How do I organize my writing?

The organization of your ideas is critical for readers to best understand the information you present.

Broad components of organization involve your formatting and section headings, such as your title. Finer organization happens within sections or paragraphs, such as the order in which you present a set of ideas. In all parts of a journal article, poster, or research proposal, the organization of your information is clearly shown using distinct headings.

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What should be the broad organization of my writing?

In academic research, one of the most useful ways to organize your writing is in an “hourglass” shape that mimics the relative scopes of the topics you discuss. At the top of the hourglass (the beginning of your writing) are the most broad pieces of information, such as why your research is relevant on the scale of the Earth. This introduction should get narrower and narrower towards the middle of the hourglass, when you discuss the details of your research–what you did (or will do, in a proposal) and what the results were (or what you predict them to be). You can then broaden the results into what they mean in terms of your project as a whole and finally back to the scale of the greater world, which forms the base of the hourglass.

Journal Article

The structural design of a journal article takes form through the sections often called “Introduction, “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Alternatively, in some journals, the results and discussion will be combined, and a “Conclusions” section is used to discuss the broader implications of the work. Journal articles also include the broader structural elements of a title, abstract, acknowledgements, and references. Subsections are often present in the methods, results, and discussion sections, which help the reader find and better understand different topics within the paper.

It is important to mark each of these sections with clear headings. Differentiating between levels of heading hierarchy with different fonts is very helpful to a reader who wants to navigate the sections quickly.

Note: Every publication has its own rules and guidelines for formatting the broad organization of your paper. Your professor may want you to adhere to one of these published standards or to adhere to a standard of their own–check with the publication or professor to whom you’re submitting your paper for what they will accept.
The following is an example of a paper in IMRD format (adapted from McGinnis et al. 2007):

Notice how the major section headings, such as “Discussion,” are different (and stand out more) than the headings for each sub-section, such as “Effects of AAS on circadian rhythms.” These sections can also be numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4 in addition to the headings, with subsections numbered 2.1, 2.2, etc.

Poster

Posters are organized like condensed journal articles, with major sections separated from one another by an obvious heading, including the introduction, methods, results, discussion, title and authors, acknowledgements, and a short references section. Because posters are used to present information rather than interpret it, it is more common in posters than in journal articles to combine the “results” and “discussion” sections and have a short “conclusions section” instead. To preserve space, posters generally do not include an abstract.

The flow from one section to another should look similar to in a journal article, with broad topics (i.e. your introduction and conclusions) coming at the beginning and end, while narrower topics (i.e. your methods and results) falling in the middle. The way you choose to arrange these on your poster board is mostly up to you, although it should somehow flow from left to right and from top to bottom. For example, one common format uses three columns such as:

Each column in the 3-column layout reads from top to bottom, starting from the leftmost column and moving to the right. A second common layout uses rows, such as:

This format can be harder to follow, but does allow you to compare figures side-by-side. You can also use a combination of the row and column formats. However you choose to format your poster, just be sure that it is logical!

Research Proposal

Unlike primary research articles and posters, proposals do not have any conventional format (such as IMRD). The most common way to organize a research proposal is through three major sections:

1. Project summary
2. Project description
3. References cited

Because nearly every funding organization has a different yet exact way they want your proposal to be organized, it is best to research what format the organization you are applying to would like you to use. This information is usually available on websites along with example proposals.

Like in journal articles, separating sections of your proposal with clear headings is important. But because proposals are often even longer and more complex than articles, it is even more critical to maintain an especially clear hierarchical heading format.

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How do I organize my writing within sections?

Just like following broad organizational conventions help a reader navigate and understand a paper, poster or research article, following specific structural conventions within paragraphs and sections will make your writing more clear and easier to read.

In scientific writing, we call a step you take towards your goal for a certain section a move. Sections and paragraphs are organized by moves, making the overall plan for how you make these moves the section’s move structure. This might be an odd concept at first, but think of it this way: every sentence you write serves some purpose, and is therefore a “move” towards achieving a goal. For example, a move towards introducing your audience to your project might be to tell them what the broad area of research is that your project is a part of.

To start understanding moves and move structures, lets take a non-scientific example: a joke. The goal of a joke is to be funny; everything said in a joke is a “move” towards making it funny. Below is an analysis of the move structure of a joke:

The move structure on the right could be applied to many jokes or used to create new jokes. The same idea applies to scientific writing. In the introduction of a journal article, for example, your goal is to help your reader become familiar with the area of your research and with your specific project. There are a series of moves associated with an introduction that can help get you there. The following is an example adapted from Downes and Solomon (1998):

The above move structure is a little more complicated than that for the joke, but just like for the joke, it can be applied to numerous introductions and help you write your own introduction. The move structures for each section of a paper or poster that you write will be different from one another, but the general idea is the same: taking steps toward achieving your goal for that section.

To see more details about the common move structures for each section of a paper or poster, click on the appropriate section below. Please note that all move structure concepts and diagrams are adapted from Write Like a Chemist (Robinson et al. 2008).

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Journal article

The following move structures apply to experimental articles only. Theoretical or review articles will adopt different conventions, which we will not cover here.

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Abstract

The move structure of an abstract is almost like an incredibly condensed version of your paper. You might have one sentence that acts an “introduction,” one that describes your methods, a few that describe your results, and possibly one that acts like a “discussion.” Below is a diagram that outlines each of the moves you should make in your abstract.

1. Describe what your project was about. The first part of your abstract is what informs your audience of the importance of your project. You’ve already given them an idea of the contents of your paper through your descriptive title, but now you are convincing them in one or two concise sentences that it is worth a read. Move 1(iii) is the most critical of the three submoves, but (i) and (ii) are also good to include to help situate the purpose and accomplishments of your project in a greater context.

2. Identify the methods used. The amount of detail you provide in this section is largely dependent on the purpose of your paper. If your goal is to analyze the efficacy of a particular instrument in a specific research context, you will probably need to identify the instrument and the basic experimental outline. If the methods you used are commonplace, you might hardly need more than a word or two to identify them.

3. Summarize your results. In this move, you show your readers why your paper is important. If there are specific results or trends that are important, you should identify them specifically by saying, for example, “was 4.23 mg/L” rather than “was higher than expected.” Don’t give your readers an exhaustive list of your results, however–choose the most important findings. Finally, you can conclude your abstract with a summary statement of the possible impact of your findings.

Note: Although the moves of the abstract are similar to some of the moves in other parts of your paper (like your introduction and methods, for example), you should avoid directly copying sentences from these sections into your abstract. Instead, take what you know from the paper that you’ve already written and craft new (and hopefully even more concise!) statements for your abstract.

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Introduction

The move structure of the introduction always moves from the most general to the most specific information about your project. (In your discussion, you should mirror this pattern so that both the very beginning and very end of your paper connect your project to the greater scientific world.)

1. Describe the background of your study. Throughout Move 1 you should be citing relevant literature. Submoves (i) and (ii)  should only take a sentence or two each, while submove (iii) may consume a couple of paragraphs. Use submove (iii) to situate your specific work within the literature. But remember, this is a very general part of your introduction, so you shouldn’t mention your study yet!

2. Identify the gap(s). Now you can introduce your project by identifying a “gap,” or something that remains to be done or learned considering all of the background you just gave in Move 1.

A gap might be a lack of understanding about how well a particular instrument works in a certain situation. It could be introducing a new method that needs to be tested. Or it could be that you are studying a whole new organism, system, or part of a process.

In a class, you might not always be studying something brand “new.” But you should still try to come up with something unique about your project, however small. Talk to your professor about what they expect for your “gap statement” if nothing seems to work.

Here, the authors signal to us that this is a gap because they use the words “has not yet been clarified.” Other phrases that might help you identify (or form!) a gap statement are:

• …has/have not been… (studied/reported/elucidated)
• …is required/needed…
• …the key question is/remains…
• …it is important to address…

3. Fill the gap(s). Once you identify the gap in the literature, you must tell your audience how you attempt to at least somewhat address this lack of knowledge or understanding in your project. This is often done in a new paragraph and should be accomplished in one summary statement, such as:

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of lead on the hepatobiliary system, especially on the liver and on the gallbladder (adapted from Sipos et al. 2003).

You’ll often find that the first sentence of the last paragraph in a paper’s introduction will start somewhat like this, indicating the gap fill.

Remember–always keep your voice professional! Colloquial phrases such as “we looked into” or “we checked if” should be avoided when introducing your gap fill.

So let’s look at this idea in context by looking at some examples from a couple of types of papers. The gap statements are underlined; the fills are italicized.

In the second and third examples, the gap may be a little less obvious–it doesn’t use any phrases to signal to you that there’s something missing, such as “has not been clarified” or “have not been reported.” But because of the way the paragraph is laid out–following the conventions of our move structures–we can see that the underlined section of text is indeed the missing information in the literature that the group sought to address in their project.

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Methods

The goal of a methods section is to describe how a project was conducted in sufficient detail that a fellow expert could replicate the work; thus, the moves used in the methods section are very specific. However, because of the nature of different types of projects, the move structure of this section may look very different between disciplines.

Note that the Methods section is only applicable to an experimental article. In theoretical articles, such as those published in many physics journals, the introduction is often directly followed by an explanation of the theory. Physics papers in general are the least likely to follow a general methods move structure; individual journals should be consulted for preferences. In many geology articles, a section detailing the location of the experiment or observations is sometimes included before the methods section.

Here is a common move structure for an experimental Methods section:

Each major move can be divided further into sub-moves through the use of subheadings that categorized the different types of materials, instrumentation, or numerical methods, as appropriate. Alternatively, it may sometimes be appropriate to group your methods such that you repeat sets of Moves 1, 2, and 3 for each part of your project. This can sometimes make your methods section more clear and is often used in organic chemistry articles.

1. Describe materials. In the first move, you should mostly list (in full sentences!) the items you used to conduct your experiments. In an experimental physics paper, the experimental setup/design can sometimes be considered Move 1. Remember that you need to provide as much information as necessary for an expert to repeat your project–this means that you will probably need to provide every detail you have about an organism you are studying but minimal details about a general reagent you used to sterilize your glassware. Depending on the project, you might only need a single sentence to complete Move 1 or have no need for Move 1 at all, in which case your Methods section can start with Move 2.

2. Describe experimental methods. This move is used to describe how results were obtained. This might involve both experimental procedures and specific instrumentation, which should be described in the order they were conducted in your study. Experimental procedures include field sample collection, synthetic procedures, modeling parameters, quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) procedures, and anything else that was used to obtain the results of your project. Like in Move 1, the move structure here is highly variable across disciplines.

3. Describe numerical methods. In this move, you should describe any statistical or otherwise mathematical manipulations your conducted on your data to obtain reported results. If none were conducted, this does not need to be stated explicitly, and you can omit Move 3 altogether. If the data analysis of each part of your procedure was conducted differently, it may be appropriate to follow each sub-section of Move 2 with Move 3, then repeat as needed. The key is that manipulation of your results should follow the collection of the results, just as they do in your project.

Remember that the construction of your methods section relies completely on how the work itself was conducted. This means that the order of your sub-moves should imitate the order of your procedures, which is why Move 1 (describe materials) precedes Move 2 (describe procedures) and Move 2 precedes Move 3 (describe numerical methods): usually, you must obtain your materials before using them for experiments, after which you will analyze your data with numerical methods. Furthermore, if, for example, your procedure only involved calculations, you probably won’t have a “describe materials” move, and your experimental procedures will be your numerical methods.

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Results

One of the most easy-to-understand ways to group information in the results section is to group results into smaller chunks. That way, instead of having to absorb results all at once, your audience can be introduced to and consider your results in manageable and sensible chunks. So if, for example, you collected two different types of data, you might want to introduce and discuss one set of data before doing so with the other.

Although it isn’t related to organization, it is worth mentioning here anyway: remember that the results section is for presenting data, not to draw conclusions from it! You can combine these techniques only if you use a “Results and Discussion” section or similar broad organization pattern. Double check that you never discuss the implications of your data unless you are supposed to.

1. Introduce a set of results. This move transitions your reader from your methods to your results. It is helpful to briefly (no more than a sentence or two) remind your reader how you obtained a set of results so that someone could read your results section out of context and still be able to understand them. Below is an example of how part of a Methods section can be condensed into a summary sentence in the Results section.

In submove (ii), you should refer your reader to a figure or table, if you are using one, that presents the data from this part of the experiment, such as the following excerpt from Weill et al. (2014):

Figure 6 shows the evolution of the cumulated erosion and deposition (in millimeters) during Exp_10 (Fig. 2, Table 2).

For conciseness, however, it is often preferable to combine submoves (i) and (ii). Here we provide a few examples of all of Move 1 accomplished in a single sentence.

2. Present important aspects of the results. In this move, you are using the results you introduced in Move 1 to tell a scientific story. What are the trends in the data? What data stand out (either because they confirm previous suspicions or refute them)? The order in which you describe each important part of your results is up to you, but you should do it in a way that makes sense with the graphics you present and the importance of the data. Consistent with the “broad-to-narrow” approach (see our section on broad organization), authors will often present an entire section of results and then describe in more detail only those that turned out to be most interesting.

In combined Results & Discussion sections, the move structures can often look very much the same as those described above, with the addition of an interpretive statement(s) as a “Move 3.” For example, here is the first part of a combined section adapted from Neubauer et al. (2015):

The measurements were taken under a constant current of 0.23 mA using a 980 nm wavelength laser. Fig. 3 displays the light intensity dependence on the photovoltage on a log–log scale. At the measured intensities the photovoltage increases linearly with the light intensity. The experimental results could be fitted to a simple power law equation, Pαpβ, where P is the photovoltage, p the light intensity, and the β the power law index. Our best fit for the β value is β = 0.72. 

Note how the first sentence accomplishes Move 1(i), the second Move 1(ii), and the following sentences Move 2. At the end of this paragraph, the authors added the following:

We believe that the surface effects of the GaAs are the major reason for the deviation from the ideal slope value, 1.

This final statement attempts to interpret the results they just presented.

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Discussion

Remember how the introduction to a work begins with a broader topic and then narrows its focus to the work at hand? (If not, click here!) In the discussion, we mirror this organizational structure by discussing the specifics of our results before looking at the project as a whole and, finally, how the project might influence to the greater world.

1. Discuss specific results. For the sake of clarity and consistency, you should discuss results in the order in which you presented them in your Results section. You should spend only a sentence or so accomplishing sub-move 1, reminding your reader of a set of results before discussing it. (In a combined Results and Discussion section, you can skip sub-move (i) altogether; instead, after presenting a particular set of results, make Discussion Move 1(ii) before presenting the next set of results. And repeat!)

Sub-move (ii) is arguably the most important part of your published paper and is certainly the meat of your discussion section. Because in broad terms the goal of your project should be to contribute to a greater understanding of a broader scientific concept, your discussion should connect your project to those of others by considering how your work supports, refutes, expands, or otherwise connects to previously published work. It is critical that you avoid “hand-waving” arguments in which you make claims about your results that have little scientific evidence to support them.

Repeat Move 1 for each result you think is important to discuss. Usually, each subsequent Move 1 iteration is begun in a new paragraph. Some results can be grouped together by discussing trends or patterns in the data; this strategy should be obvious if you already have identified data in such groups in your Results section. Remember to gradually broaden the focus of each paragraph as you move throughout your Discussion, if possible.

2. Draw broader conclusions. This move allows you to broaden the scope of your paper again to the general scientific work. If it comprises multiple paragraphs, sometimes all or part of Move 2 is sequestered to a separate Conclusions section. In this section you should attempt to answer such questions as: What should other scientists consider when thinking about the impact of your paper, including its limitations and applications? What do you think should be done next to further the accomplishments of your project? Although not every one of these sub-moves is necessary depending on your discipline and project, this move is critical for showing the importance and meaningfulness of your work. As usual, the more concise and scientifically grounded you are throughout this move, the more convincing your writing will be. It will greatly help your reader here to tie your conclusion back to your introduction, showing your reader how you finally addressed your gap.

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Poster

Most of the move structures in the sections of a poster follow the same outline as for a journal article, except that the moves themselves must be accomplished more briefly.

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Introduction

The main goal of the introduction to your poster is to convince your audience that your research is important (and therefore that the rest of your poster is worth looking at).

1. Establish the importance of the research area. Remember that in addition to being informational, the first move you make in your poster must hook your audience enough to convince them to continue reading your poster. So the more “punch” you can pack into a single concise sentence, the more effective your intro will be. Unlike in a journal article, Move 1 need not include a detailed review of the relevant literature; instead, 1 or 2 papers that directly show why your project is important is sufficient. If you don’t think it greatly highlights the importance of your project, you might choose not to cite the literature at all. However, identifying the gap in the literature is still a powerful way to both show the importance of your project and prepare your audience for Move 2.

2. Identify the contributions of your project. In this move, you should preview for your audience what you accomplished in your project. This can be given a separate sub-heading from the rest of your intro, such as “Project Goals.”

Here we provide an example comparison of introduction sections in a paper and in a poster based on Zhang, Dawes, and Walker (2001).

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Methods

Unlike in a journal article, in which the methods must be detailed enough so that your project is replicable, a poster methods section is there only to provide your audience with a snapshot of how your results were obtained so that they can better understand your results and your project as a whole. It is perfectly appropriate to use bulleted lists and incomplete (yet still clear) sentences in your poster Methods section.

1. Identify important materials. This move should provide your reader with only the most essential information about the materials you used in your project, such as your major reactants or samples or your basic experimental design.

Below we provide a few ideas of what may or may not be appropriate to include on a poster to accomplish Move 1. This chart is not exhaustive and will apply differently to different types of projects and symposiums.

2. Summarize important methods. Only the most essential parts of your methods should be described on your poster. If you were to tell someone in less than 30 seconds how you conducted your project, what would you say? Don’t forget that you should still include relevant quantitative values, because numbers can actually be a very concise way of communicating information.

Here are some examples of how a plethora of information in a journal article might be condensed for a poster Methods section:

* The journal article Methods excerpts are adapted from these articles; the poster Methods were created based on the information in these articles.

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Results

In order to engage readers and help them understand complex results in a short amount of time, your results should be presented as well-constructed figures (or tables) with descriptive captions alone. If done well, a figure should be sufficient for viewers to fully understand a set of results. To learn how to do this, be sure to check out our page on using visuals.

1. Introduce viewers to your results. Like in a journal article, your results section here should tell a story of scientific discovery. If you were telling your friend a story, would you jump right into the story’s climax? It would make a better story if you led up to it with a few points that would make the most important part of the story make more sense or be more exciting to hear. In your results section, this fan be accomplished in multiple ways. One option is to show viewers a result that motivated your study, such as a key result from a previous students’ work. You can also choose to share a preliminary result from your own study that shows why you can be more confident in your principal findings or one that led you to these results through the investigative process. Whichever way you choose, be sure not to include more than one or two introductory figures so that Move 1 doesn’t dominate Move 2.

2. Present principal results. In this move, you should plan to include your most key findings and important trends in your data. Perhaps even more so than in a journal article, be sure to keep your figures as simple as possible; helpfully, color is perfectly acceptable (and actually encouraged!) in poster figures, which can help you make your figures quick to interpret. Figures are preferred over tables in this section because it is usually easier to understand the overall message of them at a glance.

You can followed your principle findings with an optional Move 3, Show supporting results, which includes key results that extend or strengthen Move 2. Include Move 3 if you think you have non-critical data that will strengthen your principle findings and are important for your reader to know. But remember that superfluous information can be confusing, so don’t use Move 3 without double checking that you have a good reason to.

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Discussion

The Discussion is the sub-section of a poster that perhaps looks most different from that of a journal article. This is largely due to the fact that the goal of a poster is to present often very new results, which is mostly accomplished in the Results rather than the Discussion section. Thus, a poster’s discussion section is primarily used to sum up the main ideas of the work. For this reason, too, combined Results and Discussion sections are very common in posters.

1. Interpret and explain results. Move 1 allows you to highlight and explain key findings you presented in your Results. Considering the brevity of a poster Discussion section, this should be done using minimal literature references. The idea is for your audience to be able to better understand your Results, not for you to fully validate possible explanations.

An example of a poster Discussion section might look something like the following, adapted from Sato et al. (2013):

2. Summarize essential conclusions. This move acts like a “take-home” message for your viewers. What do you want them to remember about your project and what you accomplished? Move 2 is often separated from the rest of the Discussion with a subheading such as “Conclusions.” You may wish to also include a “Future Work” section or subheading, especially if you are presenting to a group of fellow students who might be interested in continuing work on your project.

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Research proposal

Here, we will cover a standard format for constructing the Project Description portion of a research proposal. Throughout this section, keep in mind that each and every funding agency will have its own specific instructions for how it wants your proposal to be organized. You should always follow these instructions exactly, although you’ll likely find that sections that may be called by different names than we call them here, they include much of the same content and can be organized similarly.

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Goals and Importance

The first section of the Project Description is intended to introduce the work by establishing its goals and its importance in the context of other scientific research. A clearly laid out argument is critical in this section for convincing a funding agency that it is worth their time to look at the details of the project itself.

1. Identify goals and objectives. Although this section might have a narrower focus than Moves 2 and 3, it is usually important that it come first so that a funding agency can quickly determine whether or not the project will contribute to the agency’s own goals and therefore merits further review. The goals of your study are usually broad, long-term ends toward which your project is directed but will not achieve on its own; objectives are more specific and should be directly measurable in your research. Move 1 should establish both of these aspects of your study.

2. Establish importance. Proving to your audience that your project is important is crucial to obtaining funding. Each submove contributes to establishing the importance of the research you are proposing. First, you should introduce the general topic of your project in a way that hints at its importance. For example:

Although premature birth is the leading cause of neonatal death, its contributing factors are poorly understood.

In submove (ii), the scientific literature should be used to provide background information and important details about the topic. Who else has interest in this area of research? What have they discovered that is of great importance? Who benefits or will benefit from the research? What have others stated a need for? This should set you up to identify the gap in the literature (which you intend to fill with the results your project).

3. Introduce the proposed work. Once you have established that there is a great need for a greater understanding of some kind in the general scientific topic you identified in Move 2, you can present your project, which will save the day! If Move 2 identified a challenge, explain how your project faces the challenge. If it identified a problem, your project will solve the problem. This solidifies the importance of your project while identifying what it will actually do. Move 3 is not often given a separate heading of the kind in Moves 1 and 2, but instead flows more smoothly from Move 2 in a new paragraph.

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Experimental Approach

This section is the most technical of the three in the Project Description and therefore must proceed in a logical manner that is easy to follow. By starting with what you’ve already accomplished in relation to the proposed project and showing that it is already yielding favorable results, you contextualize and strengthen the reader’s confidence in your proposed methodology.

1. Describe previous accomplishments. If you have done any previous research that worked towards the same or a similar goal, this is your opportunity to share its accomplishments. Doing so will build readers’ confidence in your research abilities and current project plan.

2. Identify promising results. Most funding agencies will hope that you have some empirical reason to believe that your proposed project will work, meaning that you have conducted preliminary research that has indicated that your objectives are reasonable and achievable. In this move, you should share these results (if you have them).

3. Propose methodology for reaching an objective. This move should be distinctly made for each objective that you presented in your Goals and Importance section in the same order as you presented them. It is customary to first present simpler, more straight-forward experiments first and progress to those of higher risk or, alternatively, to group methodologies by the types of information that will be gathered, such as synthesis yields versus biproduct identifications. Start by transitioning from your preliminary work to your proposed work in submove (i) before getting into the exact methodology.

It is helpful to use a separate sub-heading for each iteration of Move 3, as well, so that each objective’s methodology is clearly distinguished from the next. These headings can be generic, such as “Objective 1,” or descriptive, such as “TENR Library Construction.”

Unlike in a journal article methods section, only provide enough detail in this section to convince your audience that you can do the work. Focus on the general approach and avoid details (e.g. instrument model numbers or reagent purities) that will take up space and distract your reader from the overall importance of your project.

In submove (iii), address potential limitations or setbacks you can forsee in your plan. You are bound to have some in any research, and acknowledging them shows that you have thought carefully about your proposed research.

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Outcomes and Impacts

The first two moves of this section essentially summarize what you have already presented in a new format. The end of the proposal then broadens in scope to focus on the wider impacts of the research, beyond its addressing of your individual objectives to the more general goals of the scientific area.

1. Present project timeline. This move allows you to summarize your experimental section in away that makes your anticipated accomplishments tangible. The timeline is presented in paragraph form but reads very list-like, with phrases like “In the spring of 2016, we will complete the Si experiments.” The timeline can be fairly general but must be realistic.

2. Describe predicted outcomes. List measurable achievements that link back to your objectives in section 1. Be as specific as possible so that readers are left with the feeling that your project will result in tangible outcomes.

3. Conclude the proposal. Because they are key components of the proposal, Move 3 begins by summarizing once again the goals and significance of the proposal. This can usually be accomplished in roughly 3 sentences and comprises its own paragraph. Make your closing remarks in submove (ii), where you tell your funding agency how your project will benefit the greater scientific community and/or general public. The broader the impact of your project and the more people it benefits, the more likely it is to be funded.

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