Loay Kassem, Assistant Professor of Clinical Oncology at Kasr AlAiny School of Medicine, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“It took me forever to write my first paper.
That’s because I was (like most of you now) writing in the wrong order.
Now I write in a totally different way.
Most researchers attempt to write their manuscript in the same order they find in the journal (in the attached figure): Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.
The surprise is that this is wrong.
The introduction should be the last thing to be written.
- First, I start by the tables and figures. These are the main events of my story.
- Second, I complete the results section. I just describe the main findings of my tables and figures.
- Third, I write the methods section. Here I describe how we reached the results. The methods and results sections should be an easy part to write. A nice tip here is to have a similar article as a guide so that I don’t miss an important section to point to cover.
- Fourth, I write the discussion section. Here I explain what is the meaning, consequences and limitations of my results.
Finally, I finish with the introduction section. Here I cover why was it important to do our study.
Share with your colleagues if you think this is of benefit.”
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