Other types of articles, such as case reports, reviews, and editorials, probably need to be formatted differently. J Ment Health Policy Econ. ", Appear either in opening footnotes or a section of the article body, Disclosure of funding (grants to the project), Disclosure of conflict of interest (grants to individuals, jobs/salaries, stock or stock options), Reader's theme that is the point of this element's existence: "Why should I (the reader) spend my time reading what you say? J Evid Based Dent Pract.
This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. The introduction section had to be present but not necessarily accompanied by a heading. 2001, 293: 1624-1626. Information, which today is highly standardized in one section, would be absent, repeated, or dispersed among sections in earlier articles. One way of ensuring that the Universities actually act as knowledge hubs is through promoting institutional visibility by encouraging research publication by students and faculty using internationally recognised scientific writing formats like Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion, [IMRAD][5, 9, 10]. However, neither the rate at which the use of this format increased nor the point at which it became the standard for today's medical scientific writing is well established. While writing the background, make sure your citations are: TIP: Do not write a literature review in your Introduction, but do cite reviews where readers can find more information if they want it. They could be generally grouped as: (1) continuous text, (2) articles that used headings other than the IMRAD, (3) case reports, and (4) articles that partially adopted the IMRAD structure. Whiteside U, Pantelone DW, Hunter-Reel D, Eland J, Kleiber B, Larimer M: Initial Suggestions for Supervising and Mentoring Undergraduate Research Assistants at Large Research Universities.
10.1016/j.jebdp.2009.06.011. Reduced engagement could also point to a different trend developing over time, there seems to be little support for undergraduate research in both the curricula and in extracurricular activities. Usually, the IMRAD article sections use the IMRAD words as headings. In addition to visibility, the adoption of high quality international standards benefits the university by the creation of a pool of individuals who are conversant with scientific writing. The IMRAD structure facilitates modular reading, because readers usually do not read in a linear way but browse in each section of the article, looking for specific information, which is normally found in preestablished areas of the paper [15]. 2004, 92: 364-367. There was no significant change in the odds for IMRAD use over the years. Data collection began at 1960, moving forward and backward from that year until the frequency of IMRAD articles reached 100% and none respectively. College of Coastal Georgia Oriokot, L., Buwembo, W., Munabi, I.G.
The Editors and Their Journals. 5th ed, The evolution of medical research writing from 1735 to 1985: the case of the Edinburgh Medical Journal, Structured abstracts for papers reporting clinical trials. Many scientific journals now not only prefer this structure but also use the IMRAD acronym as an instructional device in the instructions to their authors, recommending the use of the four terms as main headings. For example, if a drug is known to work well in one population, but has never been tested in a different population, the purpose of a study could be to test the efficacy and safety of the drug in the second population. ", "One or more of the authors of this paper self-identifies as transgender. From 1965 and beyond, the full structure tends to predominate. volume4, Articlenumber:250 (2011) The general theme has been to create templates and checklists with the message to the user being, "your article is not complete until you have done all of these things." 10.1002/(SICI)1099-176X(199903)2:1<13::AID-MHP34>3.0.CO;2-M. PubMed The IMRaD (or IMRD) format is often used in the social sciences, as well as in the STEM fields.
CAS The authors did not find definite reasons explaining the leadership of the IMRAD structure in the literature. Research involves the critical analysis of each and every solution to a problem using the scientific method to identify the best evidence based solution for action at the time. Springer is part of, Describe new methods in enough detail that another researcher can reproduce your experiment, Describe established methods briefly, and simply cite a reference where readers can find more detail, As in the Materials and Methods section, use. California Privacy Statement, What are the perspectives for future research? The letter was usually single authored, written in a polite style, and addressed several subjects at the same time [1]. The other factor that could support increased interest in research is the adoption of adult learning approaches to curriculum delivery by the FoM in 2003[16].
10.1111/j.1365-2923.2007.02776.x.
It allows the most relevant information to be presented clearly and logically to the readership, by summarizing the research process in an ideal sequence and without unnecessary detail. Given that individuals who participate in research as students will more likely continue to participate in research as faculty, it is important that all efforts are made to ensure that the students develop these vital scientific writing skills [19, 23]. [4] Here, (a) and (b) are mentioned in the section of the "Introduction", (c) and (d) are mentioned in the section of the "Method" and "Result" respectively, and (e) and (f) are mentioned in the section of the "Discussion" or "Conclusion". A hand search was made for complete journal volumes from various sources that included the Sir Albert Cook Library which is the main MakCHS library, personal collections and the journal editorial teams' files. Globally there is an increasing awareness of the importance of research for developing guidelines to direct social and economic interventions[1, 2]. Provides a set of recommendations for the reporting of studies developing, Introduction Why was the study undertaken? All four journals presented a similar trend: the New England Journal of Medicine fully adopted the structure in 1975, followed by the British Medical Journal in 1980, and JAMA and The Lancet in 1985. After 1960, the IMRAD structure takes the lead. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript. 2010, 85: 419-428. where there is not enough data for a table or figure). It might be assumed that patterns set by these journals would be followed by others; nevertheless, caution should be taken in extrapolating these findings to other journals. Given the powerful nature of the undergraduate research experiences as tools for grooming the next generation of scientists, it is important to look at other factors like the need for extra effort and time of faculty to transfer scholarly writing skills to students[19]. Thus reporting guidelines (guidelines for how best to report information) arose.
Methods: In a cross-sectional study, the frequency of articles written under the IMRAD structure was measured from 1935 to 1985 in a randomly selected sample of articles published in four leading journals in internal medicine: the British Medical Journal, JAMA, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
For example, it is explicitly recommended in the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (previously called the Vancouver guidelines): The text of observational and experimental articles is usually (but not necessarily) divided into the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. Most researchers cannot be familiar with all of the many reporting standards that now exist, but it is enough to know which ones must be followed in one's own work, and to know where to look for details when needed. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences Inc. (version 12.0 for Windows, Chicago, Illinois) with the calculation of odd ratios and trend analysis being made with the aid of online Open Epi programme version 2.3.1 http://www.openepi.com[15]. PubMed Four major leading journals of internal medicine were examined. = -0.338 p < 0.01 one tailed). In some journals, the "Methods" heading may vary, being "Methods and materials", "Materials and methods", or similar phrases. Science. Articles that did not follow this structure were considered non-IMRAD. Active support for undergraduate research is happening in more developed settings as is seen in the example of Duke and Stanford universities[6]. Health Res Policy Syst. Munabi IG, Katabira ET, Konde-Lule J: Early undergraduate research experience at Makerere University Faculty of Medicine: a tool for promoting medical research. Kizza IB, Tugumisirize J, Tweheyo R, Mbabali S, Kasangaki A, Nshimye E, Sekandi J, Groves S, Kennedy CE: Makerere University College of Health Sciences' role in addressing challenges in health service provision at Mulago National Referral Hospital. Kabiru CW, Izugbara CO, Wambugu SW, Ezeh AC: Capacity development for health research in Africa: experiences managing the African Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship Program. Until 1960, texts with different headings and partial IMRAD headings shared the lead in JAMA. IMRaD is the most prominent norm for the structure of a scientific journal article of the original research type. This makes the undergraduate research experiences a powerful tool for quickly increasing the number of high calibre researchers[18]. Note the shape of the top trapezoid (representing the structure of Introduction) and the shape of the trapezoid at the bottom are reversed. Are you just making money off of saying it? In the Results section, simply state what you found, butdo not interpret the results or discuss their implications. [15] Consequently, there is a strong recent trend toward developing formal requirements for abstracts, most often structured on the IMRAD pattern, and often with strict additional specifications of topical content items that should be considered for inclusion in the abstract. BMC Int Health Hum Rights. With the University's Vision to become a leader in research in Africa, there is a high demand for research and scientific writing currently focusing on graduate research[14]. The First one, "top-bottom symmetric shape", represents the symmetry of the story development. Discussion What might the answer imply and why does it matter? Additional inferences were made with the aid of spearman's correlations and non parametric tests with the level of significance set as P value of less than 0.05. 
A high agreement was found (Kappa = 0.95; CI 95%:0.88; 1.0). For each article found, the following information was captured; the articles' authors and their affiliations, the use of the IMRAD format of writing papers, the composition of the authoring teams and the year of the publication. Article Camden Center Library Was the tested hypothesis true? 2008, 37: 1188-1204. The results were summarised as frequencies and presented in bar graphs and tables with calculation of odds ratios, effect sizes and trend analysis. 2007, 41: 729-736. A total of 1,297 original articlesall those from each selected issuewere examined: 341 from the British Medical Journal, 328 from Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 401 from The Lancet, and 227 from the New England Journal of Medicine. 10.1007/s11187-008-9135-9. In the 1970s, it reached 80% and, in the 1980s, was the only pattern adopted in original papers. In scientific writing, IMRAD or IMRaD (/mrd/) (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion)[1] is a common organizational structure (a document format). Although the IMRAD structure originates in the empirical sciences, it now also regularly appears in academic journals across a wide range of disciplines. Below are the links to the authors original submitted files for images. TIP: There is a famous saying in English: A picture is worth a thousand words. This means that, sometimes, an image can explain your findings far better than text could. ", "We got our study design approved by our local, "We got our study design approved by our local ethics committee before proceeding. In the early twentieth century, contemporary norms began to be standardized with a decreasing use of the literary style. Accessibility
African Health Sciences. This survey demonstrates that in the surveyed university population, faculty student partnerships are not producing the desired level of undergraduate research mentoring as evidenced by the reduced use of the IMRAD formatting in articles published in the MMJ. With some variation among the different disciplines, most scholarly articles of original research follow the IMRD model, which consists of the following components: This form is most obvious in scientific studies, where the methods are clearly defined and described, and data is often presented in tables or graphs for analysis. The increasing importance of well-formed autonomous abstracts may well be a consequence of the increasing use of searchable digital abstract archives, where a well-formed abstract will dramatically increase the probability for an article to be found by its optimal readership. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Since the university is expected to lead in teaching of research, there is need for increased support for undergraduate research, as a starting point for research education. Increase in undergraduate students interest in research is supported by the observation that globally there is increased interest in research at the undergraduate level as the beginning of research education[5]. The .gov means its official. In a randomly selected subsample of forty-eight articles, the data collection was independently repeated after six months. Mason J, Eccles M, Freemantle N, Drummond M: Incorporating economic analysis in evidence-based guidelines for mental health: the profile approach. PubMed Correspondence to Loraine Oriokot, William Buwembo and Stephen C Kijjambu contributed equally to this work. Sollaci LB, Pereira MG: The introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) structure: a fifty-year survey. 10.1126/science.1062714. Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, J Med Libr Assoc.
MMJ is run for and by the health professional student body at the former Faculty of Medicine (FoM) that with the School of Public Health became Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS) in 2008, [1113] one of the Colleges of Makerere University (one of the oldest universities in Sub-Saharan Africa). Small Bus Econ. According to Lappato (2007) in undergraduate research experiences students' learn by being positively influenced by the process of investigation, and learning or from modelling higher order methods of thinking as they test and later communicate their research findings[17]. 2007, 91: 36-74. In 1935, no IMRAD article could be found. Google Scholar, Johnson N, List-Ivankovic J, Eboh WO, Ireland J, Adams D, Mowatt E, Martindale S: Research and evidence based practice: Using a blended approach to teaching and learning in undergraduate nurse education. Jonkheere's test revealed no trend in the use of IMRAD over the years sampled J = 10100, z = 0.211, r = 0.086.
Sci Ed.
This trend has been observed by other researchers concerning the African continent [8]. Vickery B.. These journals were chosen based on their similarities in target audience, frequency, and lifespan.
Aravamudhan K, Frantsve-Hawley J: American Dental Association's Resources to Support Evidence-Based Dentistry. Gonzalez C: Undergraduate research, graduate mentoring, and the university's mission. Use of the IMRAD formatting was significantly affected by the composition of the teams 2 (2df) = 25.621, p < 0.001 using the Kruskal Wallis test. about navigating our updated article layout. According to Huth [13], the wide use of the IMRAD structure may be largely credited to editors, who insisted on papers being clearly formatted to benefit readers and to facilitate the process of peer review. The Introduction should answer the question: what question/problem was studied? The final thing to include at the end of your Introduction is a clear and exact statement of your study aims. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. A few variations can occur, as follows: In the late 20th century and early 21st, the scientific communities found that the communicative value of journal articles was still much less than it could be if best practices were developed, promoted, and enforced. 1974, 3: 675-678. MMJ is published bi-annually and has been in existence from the early 1960's. The field of physics, for example, had already adopted it extensively in the 1950s [7]. Society expects universities to lead both the teaching and carrying out of research. [9] The APA publication manual is widely used by journals in the social, educational and behavioral sciences.[10]. Use of the IMRAD formatting was significantly affected by the composition of the teams (2 (2df) = 25.621, p < 0.01) especially when comparing the student only teams to the faculty only teams. et al. [17] The growing importance of abstracts in the era of computerized literature search and information overload has led some users to modify the IMRAD acronym to AIMRAD, in order to give due emphasis to the abstract. Lopatto D: Undergraduate research experiences support science career decisions and active learning. This can be seen in the number of articles submitted which was highest at 33 in the 2007 journal. Springer Nature. By using this website, you agree to our Google Scholar. Regarding the non-IMRAD articles, the evolution and variations of text organization for all journals can be delineated. .jpg/220px-Herds_Maasi_Mara_(cropped_and_straightened).jpg)
introduction, method, result, and discussion
