staying between the outlines

keep things where things belong

Outlining technical papers and reports is not exactly janitorial science. My basic go-to outline is:

- Abstract
- Introduction
- Background
- Methods
- Results and Discussion
- Conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- References

Yawn. 

For a report, the “Abstract” will become the longer “Executive Summary” instead. If I’m feeling a little snappy, I might change the section titles to be a bit more descriptive of the work at hand. For example, here’s the outline for a report I coauthored on a review of springs in Texas:

- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Database Development and Evaluation of Spring Status
- Spring Analysis
- Fractal Analysis
- Future Work
- Conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- References
- Appendix

In this case, “Database Development and Evaluation of Spring Status” stands in for “Methods” and “Spring Analysis,” “Fractal Analysis,” and "Future Work" stand in for “Results and Discussion.” In fact, "Fractal Analysis" really exists as its own "bonus" paper-within-a-paper that I decided needed its own offset. I could have relegated it to an appendix, but I felt the results were too cool to hide it in the back.

Some folks will give “Results” and “Discussion” their own sections, but I find it easier on readers (and the writers) to discuss the results as you present them. This is particularly important as one result builds on another.

In my academic department, graduate student training on research methods and writing proposals requires a section called “Literature Review.” I don’t like that because results of your literature review appear in the “Introduction,” “Background,” and “Results and Discussion.” In my opinion, it’s best to not have a separate section dedicated to a literature review (although there is logic in having it in a proposal). You should, however, always do a literature review!

The biggest struggle students and writers have is honoring the outline with their content. Too many want to start discussing results in the “Introduction” (No-no-no!), the “Background” (Nuh-uh!), or the “Methods” (AH HELL NO!). I get it: your results are the exciting stuff. You want to share your knowledge! But it’s critical to the reader (and to you) that you keep things where they belong. It also helps to build tension. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't reveal that the butler did it in "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" at the beginning of the story!

The biggest reason to keep things where they belong is because this is what your readers expect. My go-to outline above is a LOT of people’s go-to outline. This is what is expected. And readers find comfort (and efficiency) in this. You’re not writing Quentin Tarantino's next non-linear script (“Wait, I thought that guy was dead!”); you are writing the next formulaic Hallmark Christmas movie ("Hot chocolate is soooo good with rum and a hotty...")

Another reason to honor the outline is because researchers, as they research, scale their reading. They will start with the abstract. If that is enticing (or poorly written...), they will then look at the conclusions. If that wets the whistle, they may poke and pick their way through your results and discussion. And if that turns out to be the bees' knees, they may read the whole dang paper. 

If you put your original thoughts (your results and discussion) in the introduction, background, or methods, researchers might miss them in their cursory reviews. That hides your important contributions to the literature and lowers your academic ratings which means you won't get tenure and thus find yourself fighting with hunched-over gutterpunks in a malodius meth-fogged backalley in downtown Lubbock for the last bite of half-cooked street possum. 

You don't want that, do you?

I will have posts about each part of my go-to outline above, but let me give you a quick overview. 

Abstract

This is the last thing you should write. And it should be written in such a way that it conveys the most important parts of your work, including key conclusions. Too many abstracts act as teasers in describing what they did but not what they found. Don’t be a tease. Give the The People what you discovered! If your paper is not open-source and a researcher does not have access to the journal you published in, the abstract may be the only part of your work they can see. [more on this later]

Introduction

This should be the first section you write or, at the very least, the first section you finish a draft of. The Introduction sets the broader context of the importance of what you are doing (which can be helpful in defining methods and discussing results), but, more critically, the Introduction introduces the research gap and crescendos with the research question.

The research question is critical because that is the mission statement for your research paper. That mission statement becomes helpful in answering questions like “Should I include this in my paper?” I should note that the only things that are “yours” in the introduction is the identification of the research gap and the research question. Everything else should be cited work and broad background. 

Background 

The background is what your reader needs to know as they read the rest of the paper. If your research is location-based, this is where you introduce the particulars of your study area. If your research is theory-based, you might spell out the background on the theory you are expanding or modifying.   

 

Methods

This should be the easiest of the sections you write. All you have to do is describe what the hell you did! But sometimes it is not that easy because how you did your research may deviate from how you originally envisioned doing your research. In other words, during your path of discovery, your discoveries changed what you did. If this is the case, simply describe what you did, and then, in the results and discussion, discuss how your results affected your methodology.  

Results and Discussion

Here is where you spread the joy. The biggest challenge here is how to organize the spread. Each research project is different. Some follow a path of discovery, so following that same path when presenting results can be quite satisfying to the reader as it builds tension just as a good (linear) story does (sorry Quentin). Lacking a defined path of discovery, then move from a broad picture to a more refined picture. For example, if you have a  dataset, start by presenting the dataset as a whole and then systematically burrowing deeper and deeper into the data. For example, if you have temperature data for various locations on a lake at various times, start by statistically describing all the pooled data (see what I did there?). After that, perhaps look at the data spatially. Is one part warmer than another? After that, look at the data over time. And so on. This is particularly useful if, in your broader data explorations, you see something anomalous. Now you’re adding tension to your writing and guiding your reader down your path of discovery. The more traditional outline (Results, then Discussion) would have you do a results dump in one section and then discuss the results in the next. My suggestion is to discuss your data along the way.

Conclusions

This is perhaps the easiest section to write--you summarize all of your conclusions here. Like a zombie searching for brains, you read your Results and Discussion section and juicily scoop out your findings, dump them all in the Conclusions cauldron, and stir and simmer until you have something palatable. There is one golden rule: You do not present a result or discussion here that has not already been resulted and discussed in the main text.

Some writers and journals, recognizing that the Conclcusions are just a more focused presentation of what has been already presented, leave the Conclusions section out. I tried thst once and hated it. The report felt unfinished and abandoned. There is still value in having a Conclusions section since it distills the results and discussion.  

Abstract

With the main body done, we can now write the abstract. Again, this is easy because you’ve already done all the work. The abstract is a bit more expansive than the Conclusions but also a bit more restrictive. The abstract is a bit more expansive because it provides an overview of the entire paper, not just the findings. You need a stage-setting sentence (why is this research important), a research question sentence, and a methodology sentence or two. The abstract is a bit more restrictive in that you’ll only include a few more sentences on key findings (not all of them [unless you only have a few!]). Bring out the zombies again! But this time pluck for the content above, massage, and press “print.”

If you are writing a report and have an Executive Summary, you can stretch your legs a bit more since you won't have a defined word count. But be careful: you still want to say what you want to say in as few words as possible. 

Acknowledgments

 Be sure to show gratitude to those that helped you do your research and finish your paper or report. Funding sources, particularly helpful people, committee members, adminstrative staff, and anonymous reviewers (including Reviewer #2). This is not a place to thank Mom (unless you are writing your thesis or dissertation). I like to add to this section as I work on the research so I don’t forget anyone at the end. 

Make sure they are all in your text (and all your call-outs in your text are here) and that the style is consistent. These days, more and more journals (and readers [for good reason]) expect to find a link for each reference (if at all possible), so be sure to provide a link for each reference. 

And there you have it! Again, I will provide longer posts about each section (and hotlink them above) in due time.