By this point in life, you’ve undoubtedly viewed enough scientific documents to recognize that almost all follow quite similar patterns, often expressed by the acronyms IMRAD – Introduction, Methods, Results And Discussion (Day and Gastel, 2011) – or AIMRaD – Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion (Cargill and O’Connor, 2009). Research also is reported in other ways, of course, including such formats as case study reports, research notes, and letters. Adding to the variety, there are a few major journals that structure their articles in entirely different arrangements. However, if you examine any of these with an analytical eye, you generally will be able to find the same categories of information, even without conventional IMRAD headings to guide you.

Together, IMRAD forms the core of an effective scientific paper. Each IMRAD section is structured to address certain questions, and together they shape a critical persuasive argument. We’ll present them in order here, but write them in whatever sequence works effectively for you. If you’re a rabbit (see Chapter 3), you’ll probably start with the Introduction. If you’re a turtle, you might prefer to write it after the Methods and the Results because these two sections are generally more straightforward to compile. If you’re an iconoclast, you’ll wait to write the Introduction until after you’ve written everything else in the core and decided what everything should mean for your audience.