Summary
The art and practice of academic neurosurgery are mastered by defining and learning the pertinent basic principles and skills. This article aims to present general guidelines to one of the many roles of a neurosurgeon: Writing an experimental research paper.
Every research report must use the “IMRAD formula: introduction, methods, results and discussion”. After the IMRAD is finished, abstract should be written and the title should be “created”. Your abstract should answer these questions: “Why did you start?, what did you do?, what answer did you get?, and what does it mean?”. Title of the research paper should be short enough to catch glance and memory of the reader and be long enough to give the essential information of what the paper is about.
Writing about the results of the experiment is no easier than the research itself. As surgery, writing a scientific paper is also an improvisation, but general principles should be learned and used in practice. The most effective style of learning basic skills to construct a research paper is the “trial and error” type.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ad Hoc Working Group for Clinical Appraisal of the Medical Literature (1987) A proposal for more informative abstracts of clinical articles. Ann Intern Med 106: 598–604.
Balch C, McKneally M, McPeek B, Mulder D, Spitzer W, Troidl H, Wechsler A (1997) Pentathlete: the many roles of academic surgeon. In: Troidl H, McKneally M, Mulder D, Wechsler A, McPeek B, Spitzer W (eds) Surgical research. New York: Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York Tokyo.
Condon R (1986) Type III Error. Arch Surg 121: 877–878.
Fleming A (1929) On the antimicrobial action of cultures of a penicillium, with special reference to their use in the isolation of B. influenzae. Br J Exper Pathol 10: 226–236.
Hill A (1965) The reasons for writing. Br Med J 2: 626–627.
Hugh E (1987) Structured abstracts for papers reporting clinical articles. Ann Intern Med 106: 626–627.
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (1997) Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. New Engl J Med 336: 309–315.
Pollock A, Evans M (1997) Writing a scientific paper. In: Troidl H, McKneally M, Mulder D, Wechsler A, McPeek B, Spitzer W (eds) Surgical research. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York Tokyo.
Tufte E (1983) The visual display of quantitative information. CT: Graphics, Cheshire.
Watson J, Crick F (1953) Molecular structure of nucleic acids. A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature 4356: 737–738.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag/Wien
About this paper
Cite this paper
Pamir, M.N. (2002). How to Write an Experimental Research Paper. In: Kanpolat, Y. (eds) Research and Publishing in Neurosurgery. Acta Neurochirurgica Supplements, vol 83. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-6743-4_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-6743-4_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-7091-7399-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-6743-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive