Organisational Strategies for Academic Papers

Organisational Strategies for Academic Papers
An organised text is a reflection of logical thought, and given the sophisticated nature of the information contained in most academic and scientific writing, poor organisation or a lack of organisation can confuse and mislead the readers it does not lose altogether. For these reasons, scholarly writing that is poorly organised is never appropriate and might justly be called unscholarly.

Effective organisation for any text begins with an outline, which is simply a design or plan of the content and structure of the document you intend to write. An outline may be formal, lengthy and detailed so that it can be shared with colleagues, or it might consist of informal notes and sketches that no one except you will ever see. Whatever form it takes, a useful outline helps an author start in the right place, include the necessary content, devise an appropriate structure and develop a thoughtful argument. As you draft the text, you may not actually write exactly what you intended, and even the outline itself may change as you proceed, but any plan is better than none.

If possible, it is usually wise to adopt a standard or traditional structure for your document. This will vary depending on the type of text you are writing, the discipline you are working in, the topic of your document, the type of research approach you adopt and so on. Many scholarly journals, for instance, still request a basic article structure consisting of an introduction or summary of background, a literature review, a description of methodology, a report of findings, a discussion of conclusions, implications and recommendations, a list of references and any appendices and supplementary material, with tables and figures embedded in the main text or added after it. Therefore, if you have a particular journal in mind for your paper, check the relevant guidelines and read a few of the articles already published in the journal to help you organise your writing in a way that will meet the journal’s requirements.

For some documents, there are no standard models, and even when a traditional structure like that outlined above is applied, certain documents will require further organisational strategies. An alphabetical order might be appropriate when discussing a variety of similar things, such as the trees that grow in a given forest, especially when you do not want to suggest another kind of priority. A chronological order is often a good choice for a thorough literature review because discussing sources in their publication order shows the development of knowledge in a subject area. Location as an organisational principle may also be effective, with the focus on exactly where different types of trees grow or where individual publications originated.

Other possibilities include an arrangement that moves from more general information to specific facts, or just the opposite, moving from specifics to generalisation: many research papers combine these two orders by beginning with general statements about a topic, moving through the specific research conducted by the author and then back out to more general ideas. You may want to start with simpler concepts and work towards more difficult material, which is an excellent educational approach, or you may want to begin with the most important or compelling information and work down through less significant or interesting facts. Finally, stating a problem or question and then presenting a solution or answer is a classic approach for reporting research and can be used as a primary structural principle along with other organisational strategies.