Scientific Writing
Ideally, your research will progress from a study protocol, to a proposal for funding, to conducting your study, to dissemination — often in the form of a journal publication.
Although styles and formats will vary, the ultimate goal for writing at any stage is to communicate your information as clearly as possible. Also see writing grant proposals.
Literature search
A literature search should be performed at the initial stage of your research, though you may wish to update it before writing up your findings. See protocol development.
Writing a research article
If your early work has been carefully designed, your article should flow conceptually from your research protocol or proposal. This is not to imply that the writing process is easy! Many of the same suggestions for writing a grant proposal apply. Above all, aim for clarity and brevity.
Note that there are a variety of types of articles and formats. In addition to the standard IMRAD article — describing a research study using introduction, methods, results and discussion sections — journals also publish reviews, which summarize the results of other studies, and commentaries, which are opinion pieces.
Some resources include:
Submitting a manuscript
When looking for an appropriate journal, you may wish to ascertain its impact factor, which measures its average number of citations. Impact factors are published by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. Note that you cannot submit your article to more than one journal at time.
Some resources include:
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