Structuring a Journal Paper

My favourite book is “English for Writing Research Papers” by Andrian Wallwork. I strongly recommend you use this!

Before going into details, these are the summarized (recommended) tenses for each chapter:

Abstract: Simple Present and Simple Past

Introduction: Simple Present (what is known), Perfect Present (previous approach/solutions)

Literature Review: Simple Present

Methodology: Simple Past

Results: Simple Past

Discussion:

Conclusion: Perfect Present (for descriptions) & Simple Past (for methods)
e.g. We have described a new resonator and we used this resonator to obtain strong excitations…

The layout of a journal, as describe by Elsevier:

1. Authors
   1. Avoid ghost authorship – leaving out authors who should be included
   2. Gift authorship – including authors who did not contribute significantly
2. Title
   1. Fewest possible words that adequately describe the paper
   2. Articles with short, catchy titles are often better cited
3. Abstract
   1. Advertisement for your article
   2. Interesting, easy to be understood without reading the whole article
   3. Accurate, brief and specific
4. Keywords
   1. Labels for your manuscript
5. Introduction.
   1. What is the problem?
   2. Are the any existing solutions?
   3. Which solution is the best?
   4. What is its main limitation
   5. What do you hope to achieve?
6. Methods
   1. Include detailed information
   2. Do not describe previously published procedures
   3. identify the equipment and describe the materials used
7. Results
   1. Clear and eas-to-understand story.
   2. Be structured
   3. Main findings (Other findings may be included in the supplimentary materials)
   4. Highlight findings that differ from findings in previous publications and unexpected results
   5. Include simulation results
   6. Use illustrations. Captions and legends must be details for items to be self-explanatory
   7. No duplication of results from other text or illustrations
8. Discussion
   1. Most important section
   2. Make the discussion correspond to the results
   3. Compare publised results with yours
9. Conclusion
   1. Should be clear
   2. Justify your work
   3. Suggest future experiments
10. Acknowledgements
    1. Advisors, Financial supporters, Proofreaders, Typists
11. References
    1. Do not use too many references
    2. Ensure you have fully absorbed materials you are referencing and do not just rely on checking excerpts or isolated sentences
    3. Avoid excessive self-citations
    4. Avoid excessive citations of publications from the same region
    5. Conform strictly to the style of the Journal
12. Supplementary Data