BIOLOGY 206, GENERAL ZOOLOGY
    Fall 1998

Guidelines for Scientific Papers

I. Scientific Laboratory Report
Writing a laboratory report is like writing an original research paper. The most common format for a scientific research paper is:

Introduction
Materials and Methods
Results
Discussion
Literature Cited

Most research papers also include figures, tables and graphs.  This allows presentation of information in illustrations and summaries which would be cumbersome if presented as text.

Tables
Figures and Graphs

Introduction
    The Introduction of the report should explain why the work was done. What were the objectives of the research?  How does the research help to fill a hole in our knowledge? 

    The Introduction should include a clear statement of the problem or question to be addressed in the experiment.  It is always helpful to put this question into some context by stating why this is an important question to be answered or why you found this to be a particularly interesting question.   Only background material that is particularly relevant to the question should be included in this section.

Materials and Methods
    The Materials and Methods section tells how the work was done.   What procedures were followed?  What research materials were used: the organism, special chemicals, instruments?  In some of the labs you will be doing, many of the procedures are given in great detail in the handouts. It is not necessary to retype these verbatim, but rather summarize them, and provide details only about changes from the handout and about your individual project.

    The most important feature of this section should be to include enough detail in your description of how your experiment was set up and run that anyone reading the Materials and Methods could repeat your experiment.

Results
    The Results section explains what you found and the data that you generated.  Data are explained succintly in the body of the report and presented in detail as Figures, Graphs and Tables. The results section should be written so that any biology major could read the text to learn what you have done. For example, you might use a paragraph to explain what is seen on a particular graph; "... When the enzyme as soaked in sulfuric acid, it produced no change in absorbance...." Do not make the common mistake of saying, "We performed the experiment, see Figures 1-4." That is too brief and does not convey to a novice what you have done. When stating your results in the body of the text, refer to your graphs and tables. Do not attempt to discuss the interpretation of your data-this should be done in the Discussion section.

    Each table and figure should be numbered sequentially for easy reference in the text, and figures should have a brief description called a legend, which provides the reader enough information to know what you did to produce the data.

Discussion
    The Discussion section typically includes your appraisal of what your research means, including its success in meeting the objectives stated in the introduction, and its significance in advancing your knowledge of the subject. This is also the place to explain discrepancies or difficulties with experiments, as well as suggestions for future work. For example, if you had initially known what you know now, how might you have changed your experiments? Most importantly, the Discussion provides an opportunity to compare your results with those of others. What previous information exists that is relevant to your research? Do your results support or supplement that information? Once again, when providing your interpretation of the data, direct the reader to specific tables and graphs to prove your point.

Literature Cited
    Finally, it is important to place your work in perspective with the published work of other scientists. We will not have much opportunity to use references in General Zoology, but here are the rules if you want to suppliment your discussion with results from additional sources:

The list of references should be in alphabetical order. Information should be listed in the following order:

- For a research article citation: author(s), year, title, journal, volume and pages.

- For a text book citation: author(s) of the book, year, book title, edition, publisher, location of publisher and the pages referenced.

- For a technical book citation: author(s), year, chapter title, book title, editors, publisher, location of publisher and pages.

Research paper example
Reed, Robin B., Mårten Sandberg, Tore Jahnsen, Suzanne M.
    Lohmann, Sharron H. Francis, and Jackie D. Corgin.  1996.   Fast
    and Slow Cyclic Nucleotide-dissociation Sites in cAMP-dependent
    Protein Kinase Are Transposed in Type Ib cGMP-dependent
    Protein Kinase. J. Biol. Chem. 271:17570-17575.

Text book example
Hickman, Cleverlan P., Jr., Larry S. Roberts and Allan Larson.  1998. 
    7th Ed.  Biology of Animals.  WCB McGraw-Hill, Dubuque, Iowa,
    pp 612-613.

Technical book example
Johnson, A. B. 1989.  Chlorophyll extraction techniques.  In: Methods in
    Plant Physiology, Editors: E. Will and F. Bill, Cambridge University
    Press, Cambridge, pp 25-30.

                                        More details and examples

II. Presentation of Results In Scientific Reports: Figures, Graphs and Tables
    Data that have been collected need to be presented clearly and succintly. As a result, two forms of presentation are most commonly used in scientific papers and reports: figures and tables. Which method to use depends somewhat on the data, but in general anything that can be displayed pictorally (e.g. as a graph or diagram) is more desirable, because the reader can immediately see the trends in the data.
In the paper itself, graphs are referred to as Figures, and are numbered sequentially in the order of presentation (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc). Tables are also numbered sequentially. Although figures and tables are often placed directly into the middle of scientific papers, for simplicity you may include them at the end of your lab report, with one figure or table per page.

Figures and Graphs
    Graphs can be made using Excel. Remember to label each axes including units of measurement and clearly identify the data you are displaying (e.g. label each line in a graph).
    In addition, every graph must have a short description below it to tell the reader some basic information about that data and the way it was obtained; this is known as a legend. The legend starts with the figure number, followed by a one sentence title. The text of the legend should be no more than one short paragraph and should be as brief as possible. Following is an example of a graph with legend:

Figure 1.   Summary data for when western lesser sirens (Siren intermedia nettingi) were collected at Ted Shanks Conservation Area, Pike County, Missouri.  Collections were done during the spring, 1995-1998.


    This graph was made using the spreadsheet and statistical program Excel.    Note that both axes are labelled, and the figure is numbered and titled . The text of the legend attempts to tell how the data were obtained.

Technical Hint:
    To put a graph and legend together on the computer, it is easiest to first make your graph using Excel. You can then make a copy of it by choosing the Edit menu, and then the Copy command. Now, open  (or reopen) Word, the word processing program, and on a blank sheet you can paste your graph by going to the Edit menu again, and choosing Paste. Hit the return bar a couple of times and then you can start typing below the graph.
NOTE: Once you have pasted the graph, you cannot alter the graph itself in the word processing program.  You can alter the size of the graph or move it to any location within your paper.  However, to alter anything within the graph itself, you must go back to the graph or datasheet in Excel.

Tables
Tables should be made using the same principles outlined for graphs, though the format is slightly different. Tables can be created with Word, using graph icon on the tool bar to create the different columns. Tables are numbered, but this usually appears at the top of the table. The title directly follows the table number:


Table 2.   List of artists who loved General Zoology.  Students who repeated the class are not included.