guidelines for researchers

the following are questions to help you structure your research paper.
Abstract
1. Why did I carry out this project? Why am I writing this paper?
2. What did I do, and how?
3. What were my results? What was new compared to previous research?
4. What are the implications of my findings? What are my conclusions and/or recommendations?
Introduction
1. What is the problem?
2. Are there any existing solutions (i.e. in the literature)?
3. Which solution is the best?
4. What is its main limitations? (i.e. what gap am I hoping to fill)?
5. What do I hope to achieve?
6. Have I achieved what I set out to do?
Literature review
1. What are the seminal works on my topic? Do I need to mention these?
2. What progress has been made since these seminal works?
3. What are the most relevant recent works? What is the best order to mention these works?
4. What gap do these limitations reveal?
5. How does my work intend to fill this gap?
Methods
1. What/who did I study? What hypotheses was I testing?
2. Where did I carry out this study and what characteristics did this location have?
3. How did I design my experiment/ sampling and what assumptions did I make?
4. What variable was I measuring and why?
5. How did I handle/ house/ treat my materials/ subjects? What kind of care / precautions were taken?
6. What experiment did I use (plus modifications) and where did this equipment come from (vendor source)?
7. What protocol did I use for collecting my data?
8. How did I analyze the data? Statistical procedures? mathematical equations? Software?
9. What probability did I use to decide significance?
10. What references to the literature could I give to save me having to describe something in detail?
11. What difficulties did I encounter?
12. How does my methodology compare with previously reported methods, and what significant advances does it make?
Result
1. What did I find?
2. What did I not find?
3. What did I find that I was not expecting to find? (e.g. that contradicts my hypotheses)?
Discussion
1. Do my data support what I set out to demonstrate at the beginning of the paper?
2. How do my findings compare with what others have found? How consistent are they?
3. What is my personal interpretations to my findings?
4. What other possible interpretations are there?
5. What are the limitations of my study? What other factors could have influenced my findings? Have I reported everything that could make my findings invalid?
6. Do any of the in interpretations reveal a possible flaw (i.e. defect error) in my experiment?
7. Do my interpretations contribute some new understanding of the problem that I have investigated? In which case they do suggest a shortcoming in, or an advance on the work of others?
8. What external validity do my findings have? How could my findings be generalized to other areas?
9. What possible implications do my findings have? What support can I give for such implications?
10. What further research would be needed to explain the issues raised by my findings? Will I do this research myself or do I want to throw it open to the community?
Conclusions
1. A very brief revisit of the most important findings pointing out how these advance you field from the present state of knowledge?
2. A final judgment on the importance and significance of those findings in tem of their implications and impact, along with possible applications to other areas?
3. An indication of the limitations of your study (though in Discussion my be a more appropriate place to do this)
4. Suggestions for improvements (perhaps in relation to the limitations)?
5. Recommendations for future work (either for the author, and/ or the community)
6. Recommendations for policy changes

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