General form of a research paper

An objective of organizing a research paper is to allow people to read your work selectively. When I research a topic, I may be interested in just the methods, a specific result, the interpretation, or perhaps I just want to see a summary of the paper to determine if it is relevant to my study. To this end, many journals require the following sections, submitted in the order listed, each section to start on a new page. There are variations of course. Some journals call for a combined results and discussion, for example, or include materials and methods after the body of the paper. The well known journal Science does away with separate sections altogether, except for the abstract.

Your papers are to adhere to the form and style required for the Journal of Biological Chemistry, requirements that are shared by many journals in the life sciences.

General style

Specific editorial requirements for submission of a manuscript will always supercede instructions in these general guidelines.

To make a paper readable

Print or type using a 12 point standard font, such as Times, Geneva, Bookman, Helvetica, etc.
Text should be double spaced on 8 1/2" x 11" paper with 1 inch margins, single sided
Number pages consecutively
Start each new section on a new page
Adhere to recommended page limits

Mistakes to avoid

Placing a heading at the bottom of a page with the following text on the next page (insert a page break!)
Dividing a table or figure - confine each figure/table to a single page
Submitting a paper with pages out of order

In all sections of your paper

Use normal prose including articles ("a", "the," etc.)
Stay focused on the research topic of the paper
Use paragraphs to separate each important point (except for the abstract)
Indent the first line of each paragraph
Present your points in logical order
Use present tense to report well accepted facts - for example, 'the grass is green'
Use past tense to describe specific results - for example, 'When weed killer was applied, the grass was brown'
Avoid informal wording, don't address the reader directly, and don't use jargon, slang terms, or superlatives
Avoid use of superfluous pictures - include only those figures necessary to presenting results