You may think that you have written your manuscript very well, but it still might have blaring errors that will be enough for your scientific research paper to be cast aside. This blog informs the most common mistakes in writing a scientific manuscript as well as suggests ways to rectify them.
Errors in introduction section
Too long an introduction
You may be incited to give a lengthy introduction to your research work, but the fact is no one is interested in non-objective texts. Scientific manuscripts emanate from theses that can be a valid reason for an introduction to be long, but adding superfluous information will be gilding the lily.
Tip: Concision is a must in scientific research paper so do not add extensive literature reviews. The thumb rule is the introduction part should be less than 10% of the total of a manuscript.
Lack of coherence
The introduction part of a manuscript must contextualise the subject of your study and present the level of knowledge which is under examination. The introduction section should be coherently written so that readers can understand the relevance of your topic and anticipate a gap to be filled immediately before reading research objectives.
Tip: Focus of your research can be equivocal if introduction is not written coherently. Make it precise, concise and organised.
Errors in materials and methods
Wrong use of tense
Materials and methods section is written when experiments are in progress. You write each step in the present tense as everything is happening at the same time, but when you move onto the final manuscript part for publishing purpose, the tense structure will change from present to past because methods refer to what has been done, not what is being carried out.
Tip: Write all sentences in the past tense.
Incomplete information
Submission of incomplete description often leads to a negative impact on your studies. You must understand that a good research paper is one that is reproducible, and it can be reproduced if it provides complete information about materials used. You may be tempted to highlight positive results without emphasising on experiments or methods you used to obtain results, but this might meet cynicism by readers because of lack of paramount details.
Tip: Include all materials used in experimental observations and discuss all methods thoroughly to make your paper reproducible.
Errors in result section
In results section, you should avoid being verbose and paradoxical. This section involves tables and graphs to define summary of findings. However, you might slip up repeating the same information in tables and graphs that you have already elucidated in text. Consult the work of other authors and prepare your own findings accordingly.
Tip: Write important points in text and then refer tables and charts to delineate findings.
Errors in discussion section
Discussion section doesn’t require you to argue previous author’s claims in favour of your own idea. Instead you have to interpret results, explain them and make propositions and suggestions. You will compare and contrast your findings with those produced by previous scholars. The significant error that you may commit in this section is writing it as a literature review and failing to include study limitation. This may leave an impression that you didn’t comprehend the scope of your study.
Tip: Use literature to compare your results with previous authors’ and don’t forget to include study limitation.
Inappropriate conclusion
Most of the authors fail to address all objectives of a study and sometimes it is beyond the scope of the study.
Tip: Write a conclusion in a simple way. Make sure that it is related to your research question.
You should be careful of these errors while writing a manuscript to get it published in a high ranking journal successfully.
