Scientific Research Articles

Author(s):  
John Blake

Error-free scientific research articles are more likely to be accepted for publication than those permeated with errors. This chapter identifies, describes, and explains how to avoid 22 common language errors. Scientists need to master the genre of scientific writing to conform to the generic expectations of the community of practice. Based on a systematic analysis of the pedagogic literature, five categories of errors were identified in scientific research articles namely accuracy, brevity, clarity, objectivity, and formality. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the errors, a corpus investigation of scientific articles was conducted. A corpus of 200 draft research articles submitted for internal review at a research institute with university status was compiled, annotated, and analyzed. This investigation showed empirically the types of errors within these categories that may impinge on publication success. In total, 22 specific types of language errors were identified. These errors are explained, and ways for overcoming each of them are described.

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (01) ◽  
pp. A03 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leong Ping Alvin

In contrast to past consensus, many authors now feel that the passive voice compromises the quality of scientific writing. However, studies involving scientific articles are rare. Using a corpus of 60 scientific research articles from six journals, this study examined the proportion of passives used, and the contexts and forms in which they occurred. The results revealed that about 30% of all clauses were passive clauses. The canonical form was most pervasive, followed by the bare passive; together, they constituted more than a quarter of all clauses analyzed. Passives were typically used in main clauses, followed by relative and adverbial clauses. Roughly 29% of all passives were located in the methodology section. Based on the results, the proportion of passives in scientific writing may stabilize at about 30%. It is unlikely to dramatically drop any further since the trend suggests that passives are still widely used in the methodology section.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin Ping Leong ◽  
Audrey Lin Lin Toh ◽  
Soo Fun Chin

While scholars in the field of writing studies have examined scientific writing from multiple perspectives, interest in its thematic structure has been modest. Recent studies suggest that the themes in scientific writing tend to be anchored on one or a few points of departure. There has also been an attempt at quantification using the thematic-density index (TDI), although this has only been tested on abstracts. In this study, we investigated the thematic structure and TDIs of 30 research articles in biology. The results revealed a progressive thematic pattern in the introduction section, followed by an anchored development in the subsequent sections. The anchoring was realized by the pervasive use of the first-person pronoun “we.” The mean TDI was lowest in the introduction section (2.593) and highest in the results section (7.095). The results were consistent across the articles in the corpus, underscoring the uniform way in which the articles were thematically structured, and in turn suggesting a core thematic pattern for scientific research writing in general. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that future studies compare the thematic structure of the introduction section vis-à-vis the other sections, and investigate the possible factors resulting in such a structure.


Signo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (86) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Carolina Andrea Mirallas

Genre approaches to teaching have long been applied to improve students’ skills, and their effect has usually been assessed by looking into students’ productions. In this work, we examine students’ perceptions of the implementation of a genre-based writing course that incorporated tasks developed by the Reading to Learn Pedagogy (R2LP) (Rose & Martin, 2008) for the teaching of Scientific Research Articles (SRA) in an EFL context. A scientific writing course in English was offered for 8 weeks on a weekly basis to researchers and Ph.D. students in Argentina. They were asked to answer surveys after every class and once the course finished. Surveys were analysed considering ATTITUDE of the System of Appraisal (Martin & White, 2005), polarity and the entities evaluated. Joint writing and Detailed reading were entities frequently evaluated positively, mainly in terms of usefulness. Negatively appraised entities include contents and exercises, which were perceived as “difficult”. Our evidence suggests that the teaching of SRA writing to researchers through the R2LP in an EFL context is effective. More precisely, teacher-guided activities which were jointly carried out with students were found to be the most useful, making them suitable for a highly specialised audience like the one that participated in this study.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aisha Osman ◽  
Daoud Al-Badriyeh ◽  
Farhat Naz Hussain ◽  
Sadaf Riaz ◽  
Hazem Elewa ◽  
...  

Abstract Background. Describe the design, delivery and impact of a course delivered in an undergraduate pharmacy program with students whose first language is not English. The aim of this course is to develop pharmacy students’ scientific writing, peer assessment and critical appraisal skills. Methods. The course is offered in the final year of an undergraduate pharmacy program. In this course, students wrote two structured pharmacy review articles (PRA) based on assigned scientific research articles and peer assessed each others’ written PRAs. Students also critically appraised scientific research articles on a weekly basis, completed one pre-journal club written reflective critique based on a assigned scientific research article and moderated one journal club session. Results. Course rubrics were developed and validated by the course coordinators. A survey that was administered to students enrolled in the course identified that 85% of the students perceived that they gained adequate writing skills in the course. More than 70% of the students indicated they had the necessary skills to evaluate their peers’ written assessments and 93% felt comfortable providing and receiving feedback from peers. More than 90% of the students indicated that their understanding of the primary research articles assigned improved as a result of their contribution to the peer assessment process and writing of PRAs. Conclusion. This course improved students scientific writing, peer assessment and critical appraisal skills. Further practice is required to reinforce the skills learned and to strengthen the writing skills of students.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-165
Author(s):  
Amin Haqiqi ◽  
◽  
Husaeri Putra ◽  

This study analyzes corruption and economic growth. The method of analysis uses literature studies. This literature study was carried out by searching scientific research articles about corruption through Google Scholar and journals about corruption. After the identification of several articles, the results show different results about the effect of corruption on economic growth. From each journal shows Corruption has a negative effect on economic growth in Indonesia and those that have a positive effect. This shows several factors that underlie the influence of corruption on economic growth, namely due to cultural differences, policies, economic freedom and the rules of each region. The diversity of each region in Indonesia makes a different level of influence of corruption so that if a region has a high level of economic freedom and rules and bureaucracy that are not difficult, corruption has a positive effect on economic growth. In general, the effect of corruption on economic growth is negative, where the cleaner the region or region is from corruption, the more it will encourage the growth of the region.


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