title: Practical approaches to scientific writing.
abstract: Scientific writings represent final products of scientific endeavors. A scientist communicates with others by his or her writings and oral presentations. In most universities, there are no formal courses on scientific writing and presentation. Students learn mostly by trial and error or by individual apprenticeship. This brief article presents a practical approach to writing a journal article, regardless of the language used. Scientific writing, as in any other writings, requires clear and concise expressions. In addition, scientific writing expects authors to (1) organize for quick access to specific sections; (2) describe experiments and findings in sufficient details so that they can be duplicated; (3) interpret data for the readers; and (4) summarize and discuss the significance of results and their relation to existing knowledge. This article will discuss the IMRAD format (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion). The focus will be on what should be included in each section of the format.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, University of Hawaii, John A. Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu 96822.
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D007802:Language; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011643:Publishing; D014956:Writing