Writing Research Reports for Publication

Abstract

The purposes of this article are to highlight the salient, and sometimes invisible, features of the standard format for reporting research and to provide guidelines to help novice writers avoid some of the more frequent problems they encounter. First, we describe some general considerations about planning and writing for publication. Then, after discussing each of the five components of the research report (abstract, introduction, method, results, and discussion), we address questions about the writing and publishing process frequently posed by our students as they begin to conduct and disseminate research independently.