{"id":2677,"date":"2019-05-21T10:51:15","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T10:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/reflections-on-writing-my-first-research-paper\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T06:35:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T06:35:14","slug":"reflections-on-writing-my-first-research-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/reflections-on-writing-my-first-research-paper","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on writing my first research paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once you\u2019ve done something that\u2019s got you some results, writing up the analysis should be easy, right? After all, it\u2019s you that\u2019s done the work, you know why you did it, you know how you did it, you know your results and the conclusions you\u2019ve drawn from it. So what is so difficult?!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I have no idea, but something is. I mean, it doesn\u2019t help that I don\u2019t \u201clike\u201d the writing up process, no matter how useful it can be to set things straight in my brain, but there\u2019s something more than that.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I guess, maybe I tried to write a paper too soon after doing my results analysis? Draft 1 of my \u201cpaper\u201d I think was probably just a word dump of the things that I had figured out\/discovered from analysing my results, topped and tailed with a Background and a Conclusion.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but hey, you\u2019ve got to start somewhere!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My supervisor sent back my \u201cdraft\u201d with some comments, but with a meeting planned \u2013 she said it would be best to talk about it in person. She did start off by saying it had some good parts and I\u2019m doing my best to keep that in my mind so I don\u2019t slump into a hole of self-pity. It just needs tweaking, adding to, and rearranging.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To be honest, that\u2019s what I\u2019d expected though. When I sent it to her, I did say it was a very rough draft but I wanted to check if it had the right things in it and the level of detail. I didn\u2019t see the point in spending time reformatting it, grammar-checking it, and making it flow if the right stuff wasn\u2019t in it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s weird, because I feel like somewhere inside me I knew that I needed to do the things that my supervisor pointed out to me, but I can\u2019t for the life of me, explain why I didn\u2019t do it to begin with. I mean, I\u2019ve read enough journal papers to know the layout and the different sections. I also am the Editor-in-Chief of an academic journal that I set up and had to help write the authorship guidelines.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Evidently, those neurons didn\u2019t feel the need to communicate with each other. Anyway, I\u2019m on track now. I\u2019ve got lots of constructive advice and I\u2019m now re-drafting something to get something that looks a little more like it should.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come up with some steps to move forward post-meeting:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Find the journal I want to publish in, so I can follow their author guidelines from the off. This means no refactoring later (feels very much like how I wrote my personal statement for the university I wanted to go to, including the things they want).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Make notes of key rules e.g. number of words, number of figures, sections to include, etc.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Make the headings (as per the guidelines), put little descriptions of each section (again from the guidelines) at the top, and bullet point the key things I want to put in each section.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Make the bullet points more detailed bullet points with the information that you want to put in.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Join your bullet points in nice prose (and rearrange if need be).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That\u2019s my 5-step plan to get a decent draft of a paper. I hope it\u2019s right \u2013 it seems to look logical but as it\u2019s my first one, so we\u2019ll see. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll have an update on how successful that plan is\/was! If anyone reading has any tips for writing a paper, or if you have any thoughts on whether there\u2019s a wrong way to do it, let me know in the comments \u2013 I\u2019ll be very interested to hear\/read all contributions.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    Shruti Turner (<\/i>@ShrutiTurner<\/i><\/a>) is a PhD Researcher at Imperial College London. This story was published on January 24, 2019, on Shruti\u2019s blog, <\/i>Shruti\u2019s PhD<\/i><\/a> (available <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>), and has been republished here with her permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Once you\u2019ve done something that\u2019s got you some results, writing up the analysis should be easy, right? After all, it\u2019s you that\u2019s done the work, you know why you did it, you know how you did it, you know your results and the conclusions you\u2019ve drawn from it. So what is so difficult?! I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1450,"featured_media":33313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2414],"tags":[2666,2454],"new_categories":[],"new_tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiring-researcher-stories","tag-phd-life","tag-researcher-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReflections on writing my first research paper<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Shruti Turner is a PhD Researcher at Imperial College London. 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