There are several style guides 3, 4 and articles 5 to help scientists and students prepare their manuscripts. If you are writing an article for publication in a particular journal (or preparing a laboratory report in the style of a particular journal) you should consult the Instructions to Authors section of the journal’s website (this information is also included in the journal’s first issue of each year). The style requirements vary only slightly from journal to journal, but there are far more similarities than differences in the scientific writing style. There are set rules for preparing a journal article (or a laboratory report). So no matter what your career goals are, it is important that you become familiar with this style of writing. Scientists working in industrial laboratories do not write as many journal articles as their colleagues in academia, but they routinely write progress reports, which take the same form as a journal article. The research paper presents the results of the experiment and interpretation of the data, describes the rationale and design of the experiment, provides a context for the results in terms of previous findings and assesses the overall success of the experiment(s). The research paper is the primary means of communication in science.

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