your study is about a human virus, you may include references about other viruses from the same family that cause human diseases as long as it’s pertinent to your research.

8. Present your gap analysis and a brief review of your research goal or working hypothesis.

Discuss the earlier research/theoretical framework and how it leads you to your research goal or hypothesis (gap analysis).

how to write scientific article introduction

For example, mention the limitations of previously published works. Then write about your research goal, explain why your research is the next logical step to fill the gaps in those studies, and briefly state your research hypothesis and methods.

9. Mention a summary of your findings or results.

Now you begin your transition from background to your research questions, your methods, justification of your findings and then to the impact of your research.

The purpose of this step is to convince the reviewers that your research is worth publishing by explaining the need, methodology and impact. It also helps readers understand how your work relates to their own or will answer their questions.

This summary should show what you discovered from your results and the significance of your findings. If possible, you may also mention the possible future impact of your research.

10. Start putting it all together.

Evaluate your entire introduction section. Make sure it follows ‘the funneling of information’. Your paragraphs should start with broader issues then narrow down, and from background information to the impact of your study.

11. Refine the paragraphs, check off your outline, and polish your introduction section.

Make sure your introduction section has all the four common components:

1. The background information of the study

2. The reasoning that leads to experimental hypothesis (gap analysis)

3. The goal of the study and research hypothesis

4. The results and the significance of the findings

In addition, read your introduction section again to make sure it is clear and logical.

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How to Write an Intro for a Scientific Research Paper

Last Updated: August 25, 2021 References

This article was co-authored by Alexander Ruiz, M.Ed. . Alexander Ruiz is an Educational Consultant and the Educational Director of Link Educational Institute, a tutoring business based in Claremont, California that provides customizable educational plans, subject and test prep tutoring, and college application consulting. With over a decade and a half of experience in the education industry, Alexander coaches students to increase their self-awareness and emotional intelligence while achieving skills and the goal of achieving skills and higher education. He holds a BA in Psychology from Florida International University and an MA in Education from Georgia Southern University. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 3,908 times.

Scientific research tries to get at objective truth. That means that your most important job as the scientist writing about it is to communicate the facts thoroughly and clearly. An engaging writing style is always a plus, but you aren't expected to be a stellar wordsmith. If you're more comfortable doing the science than stringing words together, remember that you are writing for other people in your field. They are as interested in the topic as you are, and ready to hear what you have to say. Give it a try and get one step closer to adding your contribution to the worldwide scientific project!

Write the rest of the paper first to nail down its structure and content.

Start with the methods and results sections.

Describe the general field of research in a few sentences.

Introduce the reader to the topic as it relates to your research.

  • "Existing research has established that..."
  • "Researchers use data collected by these methods in order to..."
  • "Recent studies have called earlier conclusions into question."
  • "The field has recently adjusted its approach due to..."

State the motivation for your paper.

Tell the reader why your attention was drawn to the topic.

  • "Previous studies have not focused on..."
  • "Baker's analysis failed to take into account..."
  • "Researchers have not yet established whether..."
  • "Additional data in this area helps researchers understand..."
  • "A long-standing problem in the field..."

Narrow down the focus to your specific niche.

Show the reader that you followed through on your motivation.

  • "We conducted this research to test a new research methodology..."
  • "In order to test Jansen's conclusions, we investigate whether..."
  • "This paper puts forward a new theoretical model..."
  • "This experiment tests the hypothesis that...."

State the hypothesis or research question.

What exactly does your research test?

  • You may include a brief summary of how you tested the hypothesis.
  • Not all scientific papers have a hypothesis. Many exploratory studies, for example, skip this part of the introduction. [7] X Research source

Emphasize your paper's "story" in the intro.

  • A light narrative structure helps engage your readers. Try to find a simple, clear message that runs through your paper. Is this the story of a routine experiment with surprising results? The importance of acting on your conclusions? The challenge of making sense of puzzling results? Instead of delivering all the information in the same flat style, emphasize the portions that were most interesting to you, or that moved the research forward in unexpected or productive directions. Although this focus mostly comes through in the methods and results sections, make sure your introduction includes the same elements you highlight later in the paper. [8] X Research source

Consider including a brief organizational overview.

Only summarize other sections if they are important to the paper.

  • For example, if the results are surprising or have the potential to make a significant impact, draw attention to them here: "The results provide new evidence for..."
  • If you used a novel technology or developed a new experimental setup, mention this here: "Based on our results, the change in experimental setup increased accuracy by 20%..."

Add in-text citations.

Cite the most relevant works in parentheses.

  • For example, write "Murloc hunting behavior is dependent on the tides (Thrall 2006)."
  • Only include the citations that are most helpful to the reader. If a graduate student in your field reads all the works you cited, they should have all the background information they need, and won't waste any time on redundant sources. Try to resist including citations just to show off your own knowledge or connect your paper to new, exciting results without justification. [12] X Research source

Edit for a simple, straightforward style.

Scientific writing is about clarity.

  • Break sentences with several clauses into separate sentences.
  • Rewrite sentences in the simplest language possible. It's encouraged to use scientific terms, but avoid using other advanced vocabulary just to sound impressive.
  • Aim for an introduction between 500 and 1000 words, unless the journal submission guidelines give different instructions. [15] X Research source
  • Most scientific journals today prefer the active, first person voice ("I hypothesized" or "we studied"), especially in the intro. [16] X Research source Passive voice constructions ("It was hypothesized") are also valid, and some journals may prefer this.

Expert Q&A

  • If you're a graduate student writing one of your first papers, pick up a journal in your field and read through the introductions. Try to identify how each author structures their info and includes all the relevant information. Bookmark the ones you think are successful, and use their templates as inspiration. This can also help you pick up on specific quirks in your field, such as preferred citation styles. [17] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
  • It's tempting to make your research results sound important, but this can backfire if you can't justify it. Do a thorough literature search before you claim that your paper is breaking new ground. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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  • ↑ http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/~derntl/papers/misc/paperwriting.pdf
  • ↑ https://guides.lib.uci.edu/c.php?g=334338&p=2249903
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/guides/imrad-reports-introductions
  • ↑ https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/gp-2018-0004
  • ↑ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309967516_Exploratory_research_in_the_social_sciences_what_is_exploration
  • ↑ https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13391
  • ↑ https://www.thinkscience.co.jp/en/downloads/ThinkSCIENCE-Writing-an-effective-introduction.pdf
  • ↑ https://spie.org/samples/9781510619142.pdf
  • ↑ https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bes2.1258#bes21258-bib-0010
  • ↑ Alex Hong. Executive Chef & Restaurant Owner. Expert Interview. 8 February 2019.
  • ↑ https://sites.duke.edu/scientificwriting/passive-voice-in-scientific-writing/

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WRITING A SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ARTICLE | Format for the paper | Edit your paper! | Useful books | FORMAT FOR THE PAPER Scientific research articles provide a method for scientists to communicate with other scientists about the results of their research. A standard format is used for these articles, in which the author presents the research in an orderly, logical manner. This doesn't necessarily reflect the order in which you did or thought about the work.  This format is: | Title | Authors | Introduction | Materials and Methods | Results (with Tables and Figures ) | Discussion | Acknowledgments | Literature Cited | TITLE Make your title specific enough to describe the contents of the paper, but not so technical that only specialists will understand. The title should be appropriate for the intended audience. The title usually describes the subject matter of the article: Effect of Smoking on Academic Performance" Sometimes a title that summarizes the results is more effective: Students Who Smoke Get Lower Grades" AUTHORS 1. The person who did the work and wrote the paper is generally listed as the first author of a research paper. 2. For published articles, other people who made substantial contributions to the work are also listed as authors. Ask your mentor's permission before including his/her name as co-author. ABSTRACT 1. An abstract, or summary, is published together with a research article, giving the reader a "preview" of what's to come. Such abstracts may also be published separately in bibliographical sources, such as Biologic al Abstracts. They allow other scientists to quickly scan the large scientific literature, and decide which articles they want to read in depth. The abstract should be a little less technical than the article itself; you don't want to dissuade your potent ial audience from reading your paper. 2. Your abstract should be one paragraph, of 100-250 words, which summarizes the purpose, methods, results and conclusions of the paper. 3. It is not easy to include all this information in just a few words. Start by writing a summary that includes whatever you think is important, and then gradually prune it down to size by removing unnecessary words, while still retaini ng the necessary concepts. 3. Don't use abbreviations or citations in the abstract. It should be able to stand alone without any footnotes. INTRODUCTION What question did you ask in your experiment? Why is it interesting? The introduction summarizes the relevant literature so that the reader will understand why you were interested in the question you asked. One to fo ur paragraphs should be enough. End with a sentence explaining the specific question you asked in this experiment. MATERIALS AND METHODS 1. How did you answer this question? There should be enough information here to allow another scientist to repeat your experiment. Look at other papers that have been published in your field to get some idea of what is included in this section. 2. If you had a complicated protocol, it may helpful to include a diagram, table or flowchart to explain the methods you used. 3. Do not put results in this section. You may, however, include preliminary results that were used to design the main experiment that you are reporting on. ("In a preliminary study, I observed the owls for one week, and found that 73 % of their locomotor activity occurred during the night, and so I conducted all subsequent experiments between 11 pm and 6 am.") 4. Mention relevant ethical considerations. If you used human subjects, did they consent to participate. If you used animals, what measures did you take to minimize pain? RESULTS 1. This is where you present the results you've gotten. Use graphs and tables if appropriate, but also summarize your main findings in the text. Do NOT discuss the results or speculate as to why something happened; t hat goes in th e Discussion. 2. You don't necessarily have to include all the data you've gotten during the semester. This isn't a diary. 3. Use appropriate methods of showing data. Don't try to manipulate the data to make it look like you did more than you actually did. "The drug cured 1/3 of the infected mice, another 1/3 were not affected, and the third mouse got away." TABLES AND GRAPHS 1. If you present your data in a table or graph, include a title describing what's in the table ("Enzyme activity at various temperatures", not "My results".) For graphs, you should also label the x and y axes. 2. Don't use a table or graph just to be "fancy". If you can summarize the information in one sentence, then a table or graph is not necessary. DISCUSSION 1. Highlight the most significant results, but don't just repeat what you've written in the Results section. How do these results relate to the original question? Do the data support your hypothesis? Are your results consistent with what other investigators have reported? If your results were unexpected, try to explain why. Is there another way to interpret your results? What further research would be necessary to answer the questions raised by your results? How do y our results fit into the big picture? 2. End with a one-sentence summary of your conclusion, emphasizing why it is relevant. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This section is optional. You can thank those who either helped with the experiments, or made other important contributions, such as discussing the protocol, commenting on the manuscript, or buying you pizza. REFERENCES (LITERATURE CITED) There are several possible ways to organize this section. Here is one commonly used way: 1. In the text, cite the literature in the appropriate places: Scarlet (1990) thought that the gene was present only in yeast, but it has since been identified in the platypus (Indigo and Mauve, 1994) and wombat (Magenta, et al., 1995). 2. In the References section list citations in alphabetical order. Indigo, A. C., and Mauve, B. E. 1994. Queer place for qwerty: gene isolation from the platypus. Science 275, 1213-1214. Magenta, S. T., Sepia, X., and Turquoise, U. 1995. Wombat genetics. In: Widiculous Wombats, Violet, Q., ed. New York: Columbia University Press. p 123-145. Scarlet, S.L. 1990. Isolation of qwerty gene from S. cerevisae. Journal of Unusual Results 36, 26-31.   EDIT YOUR PAPER!!! "In my writing, I average about ten pages a day. Unfortunately, they're all the same page." Michael Alley, The Craft of Scientific Writing A major part of any writing assignment consists of re-writing. Write accurately Scientific writing must be accurate. Although writing instructors may tell you not to use the same word twice in a sentence, it's okay for scientific writing, which must be accurate. (A student who tried not to repeat the word "hamster" produced this confusing sentence: "When I put the hamster in a cage with the other animals, the little mammals began to play.") Make sure you say what you mean. Instead of: The rats were injected with the drug. (sounds like a syringe was filled with drug and ground-up rats and both were injected together) Write: I injected the drug into the rat.
  • Be careful with commonly confused words:
Temperature has an effect on the reaction. Temperature affects the reaction.
I used solutions in various concentrations. (The solutions were 5 mg/ml, 10 mg/ml, and 15 mg/ml) I used solutions in varying concentrations. (The concentrations I used changed; sometimes they were 5 mg/ml, other times they were 15 mg/ml.)
 Less food (can't count numbers of food) Fewer animals (can count numbers of animals)
A large amount of food (can't count them) A large number of animals (can count them)
The erythrocytes, which are in the blood, contain hemoglobin. The erythrocytes that are in the blood contain hemoglobin. (Wrong. This sentence implies that there are erythrocytes elsewhere that don't contain hemoglobin.)

Write clearly

1. Write at a level that's appropriate for your audience.

"Like a pigeon, something to admire as long as it isn't over your head." Anonymous

 2. Use the active voice. It's clearer and more concise than the passive voice.

 Instead of: An increased appetite was manifested by the rats and an increase in body weight was measured. Write: The rats ate more and gained weight.

 3. Use the first person.

 Instead of: It is thought Write: I think
 Instead of: The samples were analyzed Write: I analyzed the samples

 4. Avoid dangling participles.

 "After incubating at 30 degrees C, we examined the petri plates." (You must've been pretty warm in there.)

  Write succinctly

 1. Use verbs instead of abstract nouns

 Instead of: take into consideration Write: consider

 2. Use strong verbs instead of "to be"

 Instead of: The enzyme was found to be the active agent in catalyzing... Write: The enzyme catalyzed...

 3. Use short words.

Instead of: Write: possess have sufficient enough utilize use demonstrate show assistance help terminate end

4. Use concise terms.

 Instead of: Write: prior to before due to the fact that because in a considerable number of cases often the vast majority of most during the time that when in close proximity to near it has long been known that I'm too lazy to look up the reference

5. Use short sentences. A sentence made of more than 40 words should probably be rewritten as two sentences.

 "The conjunction 'and' commonly serves to indicate that the writer's mind still functions even when no signs of the phenomenon are noticeable." Rudolf Virchow, 1928

  

Check your grammar, spelling and punctuation

1. Use a spellchecker, but be aware that they don't catch all mistakes.

 "When we consider the animal as a hole,..." Student's paper

 2. Your spellchecker may not recognize scientific terms. For the correct spelling, try Biotech's Life Science Dictionary or one of the technical dictionaries on the reference shelf in the Biology or Health Sciences libraries.

 3. Don't, use, unnecessary, commas.

 4. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

USEFUL BOOKS

Victoria E. McMillan, Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences , Bedford Books, Boston, 1997 The best. On sale for about $18 at Labyrinth Books, 112th Street. On reserve in Biology Library

Jan A. Pechenik, A Short Guide to Writing About Biology , Boston: Little, Brown, 1987

Harrison W. Ambrose, III & Katharine Peckham Ambrose, A Handbook of Biological Investigation , 4th edition, Hunter Textbooks Inc, Winston-Salem, 1987 Particularly useful if you need to use statistics to analyze your data. Copy on Reference shelf in Biology Library.

Robert S. Day, How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper , 4th edition, Oryx Press, Phoenix, 1994. Earlier editions also good. A bit more advanced, intended for those writing papers for publication. Fun to read. Several copies available in Columbia libraries.

William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style , 3rd ed. Macmillan, New York, 1987. Several copies available in Columbia libraries.  Strunk's first edition is available on-line.

Scientific Writing: Structuring a scientific article

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How to Structure a Scientific Article

Many scientific articles include the following elements:

I. Abstract: The abstract should briefly summarize the contents of your article. Be sure to include a quick overview of the focus, results and conclusion of your study.

II. Introduction:  The introduction should include any relevant background information and articulate the idea that is being investigated. Why is this study unique? If others have performed research on the topic, include a literature review. 

III. Methods and Materials:  The methods and materials section should provide information on how the study was conducted and what materials were included. Other researchers should be able to reproduce your study based on the information found in this section. 

IV. Results:  The results sections includes the data produced by your study. It should reflect an unbiased account of the study's findings. 

V.  Discussion and Conclusion:  The discussion section provides information on what researches felt was significant and analyzes the data. You may also want to provide final thoughts and ideas for further research in the conclusion section. 

For more information, see How to Read a Scientific Paper.  

Scientific Article Infographic

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From preregistration, to preprints, to publication—learn how and when to share your study.

How you store your data matters. Even after you publish your article, your data needs to be accessible and useable for the long term so that other researchers can continue building on your work. Good data management practices make your data discoverable and easy to use, promote a strong foundation for reproducibility and increase your likelihood of citations.

You’ve just spent months completing your study, writing up the results and submitting to your top-choice journal. Now the feedback is in and it’s time to revise. Set out a clear plan for your response to keep yourself on-track and ensure edits don’t fall through the cracks.

There’s a lot to consider when deciding where to submit your work. Learn how to choose a journal that will help your study reach its audience, while reflecting your values as a researcher.

Are you actively preparing a submission for a PLOS journal? Select the relevant journal below for more detailed guidelines. 

How to Write an Article  

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The Wire Science

A Beginner’s Guide to Writing a Popular Science Article, by a Teacher

The Wire Science

Note: The guidelines of writing described below are not to be treated as nor associated with The Wire ‘s official guidelines. They are the author’s views.

Some scientists believe that their profession is all about conducting experiments in controlled environments. It is not. Communicating their work has emerged as another responsibility – especially of those who find themselves able.

One way to do this is to write popular science articles. The Department of Science and Technology has – in recognition of this endeavour – instituted the Augmenting Writing Skills for Articulating Research (AWSAR) Award. It includes cash prizes ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 1,00,000, and a certificate of appreciation.

AWSAR’s objective is to disseminate Indian research stories in an accessible and interesting format. PhD students who have completed at least two years of study and postdoctoral fellows can compete. The last date to submit entries is September 30, 2019. More details are available on the AWSAR website .

With the technicalities out of the way, the technique remains; how does one write a compelling popular science article that is both interesting and lucid?

Also read:  Why Scientists Must Learn to Communicate With the Public

While there are no hard and fast rules, you may find the following ideas useful if you want to weave a fascinating narrative.

What to communicate 

It is important to select the article’s peg judiciously because every science experiment does not have direct implications for society. Try focusing on  something groundbreaking – a study or discovery whose findings are evidently newsworthy and which imply significant change, at least in the way we perceive the world. You could also pick something that offers a new angle or contradicts some older information.

Whatever you decide, keep the public interest in mind. This way, you will have to expend less effort in securing the reader’s interest in your popular science article.

Presentation

You may be aware that scientific articles present information through an introduction, a description of the methodology, the results and a discussion, collected in the acronym IMRD. When you write a popular science article, however, you should reverse the IMRD pattern. This is because readers are likelier to read your article if it is relevant to their interests, and a study’s implications and applications are what you should use to draw them in. The other details, such as the findings, results and the methodology, come later.

As a result, many – if not most – popular science articles may be said to follow the IFRM structure: implications, findings, results and methodology.

Now, when writing your article, keep the following questions in mind and in the following order:

  • What do the findings imply?
  • How do the findings impact society or the environment?
  • What results drove you to the conclusions?
  • Why do you think the results are relevant to society?
  • How did you arrive at the results?
  • How expensive/economical are your procedures? How much money was required, and who funded it?
  • How difficult/easy were the procedures?

Language and length

Popular science articles should be written in simple language and without technical jargon. For example, instead of simply using the term “semelparous animals”, consider qualifying it with a definition – “animals that die after having sex” – or using only the latter and dropping the technical term altogether.

If you are forced to use technical expressions, make sure to explain them in simple terms. Research articles are typically rife with nominalisation – a technique researchers use to make their tone impersonal. However, an overuse of nominalisation can render the text inaccessible.

Also read:  Science Outreach Is Great but Scientists Must Consider Who They’re Reaching

Another concern is sentence length. Writing gurus argue that longer sentences are harder to understand, and that short sentences – of 20 words or less – are more accessible. However, there is no hard-and-fast rule about this, nor is it advisable to claim that there could be one. The rule of thumb is to vary sentence length according to context and to keep sentences as simple as possible.

Finally, a popular science article doesn’t usually exceed two pages. Most readers don’t have much time to spare for the intricacies of a research study. They are likelier to be interested in how the research is going to affect their lives.

A catchy title

The title of a popular science article is closely connected to the article being discovered and read. So it should be simple, descriptive and concise. Avoid technical terms or the headline could restrict your article to being accessible only by those people who can understand what the terms mean. Here are three examples from around the web:

  • These ancient, swimming reptiles may have been the biggest animals of all time
  • Megapixels: Two stars in a fight to the death
  • A new study on whales suggests Darwin didn’t quite get it right

A cursory review suggests many titles start with demonstratives such as ‘this’ and ‘these’. Demonstratives depend on the context to offer their true meaning, and evoke interest and excitement among readers. Here are some examples of this tendency at work from Popular Science:

  • These aquatic creatures eat in seriously strange ways
  • This new, duck-like dinosaur is so wacky scientists thought it was fake
  • These animals have nipples on their butts and that is not the most fascinating thing about them

Questions are another commonly used headline-type:

  • How to smile without looking like a creep, according to scientists
  • Where the heck is autumn?
  • Does apple cider vinegar actually do anything?

Also read: ‘Why Does Science Communication Excite Me?’

While most research articles use an impersonal tone, popular science articles can be more personal. To achieve this, writers could consider the following tools:

  • Personal pronouns: Popular science articles use personal pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘you’.
  • Voice: Research articles are typically written in the passive voice. However, popular science articles should use the active voice because the latter includes the agents of action.
  • Contractions and run-on expressions: While academic articles tend not to use contractions (e.g. can’t, don’t, didn’t) and run-on expressions (e.g. etc., ‘and so forth’ or ‘and so on’), popular science articles are okay with them, even in their headlines.

Describe methods and results

Unlike specialist readers, the consumers of popular articles are seldom interested in the details of how researchers conducted a study. So methods and procedures should be described very briefly. And instead of lingering with the technical details, spend more time and words interpreting the results obtained from the study.

The ideas presented in this article are not prescriptive, but they could serve as useful points of reference for those just getting started with science writing.

Lakshmana Rao teaches at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati.

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How to structure the introduction of your scientific paper

how to write scientific article introduction

Have you ever struggled to write your introduction? If your answer to this question is a desperate “Yes”, don’t worry, you are not alone. The introduction is usually the hardest part of an article to write, especially if you don’t know how to structure it. Luckily, introductions of scientific articles are structured according to a defined template. In this post, I describe this template and give examples for you to see how it is concretely implemented (see here to get an overview of the structure of the whole article and here to download the template of your introduction).

The introduction of a scientific article follows an inverted triangle shape. It starts broadly with the general research topic and progressively narrows down to your research question and the study that you performed to answer this question. You can divide your introduction into five successive levels that become more and more specific. Here are these different levels.

how to write scientific article introduction

Level 1. Start by introducing your research topic

The first paragraph(s) of the introduction aim(s) to introduce your research topic. Your research topic is the main character in your story. Just as a good story requires a compelling hero, a good scientific paper relies on an interesting research topic. Therefore, your first introductory paragraph(s) must convince your readers of the importance of your topic. Let’s take an example!

Imagine that you have run a study to test the efficacy of a new treatment to cure a disease called Dragon Pox – Dragon Pox is an imaginary disease that affects wizards and witches, like chickenpox (see the Harry Potter series). When writing the paper describing your research on this disease, you could start your introduction by emphasizing the preponderance of Dragon Pox.

“Dragon pox is one of the most problematic infectious diseases today. It is the most common disease in children under 12 years of age and about 2 out of 5 people contract it in their lifetime. Dragon pox causes green and purple rashes and sparks that come out of the nostrils when the patient sneezes. These symptoms can escalate, leading to serious complications (pneumonia, encephalitis, etc.) and significant sequelae (respiratory failure, mottled skin). In addition, in 8.4% of cases, the infection results in the patient’s death. In 2021, the fatal consequences and high prevalence of dragon pox have prompted the Wizzard Health Organization (WHO) to declare it as the priority public health issue of the next decade.”

After having read these few sentences, your reader knows that

  • the article is about Dragon Pox,
  • that it’s an important topic.

Your introduction should begin as broadly as possible to appeal to a wide audience. That being said, the breadth of your introduction should also depend on your readership. If your paper is aimed at specialists, being too general may bore them and make them lose interest in your research. So, when writing the first paragraph(s) of your introduction, it is important to keep in mind who your audience is and what they care about.

Level 2. Delineate your research niche

Once you have established your research topic and emphasized its importance, the next step is to narrow your paper down to your research niche. Your niche defines the specialized area you are researching; it is a more focused domain than the general research topic. For example, in the case of dragon pox, your niche could be one of the following topics:             – its diagnosis,             – its treatment,             – its mechanism of contagion,             – the increased vulnerability of some people to this disease,             – the genetic code of the virus,             – the proteins that make up the virus’ membrane,             – its evolutionary origins…

At Level 2, you need to provide general background information about what has been done so far in this niche. For instance, if your research is about dragon pox treatment, you could explain which drugs already exist to cure the disease.

“Dragon pox is primarily treated with anti-herpetic agents. Indeed, the disease results from a primary infection caused by the varicella-monster virus (VMV), which belongs to the human herpesvirus family. Recent studies suggest that oral aclocyvir is the most efficient method against VMV. Aclocyvir is a nucleoside analog that mimics guasonine…“

Level 3. Describe the problem that you will address

Once you have defined your niche, you need to describe the problem that your research will address. A good story needs a compelling character facing a daunting challenge . Which challenge does your article tackle? Why is this challenge important to your readers? These are the two questions that you need to answer at Level 3.

Let’s go back to our example. If you have tested a new treatment for Dragon Pox, it’s likely because the usual treatment poses some problems that your new treatment aims at circumventing. So your next paragraphs might be something like:

“Research shows that treatment by oral aclocyvir reduces by 23% the risks of complications following VMV infection. Unfortunately, aclocyvir has many side effects, such as nausea, appetite loss, or diarrhea. These side-effects cause one-third of the patients to interrupt the treatment before completion and thus considerably reduce its efficiency. “

At Level 3, it is essential that you frame your research question as a problem. Indeed, humans have a propensity to pay attention to negative information. In psychology, this phenomenon is called negativity bias . By highlighting the problems and risks associated with the current state of knowledge, you create tension in your readers. This tension motivates them to continue reading your article and makes them want you to find a solution to the problem.

Level 4. Provide a solution

At Level 3, you have created tension in your readers by highlighting a serious problem in your niche; at Level 4, you begin to resolve that tension by explaining how you will fix that problem.

In scientific writing, it’s important to convince your reader that the solution you’re proposing to solve this problem has a rational basis. You can do that in two ways: 1) by explaining the logic that led you to consider the solution tested in your paper, 2) and by providing arguments and citing already existing evidence to support your hypotheses and/or theory.

For instance:

“ Recent research suggests that the side effects of oral aclocyvir may be counteracted by adeninoside. Adeninoside appears to decrease nausea and loss of appetite. In recent years, physicians have begun to use a combination of oral acyclovir and adenoside to treat severe forms of herpes. Early clinical trials indicate fewer side effects and better patient acceptance of the treatment. Thus, this approach appears to be successful in the treatment of herpes. However, it has never been tested in patients with VMV. The present study intends to fill this gap .”

As you can see in this example, here again, I emphasize the gap that the research intends to fill. And, I’m sure you’ve guessed it, here again, I’m creating tension in the reader.

Level 5. State your hypotheses and introduce your methods

We are now at the end of the introduction. You have already set the stage for your study; now it is time to state your hypotheses (if you have any) and/or introduce the methods that you chose to test them. For example:

“In the study reported in this article, we investigated the efficacy of a new treatment to cure Dragon Pox. We tested the hypothesis that the administration of adeninoside reduces the side-effects of aclocyvir and, thus, increases the treatment efficiency. To that aim, we compared two groups of patients treated with either aclocyvir alone or aclocyvir combined with adeninoside…”

Introducing your methods serves two purposes. First, it facilitates the transition to the materials and methods section by giving your readers an overview of your research. This should help them better understand the study you have conducted. Second, it allows you to explain the reasons for the methodological approach you decided to take. This is especially important if you are relying on a new approach or if you are writing for an audience that is unfamiliar with this type of methodology. You can use the last paragraphs of the introduction to present the rationale for your methods and their value in solving the problem your paper addresses.

Be convincing, not exhaustive

If you are writing a scientific article, you certainly know a lot about this topic. That’s a good thing! It’s necessary to do good research. But one thing is important to keep in mind: You don’t need to demonstrate all your knowledge in your article.

A scientific article is not an essay that your teacher will grade. It has a different purpose. Indeed, the goal of an essay is to convince your teacher that you have the knowledge and skills he or she expects from you. These expectations vary from teacher to teacher, but some teachers might enjoy seeing that you know a lot about the topic at hand. The goal of a scientific article is to captivate the attention of your readers and convince them of the soundness of your research.

Your readers don’t care about you. They want to read something interesting that they can trust. Your job is to take their hands and smoothly lead them to your research question, your hypotheses, and, eventually, your methods. Everything that you write in the introduction should contribute to this progression. If a piece of information is not directly useful to understand the necessity of your study, it doesn’t belong to your introduction. Go right to the point and avoid complex detours. When it comes to being convincing, less is usually more.

In this post, we’ve seen that the introduction to a scientific article contains five main levels that describe: 1) your general research topic, 2) the more specific niche, 3) the problem that your research will address, 4) the solution that you intend to bring to this problem, and 5) an overview of your hypotheses and methods. Follow these five steps and you’ll write an introduction that will captivate your readers. It’s that easy!

To make it easier for you, I’ve created a template to write your introduction, with instructions almost as simple to follow as a cooking recipe. You can find this template below. To learn more about the structure of scientific papers, read my Ultimate Guide to Scientific Writing , as well as my posts on the Materials and Methods , Results , and Discussion sections. Good luck with your paper!

how to write scientific article introduction

How to write your introduction + template

Signup for my newsletter and get your free download! Writing a good introduction is essential to getting your paper published in a top journal and captivating your readers. It’s essential… and challenging! With this template for writing your introduction, you will find:

  • Pre-writing instructions
  • Writing instructions
  • Explanations on how to use the template
  • A checklist to make sure you have included all the important elements for your introduction.

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how to write scientific article introduction

Creating effective technical documentation

Author avatar

Effective feature documentation is important in enhancing a user's experience with the feature. Good documentation is like a piece of the puzzle that makes everything click — the key for encouraging feature adoption.

To support you in creating effective technical documentation, this article provides an overview of the core principles of technical writing. It also highlights the best practices for creating clear and accessible documentation. Applying these technical writing principles helps us maintain the high quality of content on MDN. Whether you're documenting your own project or product or contributing to technical content in various settings, you can improve the quality of your work by following these best practices.

Adopt clarity, conciseness, and consistency

These three Cs form the core principles of technical writing. They can take you a long way in producing quality documentation.

For achieving clarity in your writing, apply the following guidelines:

  • Use simple words and clear language. Keep in mind the audience, especially if it includes non-native English speakers.
  • Be clear about who needs to perform the action. Writing in active voice is not strictly required. However, you should use it when you want to be clear about who needs to perform the action. For example, clarify whether a function is triggered by an event or if the user needs to explicitly call the function.
  • Clearly introduce and explain new terms. This helps to lay the foundation for concepts that are covered later in the documentation.
Tip : Replace "it", "this", and "these" with proper nouns if they can refer to more than one thing in the given context.
  • Aim for one idea per sentence to improve readability.
  • Stick to one main idea per paragraph. Each sentence in a paragraph should logically connect to the one before it. Imagine if each sentence in a paragraph was a link in a chain. If you pick up the first link, the other links in the chain should follow, forming a continuous sequence. This is how the sentences should connect to each other, ensuring a seamless flow of a single idea.

Conciseness

Keep sentences short. This automatically increases the readability and clarity of your document. It also helps in quick comprehension. Long sentences can be more challenging to understand quickly due to their complex structures.

Tip : Based on common readability standards, aim for 15-20 words per sentence.

For additional insights on sentence length and readability strategies, see Simple sentences (on https://readabilityguidelines.co.uk ) and Popular readability formulas , including the Flesch-Kincaid index, on Wikipedia.

Consistency

Use the same terminology throughout your documentation to ensure a seamless reader experience. For example, if you start referring to "user agents" as browsers, stick with that term consistently. This avoids confusion that can arise from using words interchangeably, even when they share the same meaning.

Additionally, maintain consistent word casing and follow a uniform formatting style throughout your documentation. These practices not only enhance readability but also contribute to a professional presentation of your documentation.

Organize your content for maximum impact

Apply the same principles for organizing your content as you would for organizing your code: spend some time setting a clear goal and thinking about the desired structure for your documentation. Ensure that each subsection contributes to this goal incrementally.

Start with an introduction

In the introduction, first describe the feature you're documenting. Next, set the context by explaining why learning about the feature would be beneficial to the readers. This can include describing real-life scenarios where the feature can be useful. The more relevance you add to the topic, the easier it will be for readers to understand and engage with the content.

Progress logically

The following questions can help you ensure that your content is progressing logically:

  • Is your document structured to guide readers from foundational concepts to more advanced ones? Are there sections to introduce the " what " to establish a base before delving into the " why " and " how "? Consider whether the document structure mirrors the natural learning path for the topic. Aligning the document's structure with the natural progression of learning helps readers build their knowledge step-by-step and also enhances the overall learning experience.
  • Are there sufficient how-to guides or examples following the conceptual sections?
  • Consider the flow of the content. Is it following a logical sequence — from one sentence to the next, from one paragraph to the next, and from one section to the next? Does each section logically build on the information presented previously, avoiding abrupt jumps or gaps in the content?

Additionally, as you work on the draft, always ask yourself:

  • What reader questions am I addressing with this sentence?
  • Can I add a simplistic or real-life use case to explain this concept?

Include examples

Imagine sitting next to someone as you explain the concepts to them. Preempt their questions and address them in your writing. Use this approach to add as many relevant examples as possible.

When adding examples, don't restrict yourself to only code; include non-code scenarios to demonstrate a feature's utility. This helps readers understand the concepts better and also caters to different learning styles. Consider providing real-world scenarios or use cases to illustrate how the feature or concept applies in practical situations.

Optimize the document structure and length

Evaluate your documentation's structure to ensure it maintains a logical and balanced hierarchy.

  • Ensure that each section and subsection has a clear purpose and sufficient content.
  • Look for instances where a main section contains only one subsection (orphan), such as a single H3 section under an H2 section. This indicates that you need to reorganize your content or make some additions.
  • Check if there are lower-level headings such as H4 . Too many subsections can be overwhelming for readers, making it difficult for them to grasp the information. In such cases, consider presenting the content as a bulleted list instead to help readers retain the key points more effectively. This approach helps to simplify the hierarchy and also contributes to easier navigation.
  • While there should be sufficient content for each section, pay attention to the overall length. If any section becomes too extensive, it can be overwhelming for readers. Split large sections into multiple logical subsections or restructure the content into new sections and subsections. Grouping content into digestible pieces helps maintain focus and improve navigation for readers.

Proofread your writing

One aspect that cannot be stressed enough is the importance of self-reviewing and proofreading what you've written. Whether you're creating a large document or a short paragraph, this step is crucial.

Taking the time to fully review your work will help you identify sections that don't flow well or can be improved for clarity. During self-review, aim to spot and remove redundancy (repetition of ideas without adding value) and repetitiveness (overuse of words or phrases). These refinements will ensure your documentation is clear and coherent and conveys your ideas as intended.

Proofread and then take a break before you review again. Only then submit your work. While spell checkers can flag spelling errors, they might not flag incorrect use of words, such as an unintended use of "he" instead of "the". It's best to take a break and return with fresh eyes to catch any errors you might have missed. Pay close attention to identify inconsistencies in tone, style, tense, or formatting and make the necessary adjustments.

Additional tips

To improve the clarity and accessibility of your documentation, also keep the following guidelines and tips in mind. To go in-depth into any of the topics, feel free to consult our Writing style guide .

  • Bulleted vs numbered lists : Lists, in general, make documentation easier to scan. Use bulleted lists when there is no specific order of the items. Use numbered lists when the steps need to be followed in the specific order. Always include a lead-sentence before beginning a list to provide context.
  • Commas : Use a comma after an introductory clause to improve readability and to clarify the sentence structure. Use a comma to separate items in a list to ensure clarity.
  • Alt text : Always provide an alternative text for the images you add to content. This makes your documentation accessible to people using screen readers. In addition to images, ensure that video and audio files have accompanying descriptive texts.
  • Descriptive link text : Make sure each link text is clear even out of context and clearly indicates where the link leads. Descriptive link texts also help people using screen readers understand the destination of links. For example, use "Read our writing style guide to learn more" instead of "Click here to learn more".
  • Inclusive language : Make your documentation welcoming to everyone. Strive to use words that respect and acknowledge the diversity of your audience.

That's it for this article. I hope you found these tips helpful as a quick refresher on technical writing best practices. Remember that learning how to create effective and easy-to-use documentation is an ongoing process. It starts with understanding your audience and the goals of your documentation. By applying these technical writing principles and tips, you'll certainly be able to enhance the clarity and overall quality of your documentation.

Let me know if you learned something new or if there's any idea that resonated with you. I'd also like to hear if there are any best practices you use in your technical documentation workflow. Share with us on Mastodon or Discord .

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Could artificial intelligence help or hurt scientific research articles?

Newly published studies examine advantages and disadvantages of chatgpt writing scholarly research publications.

Since its introduction to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence system, has substantially grown in use, creating written stories, graphics, art and more with just a short prompt from the user. But when it comes to scientific, peer-reviewed research, could the tool be useful?

"Right now, many journals do not want people to use ChatGPT to write their articles, but a lot of people are still trying to use it," said Melissa Kacena, PhD, vice chair of research and a professor of orthopaedic surgery at the Indiana University School of Medicine. "We wanted to study whether ChatGPT is able to write a scientific article and what are the different ways you could successfully use it."

The researchers took three different topics -- fractures and the nervous system, Alzheimer's disease and bone health and COVID-19 and bone health -- and prompted the subscription version of ChatGPT ($20/month) to create scientific articles about them. The researchers took 3 different approaches for the original draft of the articles -- all human, all ChatGPT or a combination. The study is published in a compilation of 12 articles in a new, special edition of Current Osteoporosis Reports .

"The standard way of writing a review article is to do a literature search, write an outline, start writing, and then faculty members revise and edit the draft," Kacena said. "We collected data about how much time it takes for this human method and how much time it takes for ChatGPT to write and then for faculty to edit the different articles."

In the articles written only by ChatGPT, up to 70% of the references were wrong. But when using an AI-assisted approach with more human involvement, they saw more plagiarism, especially when giving the tool more references up front. Overall, the use of AI decreased time spent to write the article, but required more extensive fact checking.

Another concern is with the writing style used by ChatGPT. Even though the tool was prompted to use a higher level of scientific writing, the words and phrases were not necessarily written at the level someone would expect to see from a researcher.

"It was repetitive writing and even if it was structured the way you learn to write in school, it was scary to know there were maybe incorrect references or wrong information," said Lilian Plotkin, PhD, professor of anatomy, cell biology and physiology at the IU School of Medicine and coauthor on five of the papers.

Jill Fehrenbacher, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the school and coauthor on nine of the papers, said she believes even though many scientific journals do not want authors to use ChatGPT, many people still will -- especially non-native English speakers.

"People may still write everything themselves, but then put it into ChatGPT to fix their grammar or help with their writing, so I think we need to look at how do we shepherd people in using it appropriately and even helping them?" Fehrenbacher said. "We hope to provide a guide for the scientific community so that if people are going to use it, here are some tips and advice."

"I think it's here to stay, but we need to understand how we can use it in an appropriate manner that won't compromise someone's reputation or spread misinformation," Kacena said.

Faculty and students from several departments and centers across the IU School of Medicine were involved, including orthopaedic surgery; anatomy, cell biology and physiology; pharmacology and toxicology; radiology and imaging sciences; anesthesia; the Stark Neuroscience Research Institute; the Indiana Center for Musculoskeletal Health; and the IU School of Dentistry. Authors are also affiliated with the Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Indianapolis, Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, and Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Indiana University School of Medicine . Original written by Christina Griffiths. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

  • Melissa A. Kacena, Lilian I. Plotkin, Jill C. Fehrenbacher. The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Writing Scientific Review Articles . Current Osteoporosis Reports , 2024; DOI: 10.1007/s11914-023-00852-0

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  • 05 February 2024

First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed

  • Jo Marchant 0

Jo Marchant is a science journalist based in London.

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You have full access to this article via your institution.

Three rows of yellow papyrus with black writing in columns, on a black background.

Text from the Herculaneum scroll, which has been unseen for 2,000 years. Credit: Vesuvius Challenge

A team of student researchers has made a giant contribution to solving one of the biggest mysteries in archaeology by revealing the content of Greek writing inside a charred scroll buried 2,000 years ago by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The winners of a contest called the Vesuvius Challenge trained their machine-learning algorithms on scans of the rolled-up papyrus, unveiling a previously unknown philosophical work that discusses the senses and pleasure. The feat paves the way for artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to decipher the rest of the scrolls in their entirety, something that researchers say could have revolutionary implications for our understanding of the ancient world.

how to write scientific article introduction

AI reads text from ancient Herculaneum scroll for the first time

The achievement has ignited the usually slow-moving world of ancient studies. It’s “what I always thought was a pipe dream coming true”, says Kenneth Lapatin, curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. The revealed text discusses sources of pleasure including music, the taste of capers and the colour purple. “It’s an historic moment,” says classicist Bob Fowler at the University of Bristol, UK, one of the prize judges. The three students, from Egypt, Switzerland and the United States, who revealed the text share a US$700,000 grand prize.

The scroll is one of hundreds of intact papyri excavated in the eighteenth century from a luxury Roman villa in Herculaneum, Italy. These lumps of carbonized ash — known as the Herculaneum scrolls — constitute the only library that survives from the ancient world, but are too fragile to open.

The winning entry, announced on 5 February, reveals hundreds of words across 15 columns of text, corresponding to around 5% of a scroll. “The contest has cleared the air on all the people saying will this even work,” says Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and co-founder of the prize. “Nobody doubts that anymore.”

Twenty-year mission

In the centuries after the scrolls were discovered, many people have attempted to open them, destroying some and leaving others in pieces. Papyrologists are still working to decipher and stitch together the resulting, horribly fragmented, texts. But the chunks with the worst charring — the most hopeless cases, adding up to perhaps 280 entire scrolls — were left intact. Most are held in the National Library in Naples, Italy, with a few in Paris, London and Oxford, UK.

A carbonized scroll rests on weighing scales.

This Herculaneum scroll was burnt and buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Credit: Vesuvius Challenge

Seales has been trying to read these concealed texts for nearly 20 years. His team developed software to “virtually unwrap” the surfaces of rolled-up papyri using 3D computed tomography (CT) images. In 2019, he took two of the scrolls from the Institut de France in Paris to the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator near Oxford to make high-resolution scans.

Mapping the surfaces was time consuming, however, and the carbon-based ink used to write the scrolls has the same density as papyrus, so it was impossible to differentiate in CT scans. Seales and his colleagues wondered whether machine-learning models might be trained to ‘unwrap’ the scrolls and distinguish the ink. But making sense of all the data was a gigantic task for his small team.

Seales was approached by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nat Friedman, who had become intrigued by the Herculaneum scrolls after watching a talk by Seales online. Friedman suggested opening the challenge to contestants. He donated $125,000 to launch the effort and raised hundreds of thousands more on Twitter, and Seales released his software along with the high-resolution scans. The team launched the Vesuvius Challenge in March 2023, setting a grand prize for reading 4 passages, of at least 140 characters each, before the end of the year.

Key to the contest’s success was its “blend of competition and cooperation”, says Friedman. Smaller prizes were awarded along the way to incentivize progress, with the winning machine-learning code released at each stage to “level up” the community so contestants could build on each other’s advances.

The colour purple

A key innovation came in the middle of last year, when US entrepreneur and former physicist Casey Handmer noticed a faint texture in the scans, similar to cracked mud — he called it “crackle” — that seemed to form the shapes of Greek letters. Luke Farritor, an undergraduate studying computer science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, used the crackle to train a machine-learning algorithm, revealing the word porphyras , ‘purple’, which won him the prize for unveiling the first letters in October . An Egyptian computer-science PhD student at the Free University of Berlin, Youssef Nader, followed with even clearer images of the text and came second.

A team of researchers used machine learning to image the shapes of ink on the rolled-up scroll. Credit: Vesuvius Challenge

Their code was released with less than three months for contestants to scale up their reads before the 31 December deadline for the final prize. “We were biting our nails,” says Friedman. But in the final week, the competition received 18 submissions. A technical jury checked entrants’ code, then passed 12 submissions to a committee of papyrologists who transcribed the text and assessed each entry for legibility. Only one fully met the prize criteria: a team formed by Farritor and Nader, along with Julian Schilliger, a robotics student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

The results are “incredible”, says judge Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II. “We were all completely amazed by the images they were showing.” She and her colleagues are now racing to analyse the text that has been revealed.

Music, pleasure and capers

The content of most of the previously opened Herculaneum scrolls relates to the Epicurean school of philosophy, founded by the Athenian philosopher Epicurus, who lived from 341 to 270 bc . The scrolls seem to have formed the working library of a follower of Epicurus named Philodemus. The new text doesn’t name the author but from a rough first read, say Fowler and Nicolardi, it is probably also by Philodemus. As well as pleasurable tastes and sights, it refers to a figure called Xenophantus, possibly a flute-player of that name mentioned by the ancient authors Seneca and Plutarch, whose evocative playing apparently caused Alexander the Great to reach for his weapons.

Lapatin says the topics discussed by Philodemus and Epicurus are still relevant: “The basic questions Epicurus was asking are the ones that face us all as humans. How do we live a good life? How do we avoid pain?” But “the real gains are still ahead of us”, he says. “What’s so exciting to me is less what this scroll says, but that the decipherment of this scroll bodes well for the decipherment of the hundreds of scrolls that we had previously given up on.”

There is likely to be more Greek philosophy in the scrolls: “I’d love it if he had some works by Aristotle,” says papyrologist and prize judge Richard Janko at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, some of the opened scrolls, written in Latin, cover a broader subject area, raising the possibility of lost poetry and literature by writers from Homer to Sappho. The scrolls “will yield who knows what kinds of new secrets”, says Fowler. “We’re all very excited.”

The achievement is also likely to fuel debate over whether further investigations should be conducted at the Herculaneum villa, entire levels of which have never been excavated. Janko and Fowler are convinced that the villa’s main library was never found, and that thousands more scrolls could still be underground. More broadly, the machine-learning techniques pioneered by Seales and the Vesuvius Challenge contestants could now be used to study other types of hidden text, such as cartonnage, recycled papyri often used to wrap Egyptian mummies.

The next step is to decipher an entire work. Friedman has announced a new set of Vesuvius Challenge prizes for 2024, with the aim of reading 90% of a scroll by the end of the year. But in the meantime, just getting this far “feels like a miracle”, he says. “I can’t believe it worked.”

Nature 626 , 461-462 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00346-8

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How to write an introduction section of a scientific article?

Affiliation.

  • 1 Department of Urology, Faculty of Medicine, Bezmialem Vakıf University, İstanbul, Turkey.
  • PMID: 26328128
  • PMCID: PMC4548565
  • DOI: 10.5152/tud.2013.046

An article primarily includes the following sections: introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Before writing the introduction, the main steps, the heading and the familiarity level of the readers should be considered. Writing should begin when the experimental system and the equipment are available. The introduction section comprises the first portion of the manuscript, and it should be written using the simple present tense. Additionally, abbreviations and explanations are included in this section. The main goal of the introduction is to convey basic information to the readers without obligating them to investigate previous publications and to provide clues as to the results of the present study. To do this, the subject of the article should be thoroughly reviewed, and the aim of the study should be clearly stated immediately after discussing the basic references. In this review, we aim to convey the principles of writing the introduction section of a manuscript to residents and young investigators who have just begun to write a manuscript.

Keywords: Article; introduction; scientific.

A man walks through knee-high water on a sidewalk next to a car parked at the curb with water over its wheels.

El Niño is starting to lose strength after fueling a hot, stormy year, but it’s still powerful − an atmospheric scientist explains what’s ahead for 2024

how to write scientific article introduction

Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York

Disclosure statement

Paul Roundy receives funding from the National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

University at Albany, State University of New York provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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Wild weather has been roiling North America for the past few months, thanks in part to a strong El Niño that sent temperatures surging in 2023. The climate phenomenon fed atmospheric rivers drenching the West Coast and contributed to summer’s extreme heat in the South and Midwest and fall’s wet storms across the East .

That strong El Niño is now starting to weaken and will likely be gone by late spring 2024.

So, what does that mean for the months ahead – and for the 2024 hurricane season?

What is El Niño?

Let’s start with a quick look at what an El Niño is.

El Niño and its opposite, La Niña, are climate patterns that influence weather around the world. El Niño tends to raise global temperatures, as we saw in 2023, while La Niña events tend to be slightly cooler. The two result in global temperatures fluctuating above and below the warming trend set by climate change .

El Niño starts as warm water builds up along the equator in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, off South America.

A colored map shows temperature differences with a warm area just west of South America along the equator.

Typically, tropical Pacific winds blow from the east, exposing cold water along the equator and building up warm water in the western Pacific. Every three to seven years or so , however, these winds relax or turn to blow from the west. When that happens, warm water rushes to the east. The warmer-than-normal water drives more rainfall and alters winds around the world. This is El Niño .

The water stays warm for several months until, ultimately, it cools or is driven away from the equator by the return of the trade winds.

When the eastern Pacific region along the equator becomes abnormally cold, La Niña has emerged, and global weather patterns change again.

What to expect from El Niño in 2024

While the 2023-24 El Niño event likely peaked in December , it is still strong.

For the rest of winter, forecasts suggest that strong El Niño conditions will likely continue to favor unusual warmth in Canada and the northern United States and occasional stormy conditions across the southern states.

Two maps of typical winter conditions under El Nino and La Nina show the Southwest wetter and the Northwest and upper Midwest generally warmer under El Nino.

El Niño is likely to end in late spring or early summer, shifting briefly to neutral. There’s a good chance we will see La Niña conditions this fall. But forecasting when that happens and what comes next is harder.

How an El Niño ends

While it’s easy to tell when an El Niño event reaches its peak, predicting when one will end depends on how the wind blows, and everyday weather affects the winds.

The warm area of surface water that defines El Niño typically becomes more shallow toward spring. In mid-May 1998, at the end of an even stronger El Niño event , there was a time when people fishing in the warm surface water in the eastern tropical Pacific could have touched the cold water layer a few feet below by just jumping in. At that point, it took only a moderate breeze to pull the cold water to the surface, ending the El Niño event.

But exactly when a strong El Niño event reverses varies. A big 1983 El Niño didn’t end until July. And the El Niño in 1987 retreated into the central Pacific but did not fully reverse until December.

As of early February 2024, strong westerly winds were driving warm water from west to east across the equatorial Pacific.

These winds tend to make El Niño last a little longer. However, they’re also likely to drive what little warm water remains along the equator out of the tropics, up and down the coasts of the Americas. The more warm water that is expelled, the greater the chances of full reversal to La Niña conditions in the fall.

Summer and the hurricane risk

Among the more important El Niño effects is its tendency to reduce Atlantic hurricane activity .

El Niño’s Pacific Ocean heat affects upper level winds that blow across the Gulf of Mexico and the tropical Atlantic Ocean. That increases wind shear - the change in wind speed and direction with height – which can tear hurricanes apart.

The 2024 hurricane season likely won’t have El Niño around to help weaken storms. But that doesn’t necessarily mean an active season.

During the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season , El Niño’s effect on the winds was more than offset by abnormally warm Atlantic waters, which fuel hurricanes. The season ended with more storms than average.

The strange El Niño of 2023-24

Although the 2023-24 El Niño event wasn’t the strongest in recent decades, many aspects of it have been unusual.

It followed three years of La Niña conditions, which is unusually long. It also emerged quickly, from March to May 2023. The combination led to weather extremes unseen since perhaps the 1870s .

Two cars are trapped up to their widows in a mudslide that poured through a Los Angeles neighborhood. One car is parked in its driveway,

La Niña cools the tropics but stores warm water in the western Pacific. It also warms the middle latitude oceans by weakening the winds and allowing more sunshine through. After three years of La Niña, the rapid emergence of El Niño helped make the Earth’s surface warmer than in any recent year .

  • Extreme weather
  • Pacific Ocean
  • El Niño Southern Oscillation
  • Atmospheric rivers
  • Extreme storms
  • 2023 U.S. heat wave

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