Winning Papers:
WESEF: Jason Kang - Cellular and Molecular Biology
Resources:
Regeneron Paper Formatting Guide
So you’ve emailed your mentor. They’ve agreed to guide you through the research process. You’ve done some further background research through others’ research articles. Now what’s next?
Well now, you’ve got this daunting task ahead of you: the research paper. Where do I start? How long should it be? What kind of vocabulary do I use? These might be just a few of the many questions going around in your head right now. But don’t worry, this guide will hopefully clear up a couple of things for you and serve as a guide when writing your paper.
Abstract
The first major component of a research paper is the abstract. Your abstract is a paragraph (usually around 250 words) that essentially describes your entire research briefly. Since the abstract is so short in length, it’s VERY important to use the space wisely. Each sentence of the abstract should weave nicely and represent each section of the paper (eg: background information, problem statement, goals/hypotheses, methodology, results, etc.). The abstract should be clear and concise and written in past tense.
Introduction (Background Information and Review of Literature)
The background information is the information that is necessary in order for the reader to better understand your research. Try considering these questions when writing your background information section:
Why am I conducting this research?
What is the central concept this research revolves around?
What previous research has been done relating to your research?
Also when writing this section, make sure to include other primary articles you read that helped you to understand your research. Don’t forget to cite those sources (not only at the end but also within sentences)!
Problem Statement, Objectives, and Hypotheses
The problem statement addresses the gap in research. Usually, this section is written in bullet points rather than a paragraph. And in some cases, your research may have several problems that need to be addressed. In this scenario, it’s handy to use different stages/phases to highlight the various stages of your research.
The objectives describe how your research project addresses the problem statement/s. This section should also be written in bullet points rather than in paragraph form.
Lastly, the hypotheses form predictions to your problem statement (if there are multiple PS’s, there should be multiple hypotheses).
Methodology
Your methodology should be written so that another could replicate your experiment again. Make sure to explain the details and not just use vague language. So if you’re unsure about a specific lab technique, it’s best to ask your mentor why you’re performing a certain technique and why it’s crucial to your research data. (For lab techniques, there’s no need to explain every single step of that procedure. For example, you only need to state “PCR” or “Western Blot” rather than explaining each step.)
It’s also useful to split up your methodology into smaller chunks. You can subdivide it according to a certain procedure or a stage in your experiment. In general, the methodology section should be written in passive voice. In addition, you can use personal pronouns like “I” or “we” when there was a specific procedure that you were mainly responsible for.
Results
After the methodology comes the results section. The results should follow a similar outline as that of the methodology. When presenting the data, it is usually efficient to do so through graphs, tables, and charts. Make sure to include captions for each of the graphs/tables. You can also refer back to your figures by noting them as “Figure 1” or “Figure 2”, and so on.
One mistake some people make when writing the results section is that they attempt to interpret the data! Please do not make this mistake, save the interpreting for later in the discussion/conclusion. Just focus on being clear and concise about the data. It’s also helpful to learn about confidence intervals and p-values to actually understand what the data signifies.
Discussion
Now that you came to the discussion, you can finally analyze and interpret the data. One of the most important things you have to keep in mind is that you must address whether your hypotheses were supported or refuted. And when you explain this, make sure to use the actual data from the experiment to support your claims.
After you interpret the data, you can include a short paragraph explaining any possible limitations or errors while conducting your research. You can even start heading into the future research and conclusion section by explaining the relevance of your acquired results.
Future Research
The future research section explains possible applications of your research in the near future. How can you see your research being utilized in a certain field of science? Why is your research so important to you? To others? How can I possibly modify certain parts of the experiment? These are some thinking points for you to consider when writing this section.
Conclusion
And lastly, we have the conclusion! The conclusion is the thing that ties everything together. It must review all the objectives, methods, results, and discussions you took away from the research. And try to end the conclusion in an impactful way. After all, you should be very proud of conducting this level of research as a high schooler. So finish off strong!
Works Cited
One more! The Works Cited section should be alphabetical and in “hanging indent” form. The first line of each citation should hang over the rest of the citation (indentation).
Best of luck on your research papers!