How to Publish a Research Paper
Publishing a research paper or getting it published in an academic journal can be one of the most fulfilling accomplishments in your academic career. You’ve spent countless hours learning, researching, thinking and writing, and now you get to share your knowledge with others who share your interests and passion for research. This guide on how to publish a research paper will help you choose the best journal for publishing your work, what information to include in your manuscript and how to format it correctly and more!
Choose your topic
For many scientists, the goal of their research is publication. Every published paper not only contributes to the body of knowledge in a particular field, but also gives credit and recognition for individual accomplishment. Publishing can be an arduous process, however; take this step-by-step guide to help you get started.
Conduct your Literature Review
Find articles from reputable journals and use them to conduct your literature review. To start, you can conduct an academic search in Google Scholar, read the abstracts, and include these articles in your list of sources. Make sure that all the papers are on an appropriate scholarly level (peer reviewed, etc.) and published within 5 years of when you write your paper. Once you have compiled this list of academic sources, it is time to move on the steps.
Write your Introduction
In the introduction, you’ll summarize the paper’s content and specify its goals. After, you’ll establish a clear research question or problem that your research will try to answer. With this all done, you’ll introduce who your target audience is and outline how your findings will affect them. In short, the introduction must tell people what they’re getting themselves into.
Write your Methodology section
I will use the grading scale as an example of how to write a formal methodology section. I have been using this system in all my research writing classes, and it has been accepted by both instructors and readers. As such, I feel confident in saying that it is both efficient and effective. The steps are as follows: To begin, place the question or problem statement in brackets at the top of the page. For instance:
Write your Results section
1.Sit down and think about your research project from beginning to end; ask yourself, What are the major findings? What are my key messages? Once you have answered these questions, it is important to think about how the audience of your paper will react. Will they understand what you’re trying to say or explain? If not, can you simplify it?
2. It is a good idea to start by outlining your ideas in points and then reordering them into an outline that flows in sequential order.
3. This next step is one of the most crucial: having someone who understands English grammar and has excellent writing skills read over your paper for errors before submitting it for publishing.
Write your Discussion section
After thinking about the purpose of your research and reading related papers, formulate an original research question. Make sure your question is clear and has a single answer with some way to measure it, otherwise your results will be ambiguous. Once you have developed the best research question, start writing out how you are going to answer it by outlining what you need. Next, follow these steps when starting on your experimental procedures:
1. set up necessary materials and equipment;
2. construct study setup;
3. collect data; and finally
4. analyze data.
Be sure not to rush this process because you want everything in place before getting into the analysis step so that you can quickly find any errors or mistakes if they exist.
Write your Conclusion and Recommendations
In conclusion, I recommend that you write your introduction at the end of the paper. Then, work on the methods and results sections and finally the discussion section. Once you finish with those three sections, then write your introduction. I also recommend using reference materials like an index card and your computer during the process of writing. Remember that publishing a research paper can be fun and rewarding!
Get References from Sources
A lot of people ask me how to publish a research paper. Fortunately, this is pretty easy these days if you know where to start. Here’s how it works. You need your references from sources, of course. These should be from respected and reliable sources (e.g., journals with peer review) that are relevant for your topic area. Your reviewers may require them for approval purposes and/or help evaluating the quality of your research. You’ll want at least five good references – more is better, but not all papers need more than five good references, especially those on popular topics in academic circles or within a specific discipline.
Start Writing
The first step is coming up with a research question.