English for Writing Research Papers_1.2

You believe you can make a contribution to a gap in the current knowledge base of your field. It helps if you can write down concisely what this contribution is, and then double check that your proposed contribution really is original.

Discussing and presenting your findings to colleagues should help you to identify what your key findings are.

Make a list of your key findings and choose the most important ones to fit the space you have available (i.e. the total word count allowed by your chosen journal). For each key finding decide if there is another possible explanation for what you have found. You can do this by looking in the literature again. Make sure you have not inserted any bias in your explanation of your findings. Next, write an explanation saying why you think each key finding is true. However, write your explanation in a way that shows you are open to other interpretations.

The above suggestions should also help you to decide whether your planned paper really will have a contribution to make.