How to Write a Research Manuscript

Well-organized and clearly-written manuscripts are key to the communication of the scientific ideas. Readers should be excited by the title and abstract, drawn into the topic by the introduction, able to understand the experiments from the methods and results, and appreciative of their wider significance after reading the discussion.

There are many ways to approach manuscript writing and several different structures that can be used. Here we provide hints and tips that will help you to communicate your work effectively using a common manuscript structure.

  • Decide upon a single, clear and robust message that can be concluded from your data
  • Compose a title that conveys this conclusion
    • Titles should be declarative, stating what has been found rather than what has been done
    • The most effective titles are brief and of simple construction
  • Create a logical narrative that will guide the reader from the knowledge gap, through the available evidence, to your main conclusion
  • Generate a set of figures that illustrate the evidence in your narrative
    • Combine related panels into individual figures
    • Assign a brief, declarative title to each figure
    • Compose legends that describe the contents of each panel and any symbols or acronyms used
    • Include tables to convey tabular data
  • Describe these data in the form of a results section
    • Use brief, declarative subheadings to guide the reader through the narrative; consider using figure titles as subheadings
    • Introduce each experiment by explaining the rationale
    • Draw a conclusion from the results of each experiment
  • Write a discussion that puts the results into a wider context
    • Begin with a summary of the main results
    • Explain how you interpret these results, referring to the literature to support your claims
    • Mention any limitations of your study and additional research that could be carried out to explore unresolved issues
    • Finish by explaining how the conclusions fill the knowledge gap
  • Compose an introduction that provides the reader with sufficient background information to understand the results and conclusion
    • Begin with a general introduction to the topic for non-specialists
    • Explain current understanding by discussing recent work
    • Explain the knowledge gap within this topic and the specific question addressed by this work
    • End with a brief summary of the experimental approach, the main findings and the overall conclusion
  • Write a concise abstract that summarizes the contents of the manuscript
    • Begin with 1-2 sentences of general introduction
    • Include 1-2 sentences of more detailed background and an explanation of the knowledge gap
    • Summarize the main conclusion of your work with a ‘Here we show…’ (or similar) sentence
    • Describe the main results that led to this conclusion in 2-3 sentences, noting major techniques used; use the subheadings from the results section as a guide
    • Finish with 1-2 sentences to frame the conclusion in a broader context
  • Describe all materials and methods in a separate section, if not already included within the results
    • Use a new subheading for each technique
  • Compile a list of references cited
  • Proof read the manuscript
    • Aim to maximize intelligibility by using a clear, concise style, and avoiding complicated sentence construction
    • Use plain English and avoid jargon
    • Ask a colleague from a different field for constructive feedback.

AIP Publishing provides authors with support for language editing, translation, and figure creation. More information can be found at AIP Author Services.