Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Matcheri S Keshavan MD
Introduction
Methods
Results
Conflicts
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Abstract SHOULD NOT contain:
lengthy background information, references to other literature, elliptical (i.e., ending with ...) or incomplete sentences, abbreviations or terms that may be confusing to readers, any sort of illustration, figure, or table, or references to them.
Introduction
How did you come up with this question/ hypothesis. Set the scene Go from general to specific. Set a historical background. Avoid too detailed a review of the literature; that could be material for another paper. Why this is worth doing. Has this wheel been invented before? Provide a balanced uptodate literature Why this particular method or population.
Methods
Should have enough information for someone else to replicate your results BUT avoid providing too much information that your peers are already expected to know
Methodscontinued
Carefully describe the group
Results
Text should complement figures and tables. Do not duplicate. Do not provide too many numbers- they can be distracting. Figures the best way for readers to capture results at a glance. Make your readers want to steal your figure for their own powerpoint presentation! Figure and table captions should be detailed enough to stand alone. Use the word significant only to refer to statistical significance
Graphics
70 60
50
No trend line
SES 40
20
10 6 8 10 12 14 education 16 18 20 22
Figure 1. Education correlated with socioeconomic status. Pearson Correlation coefficients with age effects partialled out.
70
R= .46 P <.01
60
Socioeconomic status
50
40
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Discussion
What did you find?
Avoid statements not supported by data How findings relate to other studies.
Do the findings matter? What are the clinical implications? What are the strengths and limitations? What are the next steps?
CATIE (Keefe d-Cycloserine Glycine Galantamine Practice Effect et al., 2007) (Buchanan et (Buchanan et (Buchanan et (Goldberg et al., 2007) al., 2007) al., 2008) al., 2007)
Title
Alterations in brain high-energy phosphate and membrane phospholipid metabolism in firstepisode, drug-naive schizophrenics. A pilot study of the dorsal PFC by in vivo phosphorus 31 P MRS
could be restated as
Writing style
anticholinergics were needed by the patients at a higher rate..
Active vs Passive. Use active verbs whenever possible; Passive verbs (is, was, has, have, had) are difficult to read and use up unnecessary words.
Style- II
Tense.For already completed work by you or others, use the past tense consistently. Person. Avoid too much use of first person (I believe, I did, etc). Economy. Economize words Avoid flowery sentences unless absolutely needed
E.g. based upon the fact that = Because
Accepting rejection
Dont take it personally Try to understand why the paper has been rejected Evaluate honestly.. Would a different journal have been more appropriate?
language
FOCUS ON AVOID