original research articles what does it mean

Home » Original Research – Definition, Examples, Guide

Original Research – Definition, Examples, Guide

Table of Contents

Original Research

Definition:

Original research refers to a type of research that involves the collection and analysis of new and original data to answer a specific research question or to test a hypothesis. This type of research is conducted by researchers who aim to generate new knowledge or add to the existing body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline.

Types of Original Research

There are several types of original research that researchers can conduct depending on their research question and the nature of the data they are collecting. Some of the most common types of original research include:

Basic Research

This type of research is conducted to expand scientific knowledge and to create new theories, models, or frameworks. Basic research often involves testing hypotheses and conducting experiments or observational studies.

Applied Research

This type of research is conducted to solve practical problems or to develop new products or technologies. Applied research often involves the application of basic research findings to real-world problems.

Exploratory Research

This type of research is conducted to gather preliminary data or to identify research questions that need further investigation. Exploratory research often involves collecting qualitative data through interviews, focus groups, or observations.

Descriptive Research

This type of research is conducted to describe the characteristics or behaviors of a population or a phenomenon. Descriptive research often involves collecting quantitative data through surveys, questionnaires, or other standardized instruments.

Correlational Research

This type of research is conducted to determine the relationship between two or more variables. Correlational research often involves collecting quantitative data and using statistical analyses to identify correlations between variables.

Experimental Research

This type of research is conducted to test cause-and-effect relationships between variables. Experimental research often involves manipulating one or more variables and observing the effect on an outcome variable.

Longitudinal Research

This type of research is conducted over an extended period of time to study changes in behavior or outcomes over time. Longitudinal research often involves collecting data at multiple time points.

Original Research Methods

Original research can involve various methods depending on the research question, the nature of the data, and the discipline or field of study. However, some common methods used in original research include:

This involves the manipulation of one or more variables to test a hypothesis. Experimental research is commonly used in the natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, but can also be used in social sciences, such as psychology.

Observational Research

This involves the collection of data by observing and recording behaviors or events without manipulation. Observational research can be conducted in the natural setting of the behavior or in a laboratory setting.

Survey Research

This involves the collection of data from a sample of participants using questionnaires or interviews. Survey research is commonly used in social sciences, such as sociology, political science, and economics.

Case Study Research

This involves the in-depth analysis of a single case, such as an individual, organization, or event. Case study research is commonly used in social sciences and business studies.

Qualitative research

This involves the collection and analysis of non-numerical data, such as interviews, focus groups, and observation notes. Qualitative research is commonly used in social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

Quantitative research

This involves the collection and analysis of numerical data using statistical methods. Quantitative research is commonly used in natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, as well as in social sciences, such as psychology and economics.

Researchers may also use a combination of these methods in their original research depending on their research question and the nature of their data.

Data Collection Methods

There are several data collection methods that researchers can use in original research, depending on the nature of the research question and the type of data that needs to be collected. Some of the most common data collection methods include:

Surveys : Surveys involve asking participants to respond to a series of questions about their attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, or experiences. Surveys can be conducted in person, over the phone, through email, or online.
Interviews : Interviews involve asking participants open-ended questions about their experiences, beliefs, or behaviors. Interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing.
Observations : Observations involve observing and recording participants’ behaviors or interactions in a natural or laboratory setting. Observations can be conducted using structured or unstructured methods.
Experiments : Experiments involve manipulating one or more variables and observing the effect on an outcome variable. Experiments can be conducted in a laboratory or in the natural environment.
Case studies: Case studies involve conducting an in-depth analysis of a single case, such as an individual, organization, or event. Case studies can involve the collection of qualitative or quantitative data.
Focus groups: Focus groups involve bringing together a small group of participants to discuss a specific topic or issue. Focus groups can be conducted in person or online.
Document analysis: Document analysis involves collecting and analyzing written or visual materials, such as reports, memos, or videos, to answer research questions.

Data Analysis Methods

Once data has been collected in original research, it needs to be analyzed to answer research questions and draw conclusions. There are various data analysis methods that researchers can use, depending on the type of data collected and the research question. Some common data analysis methods used in original research include:

Descriptive statistics: This involves using statistical measures such as mean, median, mode, and standard deviation to describe the characteristics of the data.
Inferential statistics: This involves using statistical methods to infer conclusions about a population based on a sample of data.
Regression analysis: This involves examining the relationship between two or more variables by using statistical models that predict the value of one variable based on the value of one or more other variables.
Content analysis: This involves analyzing written or visual materials, such as documents, videos, or social media posts, to identify patterns, themes, or trends.
Qualitative analysis: This involves analyzing non-numerical data, such as interview transcripts or observation notes, to identify themes, patterns, or categories.
Grounded theory: This involves developing a theory or model based on the data collected in the study.
Mixed methods analysis: This involves combining quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the research question.

How to Conduct Original Research

Conducting original research involves several steps that researchers need to follow to ensure that their research is valid, reliable, and produces meaningful results. Here are some general steps that researchers can follow to conduct original research:

Identify the research question: The first step in conducting original research is to identify a research question that is relevant, significant, and feasible. The research question should be specific and focused to guide the research process.
Conduct a literature review: Once the research question is identified, researchers should conduct a thorough literature review to identify existing research on the topic. This will help them identify gaps in the existing knowledge and develop a research plan that builds on previous research.
Develop a research plan: Researchers should develop a research plan that outlines the methods they will use to collect and analyze data. The research plan should be detailed and include information on the population and sample, data collection methods, data analysis methods, and ethical considerations.
Collect data: Once the research plan is developed, researchers can begin collecting data using the methods identified in the plan. It is important to ensure that the data collection process is consistent and accurate to ensure the validity and reliability of the data.
Analyze data: Once the data is collected, researchers should analyze it using appropriate data analysis methods. This will help them answer the research question and draw conclusions from the data.
Interpret results: After analyzing the data, researchers should interpret the results and draw conclusions based on the findings. This will help them answer the research question and make recommendations for future research or practical applications.
Communicate findings: Finally, researchers should communicate their findings to the appropriate audience using a format that is appropriate for the research question and audience. This may include writing a research paper, presenting at a conference, or creating a report for a client or stakeholder.

Purpose of Original Research

The purpose of original research is to generate new knowledge and understanding in a particular field of study. Original research is conducted to address a research question, hypothesis, or problem and to produce empirical evidence that can be used to inform theory, policy, and practice. By conducting original research, researchers can:

Expand the existing knowledge base: Original research helps to expand the existing knowledge base by providing new information and insights into a particular phenomenon. This information can be used to develop new theories, models, or frameworks that explain the phenomenon in greater depth.
Test existing theories and hypotheses: Original research can be used to test existing theories and hypotheses by collecting empirical evidence and analyzing the data. This can help to refine or modify existing theories, or to develop new ones that better explain the phenomenon.
Identify gaps in the existing knowledge: Original research can help to identify gaps in the existing knowledge base by highlighting areas where further research is needed. This can help to guide future research and identify new research questions that need to be addressed.
Inform policy and practice: Original research can be used to inform policy and practice by providing empirical evidence that can be used to make decisions and develop interventions. This can help to improve the quality of life for individuals and communities, and to address social, economic, and environmental challenges.

How to publish Original Research

Publishing original research involves several steps that researchers need to follow to ensure that their research is accepted and published in reputable academic journals. Here are some general steps that researchers can follow to publish their original research:

Select a suitable journal: Researchers should identify a suitable academic journal that publishes research in their field of study. The journal should have a good reputation and a high impact factor, and should be a good fit for the research topic and methods used.
Review the submission guidelines: Once a suitable journal is identified, researchers should review the submission guidelines to ensure that their manuscript meets the journal’s requirements. The guidelines may include requirements for formatting, length, and content.
Write the manuscript : Researchers should write the manuscript in accordance with the submission guidelines and academic standards. The manuscript should include a clear research question or hypothesis, a description of the research methods used, an analysis of the data collected, and a discussion of the results and their implications.
Submit the manuscript: Once the manuscript is written, researchers should submit it to the selected journal. The submission process may require the submission of a cover letter, abstract, and other supporting documents.
Respond to reviewer feedback: After the manuscript is submitted, it will be reviewed by experts in the field who will provide feedback on the quality and suitability of the research. Researchers should carefully review the feedback and revise the manuscript accordingly.
Respond to editorial feedback: Once the manuscript is revised, it will be reviewed by the journal’s editorial team who will provide feedback on the formatting, style, and content of the manuscript. Researchers should respond to this feedback and make any necessary revisions.
Acceptance and publication: If the manuscript is accepted, the journal will inform the researchers and the manuscript will be published in the journal. If the manuscript is not accepted, researchers can submit it to another journal or revise it further based on the feedback received.

How to Identify Original Research

To identify original research, there are several factors to consider:

The research question: Original research typically starts with a novel research question or hypothesis that has not been previously explored or answered in the existing literature.
The research design: Original research should have a clear and well-designed research methodology that follows appropriate scientific standards. The methodology should be described in detail in the research article.
The data: Original research should include new data that has not been previously published or analyzed. The data should be collected using appropriate research methods and analyzed using valid statistical methods.
The results: Original research should present new findings or insights that have not been previously reported in the existing literature. The results should be presented clearly and objectively, and should be supported by the data collected.
The discussion and conclusions: Original research should provide a clear and objective interpretation of the results, and should discuss the implications of the research findings. The discussion and conclusions should be based on the data collected and the research question or hypothesis.
The references: Original research should be supported by references to existing literature, which should be cited appropriately in the research article.

Advantages of Original Research

Original research has several advantages, including:

Generates new knowledge: Original research is conducted to answer novel research questions or hypotheses, which can generate new knowledge and insights into various fields of study.
Supports evidence-based decision making: Original research provides empirical evidence that can inform decision-making in various fields, such as medicine, public policy, and business.
Enhances academic and professional reputation: Conducting original research and publishing in reputable academic journals can enhance a researcher’s academic and professional reputation.
Provides opportunities for collaboration: Original research can provide opportunities for collaboration between researchers, institutions, and organizations, which can lead to new partnerships and research projects.
Advances scientific and technological progress: Original research can contribute to scientific and technological progress by providing new knowledge and insights into various fields of study, which can inform further research and development.
Can lead to practical applications: Original research can have practical applications in various fields, such as medicine, engineering, and social sciences, which can lead to new products, services, and policies that benefit society.

Limitations of Original Research

Original research also has some limitations, which include:

Time and resource constraints: Original research can be time-consuming and expensive, requiring significant resources to design, execute, and analyze the research data.
Ethical considerations: Conducting original research may raise ethical considerations, such as ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of research participants, obtaining informed consent, and avoiding conflicts of interest.
Risk of bias: Original research may be subject to biases, such as selection bias, measurement bias, and publication bias, which can affect the validity and reliability of the research findings.
Generalizability: Original research findings may not be generalizable to larger populations or different contexts, which can limit the applicability of the research findings.
Replicability: Original research may be difficult to replicate, which can limit the ability of other researchers to verify the research findings.
Limited scope: Original research may have a limited scope, focusing on a specific research question or hypothesis, which can limit the breadth of the research findings.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

Documentary Research – Types, Methods and...

Scientific Research – Types, Purpose and Guide

Humanities Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Historical Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Artistic Research – Methods, Types and Examples

Main Library
Digital Fabrication Lab
Data Visualization Lab
Business Learning Center
Klai Juba Wald Architectural Studies Library
NDSU Nursing at Sanford Health Library
Research Assistance
Special Collections
Digital Collections
Collection Development Policy
Course Reserves
Request Library Instruction
Main Library Services
Alumni & Community
Academic Support Services in the Library
Libraries Resources for Employees
Book Equipment or Study Rooms
Librarians by Academic Subject
Germans from Russia Heritage Collection
NDSU Archives
Mission, Vision, and Strategic Plan 2022-2024
Staff Directory
Floor Plans
The Libraries Magazine
Accommodations for People with Disabilities
Annual Report
Donate to the Libraries
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Faculty Senate Library Committee
Undergraduate Research Award

What is an original research article?

An original research article is a report of research activity that is written by the researchers who conducted the research or experiment. Original research articles may also be referred to as: “primary research articles” or “primary scientific literature.” In science courses, instructors may also refer to these as “peer-reviewed articles” or “refereed articles.”

Original research articles in the sciences have a specific purpose, follow a scientific article format, are peer reviewed, and published in academic journals.

Identifying Original Research: What to Look For

An "original research article" is an article that is reporting original research about new data or theories that have not been previously published. That might be the results of new experiments, or newly derived models or simulations. The article will include a detailed description of the methods used to produce them, so that other researchers can verify them. This description is often found in a section called "methods" or "materials and methods" or similar. Similarly, the results will generally be described in great detail, often in a section called "results."

Since the original research article is reporting the results of new research, the authors should be the scientists who conducted that research. They will have expertise in the field, and will usually be employed by a university or research lab.

In comparison, a newspaper or magazine article (such as in The New York Times or National Geographic ) will usually be written by a journalist reporting on the actions of someone else.

An original research article will be written by and for scientists who study related topics. As such, the article should use precise, technical language to ensure that other researchers have an exact understanding of what was done, how to do it, and why it matters. There will be plentiful citations to previous work, helping place the research article in a broader context. The article will be published in an academic journal, follow a scientific format, and undergo peer-review.

Original research articles in the sciences follow the scientific format. ( This tutorial from North Carolina State University illustrates some of the key features of this format.)

Look for signs of this format in the subject headings or subsections of the article. You should see the following:

Scientific research that is published in academic journals undergoes a process called "peer review."

The peer review process goes like this:

A researcher writes a paper and sends it in to an academic journal, where it is read by an editor
The editor then sends the article to other scientists who study similar topics, who can best evaluate the article
The scientists/reviewers examine the article's research methodology, reasoning, originality, and sginificance
The scientists/reviewers then make suggestions and comments to impove the paper
The original author is then given these suggestions and comments, and makes changes as needed
This process repeats until everyone is satisfied and the article can be published within the academic journal

For more details about this process see the Peer Reviewed Publications guide.

This journal article is an example. It was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science in 2015. Clicking on the button that says "Review History" will show the comments by the editors, reviewers and the author as it went through the peer review process. The "About Us" menu provides details about this journal; "About the journal" under that tab includes the statement that the journal is peer reviewed.

Review articles

There are a variety of article types published in academic, peer-reviewed journals, but the two most common are original research articles and review articles . They can look very similar, but have different purposes and structures.

Like original research articles, review articles are aimed at scientists and undergo peer-review. Review articles often even have “abstract,” “introduction,” and “reference” sections. However, they will not (generally) have a “methods” or “results” section because they are not reporting new data or theories. Instead, they review the current state of knowledge on a topic.

Press releases, newspaper or magazine articles

These won't be in a formal scientific format or be peer reviewed. The author will usually be a journalist, and the audience will be the general public. Since most readers are not interested in the precise details of the research, the language will usually be nontechnical and broad. Citations will be rare or nonexistent.

Tips for Finding Original research Articles

Search for articles in one of the library databases recommend for your subject area . If you are using Google, try searching in Google Scholar instead and you will get results that are more likely to be original research articles than what will come up in a regular Google search!

For tips on using library databases to find articles, see our Library DIY guides .

Tips for Finding the Source of a News Report about Science

If you've seen or heard a report about a new scientific finding or claim, these tips can help you find the original source:

Often, the report will mention where the original research was published; look for sentences like "In an article published yesterday in the journal Nature ..." You can use this to find the issue of the journal where the research was published, and look at the table of contents to find the original article.
The report will often name the researchers involved. You can search relevant databases for their name and the topic of the report to find the original research that way.
Sometimes you may have to go through multiple articles to find the original source. For example, a video or blog post may be based on a newspaper article, which in turn is reporting on a scientific discovery published in another journal; be sure to find the original research article.
Don't be afraid to ask a librarian for help!

Search The Site

Find Your Librarian

Phone: Circulation: (701) 231-8888 Reference: (701) 231-8888 Administration: (701) 231-8753

Email: Administration InterLibrary Loan (ILL)

Online Services
Phone/Email Directory
Registration And Records
Government Information
Library DIY
Subject and Course Guides
Special Topics
Collection Highlights
Digital Horizons
NDSU Repository (IR)
Libraries Hours
News & Events

West Coast University Libraries
Research Guides
Find Materials
West Coast University
Research Help

WCU FAQs: Research Help

APA and Citations
General Education Classes
Library Login and Information
Program-Specific Classes
Technology Help
WCU General Information
Writing and Tutoring Help
26 A-Z Database List
3 Academic Search Complete
1 Acland's Video Atlas of Human Anatomy
1 Alexander Street Academic Video
1 Authority
1 Business Administration
2 Business Source Complete
1 Credible or Reliable
31 Databases
2 Dentistry Oral Sciences
1 Evaluating Resources
3 Evidence based
13 Full Text
1 Hein Online or HeinOnline
1 Integrative Review
3 Interlibrary Loan or ILL
21 Journal Articles
13 Library Catalog
1 Library ID
1 Library Information
1 Link or URL
1 Literature Review
1 Mergent Intellect
2 MESH or mesh
2 NURS 350 or N350
2 Nursing Reference Center Plus
2 Off-campus
8 Opposing Viewpoints
5 Original Research
8 Peer reviewed
4 Primary Source
14 Proquest
3 Qualitative
3 Quantitative
10 Reference
1 Relevance
28 Research
13 Research Guides
1 Research Paper
4 Search or Searching
1 Secondary Source
4 Statistics
2 Subject Headings or Subject Terms
1 Up To Date

Research Help Question

Research help answer.

Many original research articles are not labeled as original research articles. Original research articles include a research question or hypothesis. They usually contain most of the following sections: methods, results, discussion, conclusion and references. An original research article is written by the person or people that conducted the experiment or observations. Original research articles are considered empirical or primary sources and present an original study.

Articles that look at multiple studies are not considered original research articles. Search library databases using keywords like “study or “case study” to increase your chances of locating original research articles.

For information on how to find an original research article that is not meta-analysis, not meta-synthesis and not mixed method, go to https://westcoastuniversitylibrary.libanswers.com/research/faq/291851 .

Have a Question?

Share on Facebook

Was this helpful? Yes 0 No 0

Become Involved |
Give to the Library |
Staff Directory |
UNF Library
Thomas G. Carpenter Library

Original Research

How can i tell if the article is original research.

Glossary of Terms
What are Peer Reviewed/Refereed Articles?

Chat With Us Text Us (904) 507-4122 Email Us Schedule a Research Consultation

Visit us on social media!

What is Original Research?

Original research is considered a primary source.

An article is considered original research if...

it is the report of a study written by the researchers who actually did the study.
the researchers describe their hypothesis or research question and the purpose of the study.
the researchers detail their research methods.
the results of the research are reported.
the researchers interpret their results and discuss possible implications.

There is no one way to easily tell if an article is a research article like there is for peer-reviewed articles in the Ulrich's database. The only way to be sure is to read the article to verify that it is written by the researchers and that they have explained all of their findings, in addition to listing their methodologies, results, and any conclusions based on the evidence collected.

All that being said, there are a few key indicators that will help you to quickly decide whether or not your article is based on original research.

Literature Review or Background
Conclusions
Read through the abstract (summary) before you attempt to find the full-text PDF. The abstract of the article usually contains those subdivision headings where each of the key sections are summarized individually.
Use the checkbox with CINAHL's advanced search to only see articles that have been tagged as research articles.
Next: Glossary of Terms >>
Last Updated: Feb 7, 2022 11:44 AM
URL: https://libguides.unf.edu/originalresearch

Research Guides

Reading for Research: Social Sciences

Structure of a research article.

Structural Read

Guide Acknowledgements

How to Read a Scholarly Article from the Howard Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University

Strategic Reading for Research from the Howard Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University

Bridging the Gap between Faculty Expectation and the Student Experience: Teaching Students toAnnotate and Synthesize Sources

Librarian for Sociology, Environmental Sociology, MHS and Public Policy Studies

Academic writing has features that vary only slightly across the different disciplines. Knowing these elements and the purpose of each serves help you to read and understand academic texts efficiently and effectively, and then apply what you read to your paper or project.

Social Science (and Science) original research articles generally follow IMRD: Introduction- Methods-Results-Discussion

Introduction

Introduces topic of article
Presents the "Research Gap"/Statement of Problem article will address
How research presented in the article will solve the problem presented in research gap.
Literature Review. presenting and evaluating previous scholarship on a topic. Sometimes, this is separate section of the article.

Method & Results

How research was done, including analysis and measurements.
Sometimes labeled as "Research Design"
What answers were found
Interpretation of Results (What Does It Mean? Why is it important?)
Implications for the Field, how the study contributes to the existing field of knowledge
Suggestions for further research
Sometimes called Conclusion

You might also see IBC: Introduction - Body - Conclusion

Identify the subject
State the thesis
Describe why thesis is important to the field (this may be in the form of a literature review or general prose)

Body

Presents Evidence/Counter Evidence
Integrate other writings (i.e. evidence) to support argument
Discuss why others may disagree (counter-evidence) and why argument is still valid
Summary of argument
Evaluation of argument by pointing out its implications and/or limitations
Anticipate and address possible counter-claims
Suggest future directions of research
Next: Structural Read >>
Last Updated: Jan 19, 2024 10:44 AM
URL: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/readingforresearch

Enroll & Pay
Prospective Students
Current Students
Degree Programs

Original Research

An original research paper should present a unique argument of your own. In other words, the claim of the paper should be debatable and should be your (the researcher’s) own original idea. Typically an original research paper builds on the existing research on a topic, addresses a specific question, presents the findings according to a standard structure (described below), and suggests questions for further research and investigation. Though writers in any discipline may conduct original research, scientists and social scientists in particular are interested in controlled investigation and inquiry. Their research often consists of direct and indirect observation in the laboratory or in the field. Many scientists write papers to investigate a hypothesis (a statement to be tested).

Although the precise order of research elements may vary somewhat according to the specific task, most include the following elements:

Table of contents
List of illustrations
Body of the report
References cited

Check your assignment for guidance on which formatting style is required. The Complete Discipline Listing Guide (Purdue OWL) provides information on the most common style guide for each discipline, but be sure to check with your instructor.

The title of your work is important. It draws the reader to your text. A common practice for titles is to use a two-phrase title where the first phrase is a broad reference to the topic to catch the reader’s attention. This phrase is followed by a more direct and specific explanation of your project. For example:

“Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!: The Effects of Large Predators on Livestock Yields.”

The first phrase draws the reader in – it is creative and interesting. The second part of the title tells the reader the specific focus of the research.

In addition, data base retrieval systems often work with keywords extracted from the title or from a list the author supplies. When possible, incorporate them into the title. Select these words with consideration of how prospective readers might attempt to access your document. For more information on creating keywords, refer to this Springer research publication guide.

See the KU Writing Center Writing Guide on Abstracts for detailed information about creating an abstract.

The table of contents provides the reader with the outline and location of specific aspects of your document. Listings in the table of contents typically match the headings in the paper. Normally, authors number any pages before the table of contents as well as the lists of illustrations/tables/figures using lower-case roman numerals. As such, the table of contents will use lower-case roman numbers to identify the elements of the paper prior to the body of the report, appendix, and reference page. Additionally, because authors will normally use Arabic numerals (e.g., 1, 2, 3) to number the pages of the body of the research paper (starting with the introduction), the table of contents will use Arabic numerals to identify the main sections of the body of the paper (the introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references, and appendices).

Here is an example of a table of contents:

ABSTRACT..................................................iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................iv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...........................v

LIST OF TABLES.........................................vii

INTRODUCTION..........................................1

LITERATURE REVIEW.................................6

METHODS....................................................9

RESULTS....................................................10

DISCUSSION..............................................16

CONCLUSION............................................18

REFERENCES............................................20

APPENDIX................................................. 23

More information on creating a table of contents can be found in the Table of Contents Guide (SHSU) from the Newton Gresham Library at Sam Houston State University.

List of Illustrations

Authors typically include a list of the illustrations in the paper with longer documents. List the number (e.g., Illustration 4), title, and page number of each illustration under headings such as "List of Illustrations" or "List of Tables.”

Body of the Report

The tone of a report based on original research will be objective and formal, and the writing should be concise and direct. The structure will likely consist of these standard sections: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion . Typically, authors identify these sections with headings and may use subheadings to identify specific themes within these sections (such as themes within the literature under the literature review section).

Introduction

Given what the field says about this topic, here is my contribution to this line of inquiry.

The introduction often consists of the rational for the project. What is the phenomenon or event that inspired you to write about this topic? What is the relevance of the topic and why is it important to study it now? Your introduction should also give some general background on the topic – but this should not be a literature review. This is the place to give your readers and necessary background information on the history, current circumstances, or other qualities of your topic generally. In other words, what information will a layperson need to know in order to get a decent understanding of the purpose and results of your paper? Finally, offer a “road map” to your reader where you explain the general order of the remainder of your paper. In the road map, do not just list the sections of the paper that will follow. You should refer to the main points of each section, including the main arguments in the literature review, a few details about your methods, several main points from your results/analysis, the most important takeaways from your discussion section, and the most significant conclusion or topic for further research.

Literature Review

This is what other researchers have published about this topic.

In the literature review, you will define and clarify the state of the topic by citing key literature that has laid the groundwork for this investigation. This review of the literature will identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies between previous investigations and this one, and suggest the next step in the investigation chain, which will be your hypothesis. You should write the literature review in the present tense because it is ongoing information.

Methods (Procedures)

This is how I collected and analyzed the information.

This section recounts the procedures of the study. You will write this in past tense because you have already completed the study. It must include what is necessary to replicate and validate the hypothesis. What details must the reader know in order to replicate this study? What were your purposes in this study? The challenge in this section is to understand the possible readers well enough to include what is necessary without going into detail on “common-knowledge” procedures. Be sure that you are specific enough about your research procedure that someone in your field could easily replicate your study. Finally, make sure not to report any findings in this section.

This is what I found out from my research.

This section reports the findings from your research. Because this section is about research that is completed, you should write it primarily in the past tense . The form and level of detail of the results depends on the hypothesis and goals of this report, and the needs of your audience. Authors of research papers often use visuals in the results section, but the visuals should enhance, rather than serve as a substitute, for the narrative of your results. Develop a narrative based on the thesis of the paper and the themes in your results and use visuals to communicate key findings that address your hypothesis or help to answer your research question. Include any unusual findings that will clarify the data. It is a good idea to use subheadings to group the results section into themes to help the reader understand the main points or findings of the research.

This is what the findings mean in this situation and in terms of the literature more broadly.

This section is your opportunity to explain the importance and implications of your research. What is the significance of this research in terms of the hypothesis? In terms of other studies? What are possible implications for any academic theories you utilized in the study? Are there any policy implications or suggestions that result from the study? Incorporate key studies introduced in the review of literature into your discussion along with your own data from the results section. The discussion section should put your research in conversation with previous research – now you are showing directly how your data complements or contradicts other researchers’ data and what the wider implications of your findings are for academia and society in general. What questions for future research do these findings suggest? Because it is ongoing information, you should write the discussion in the present tense . Sometimes the results and discussion are combined; if so, be certain to give fair weight to both.

These are the key findings gained from this research.

Summarize the key findings of your research effort in this brief final section. This section should not introduce new information. You can also address any limitations from your research design and suggest further areas of research or possible projects you would complete with a new and improved research design.

References/Works Cited

See KU Writing Center writing guides to learn more about different citation styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago. Make an appointment at the KU Writing Center for more help. Be sure to format the paper and references based on the citation style that your professor requires or based on the requirements of the academic journal or conference where you hope to submit the paper.

The appendix includes attachments that are pertinent to the main document but are too detailed to be included in the main text. These materials should be titled and labeled (for example Appendix A: Questionnaire). You should refer to the appendix in the text with in-text references so the reader understands additional useful information is available elsewhere in the document. Examples of documents to include in the appendix include regression tables, tables of text analysis data, and interview questions.

Updated June 2022

Finding original (or "scientific") research articles: Definition and description

Definition and description
Where do I find these articles?
How do I understand them?
What's the point?

Original research articles are primary sources:

An "original" research article is a detailed account of research activity written by the scientists who did the research--not by someone else who is reporting on the research; it is a primary resource . Some instructors may refer to these as "scientific research" articles or as "empirical" research.

Defining "empirical" research:

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines empirical as: "originating in or based on observation or experience research; capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment."

photo of scientists, research in a science lab

Image source: " Lab Laboratory Research Scientific Science " by felixioncool is licensed under the CC0 license (public domain)

Anatomy of a scholarly article

Take a look at this very helpful web page created by librarians at NCSU (North Carolina State University).

Anatomy of a Scholarly Article Interactive display of a scholarly article. Created by NCSU Libraries, CC BY license

Common characteristics of most original research articles

Written by multiple authors (usually three or more)
Authors are always identified and their credentials displayed
Long, technical article titles with specialized terminology
Lengthy--a minimum of six pages, often twenty or more
Introduction that includes the problem, question(s), and research objectives
Literature review: a description of what other scholars have written about the problem
Methods or Approach
Methods, Study, Results
Randomized, Double blind, Placebo-controlled
Article text will describe and analyze the problem, experiment or study, with technical language or jargon understood by others in that field
Chart, graphs, and/or tables often included
Lengthy references list
Published in professional or scholarly journals

Here's what a citation might look like

closeup of citations in a research article

A Pilot Study of Gene/Gene and Gene/Environment Interactions in Alzheimer Disease .By: Ghebranious, Nader; Mukesh, Bickol; Giampietro, Philip F.; Gluhch, Ingrid; Michel, Susan F.; Waring, Stephen C.; McCarty, Catherine A., Clinical Medicine & Research , Mar2011, Vol. 9 Issue 1, p17-25, 9p, 5 Charts;
Developmental Trajectories of Marital Happiness in Continuously Married Individuals: A Group-Based Modeling Approach . By: Anderson, Jared R., Van Ryzin, Mark J., Doherty, William J., Journal of Family Psychology , 08933200, Oct2010, Vol. 24, Issue 5
Occurrence of genetically modified oilseed rape seeds in the harvest of subsequent conventional oilseed rape over time . European Journal of Agronomy , Volume 27, Issue 1, July 2007, Pages 115-122. A. Messéan, C. Sausse, J. Gasquez, H. Darmency

(Also, please note that the citations above are NOT cited in either APA or MLA style.)

Image source: “ Scientific citations ” by Finn Årup Nielsen is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

<< Previous: Start here
Next: Where do I find these articles? >>
Last Updated: Mar 21, 2024 10:25 AM
URL: https://tacomacc.libguides.com/originalresearcharticles

Tacoma Community College Library - Building 7, 6501 South 19th Street, Tacoma, WA 98466 - P. 253.566.5087

Visit us on Instagram!

University Libraries
Research Guides
Subject Guides

Biology 303L: Ecology and Evolution

About Original Research
Scientific Research Process
Articles to Practice Identifying
Reading Original Research Articles
Citation-Based Searching
Related Guides
Review Tutorials
Helpful Web Resources

Original Research Articles

Definition : An original research article communicates the research question, methods, results, and conclusions of a research study or experiment conducted by the author(s). These articles present original research data or findings generated through the course of the authors' study and an analysis of that data or information.

Published in Journals : Origingal research articles are published in scientific journals, also called scholarly or academic journals. These can be published in print and/or online. Journals are serial publications, meaning they publish volumes and issues on a schedule continually over time, similar to a magazine but for a scholarly audience. You can access journals through many of the library's databases. A list of recommended databases to use to search for original articles on biology subjects can be found through this link , accessible from the database "subject" dropdown on the library homepage.

Peer Reviewed : Prior to being published, original research articles undergo a process called peer review in an effort to ensure that published articles are based on sound research that adheres to established standards in the discipline. This means that after an article is first submitted to a journal, it is reviewed by other scientists who are experts in the article's subject area. These individuals review the article and provide unbiased feedback about the soundness of the background information, research methods, analysis, conclusions, logic, and reasoning of any conclusions; the author needs to incorporate and/or respond to recommended edits before an article will be published. Though it isn't perfect, peer review is the best quality control mechanism that scholars currently have in place to validate the quality of published research.

Peer reviewed articles will often be published with "Received", "Accepted", and "Published" dates, which indicates the timeline of the peer review process.

Structure : Traditionally, an original research article follows a standardized structure known by the acronym IMRD, which stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, & Discussion. Further information about the IMRD structure is available on the Reading Original Research Articles tab of this guide.

Why is Published Original Research Important?

Current information : Typical publication turnaround varies, but can be as quick as ~3 months.

Replicable : The studies published in original research articles contain enough methodological detail to be replicated so research can be verified (though this is a topic of recent debate ).

Contains Raw Data : The raw original research data, along with information about experimental conditions, allows for reuse of results for your own research or analysis.

Shows Logic : Using the provided data and methods, you can evaluate the logic of the authors' conclusions.

<< Previous: Scientific Research Process
Next: Articles to Practice Identifying >>
Last Updated: Sep 6, 2022 4:02 PM
URL: https://libguides.unm.edu/biology303

Healey Library
Research Guides

Scholarly Articles and Journals

Original Research
Popular vs. Scholarly

Original Research Articles

Types of journal articles

It is helpful to familiarise yourself with the different types of articles published by journals. Although it may appear there are a large number of types of articles published due to the wide variety of names they are published under, most articles published are one of the following types; Original Research, Review Articles, Short reports or Letters, Case Studies, Methodologies.

Original Research:

This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies. It includes full Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

Short reports or Letters:

These papers communicate brief reports of data from original research that editors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in the field. As they are relatively short the format is useful for scientists with results that are time sensitive (for example, those in highly competitive or quickly-changing disciplines). This format often has strict length limits, so some experimental details may not be published until the authors write a full Original Research manuscript. These papers are also sometimes called Brief communications .

Review Articles:

Review Articles provide a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and a perspective on the state of the field and where it is heading. They are often written by leaders in a particular discipline after invitation from the editors of a journal. Reviews are often widely read (for example, by researchers looking for a full introduction to a field) and highly cited. Reviews commonly cite approximately 100 primary research articles.

TIP: If you would like to write a Review but have not been invited by a journal, be sure to check the journal website as some journals to not consider unsolicited Reviews. If the website does not mention whether Reviews are commissioned it is wise to send a pre-submission enquiry letter to the journal editor to propose your Review manuscript before you spend time writing it.

Case Studies:

These articles report specific instances of interesting phenomena. A goal of Case Studies is to make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. This type of study is often used in medicine to report the occurrence of previously unknown or emerging pathologies.

Methodologies or Methods

These articles present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

Back │ Next

Utility Menu

fa3d988da6f218669ec27d6b6019a0cd

A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources

The Honor Code

Writing "Original" Papers

Some of your writing assignments at Harvard will explicitly ask you to present an "original" thesis, claim, or idea. But even when the word "original" isn't mentioned, you should assume that your professor expects you to develop a thesis that is the product of your own thinking and not something drawn directly from a source. Occasionally an assignment will require only a summary of your reading, particularly if the instructor wants to make sure you have understood a particularly complex concept; however, some assignments may be worded in a way that leaves expectations ambiguous (you may be asked, for example, to "discuss" or "consider" a source), and you may think you are only expected to summarize when, in fact, you are expected to make an argument. When in doubt about whether you are supposed to make an argument in your paper, always check with your instructor to make sure you understand what you're expected to do.

The expectation that you will say something original in every college paper may seem daunting. After all, how can you, an undergraduate who has been studying a particular subject for as little as one semester, know enough to make an original contribution to a field that your professor may have spent a career studying? Indeed, it would be impossible for you to come up with an idea for every paper you write that no one has ever thought of before, and your instructors realize this. When they ask you to come up with an original idea, they may be signaling different expectations, depending on the context of the assignment. Below, you'll find a general framework for thinking about originality in different situations you will encounter in college.

Writing Situation #1: Short Non-Research Papers

In the context of certain assignments, it's enough to come up with a thesis that's original to you—a thesis that you arrived at after thinking about the material you read, rather than an idea you encountered in one of the assigned sources. This will be true for the papers you write in Expos, as well as for many of the short papers you write in your Gen Ed and concentration courses. For these papers, your instructor does not expect you to come up with an idea that no one else has ever written about. Instead, your instructor is most interested in your thought process, your analytical skills, and the way you explain why you think what you think. But why, you may be wondering, would anyone bother writing a paper that presents an idea that other scholars have written about already?

Here's the short answer to that question: There is real value in discovering an idea for yourself, selecting the best evidence to support it, and taking the necessary steps to argue for it. Taking these steps helps you learn both what you think about a topic or issue and how to think through a problem or set of problems. This kind of thinking is necessary preparation for the longer projects you'll do later in your college career when you will be expected to say something truly original. It's impossible to tackle those projects—from a senior thesis to original lab research—if you haven't had the experience of arriving at an idea, fleshing out an argument, and presenting it to an audience. This preparation will serve you well as your college coursework becomes more specialized, and it will also benefit you when you leave college. Whatever field you go into, you'll find yourself in situations where your analysis of a particular problem—and your use of sources to solve that problem—will be crucial to your success.

While the specifics of the assignments for short papers will vary, remember that whenever you're asked to make a claim, you're expected to do your own thinking. In other words, writing a paper about a claim that has been worked over in class, in section, or in your readings will not leave you room to do much thinking of your own. Nor will writing a paper about a claim that will strike your readers as obvious, simple, and unarguable. If you are interested in an idea that has come up in class, or one that seems obvious, you should work on extending or complicating this idea, or coming up with a counterargument that changes the way the idea should be considered. Also, keep in mind that when your instructors tell you not to consult outside sources, they are often doing so precisely to encourage your original thinking, and you should follow their instructions. When an assignment specifies that you avoid outside sources, you should generally take this to mean that you should not do any outside reading in preparation for the assignment.

Writing Situation #2: Short Research Papers and Term Papers

When you are assigned a research paper or term paper for a course, you will often be asked to write 10-20 pages in which you respond to sources you identify and locate yourself . As with the shorter papers you write for your courses, you will generally not be expected to come up with an idea that has never been considered before (although your instructors will certainly be pleased if you do). So how will you know if your idea is original enough?

The key to answering this question is to think carefully about the context of the course and to decide what's reasonable for you to do given the scope of the assignment. For example, if you've been asked to find five sources of your own, your paper will not be original enough if your argument simply echoes one of these sources, or if it echoes a source that was assigned in class. On the other hand, if you locate three sources, each of which offers different answers to the same question, your paper will be original if you can make your own argument for which answer makes the most sense and why.

Your argument will not, however, be original enough if you make the same argument as one of the sources without acknowledging why that source makes the strongest argument. For example, if you were writing about climate change and you were asked to read and consider an argument for investing in nuclear energy and an argument against investing in nuclear energy, you might agree with one of those arguments and present your argument for why it is the stronger idea. Or you might decide that both arguments fall short. You might decide that you support or oppose investing in nuclear energy for reasons other than those offered in the source’s argument. Or you might decide that the argument opposing nuclear energy misses a key factor. The result of doing your own thinking about the topic would be a paper that does not simply restate the position of one of your sources but, rather, uses those sources to inform your own thinking. And the process of writing that paper would have gotten you closer to figuring out what you think about the topic. When you are doing research, it's always a good idea to check in with your instructor to make sure that you are not overlooking important work in that field and that the sources you are choosing are significant and appropriate for your project.

Writing Situation #3: The Junior Tutorial and the Senior Thesis

When you write a substantial piece of work that takes a semester or more (like a junior tutorial paper or a senior thesis), the expectations for originality are different because of the length of the essay you'll write and because of your level of expertise in the field. As you gain experience in your concentration, your knowledge of the major ideas in your chosen field will expand, you will develop your ability to ask more rigorous questions in that field, and you will be able to answer those questions in ways that are original not just to you but to your readers. At this point in your college career, you'll have had the opportunity to learn who the major thinkers are in your field and how to identify the important literature on what research has taken place on your topic. You'll be able to find the most important current scholarship on a topic or the most recent findings related to your research question. Your expertise, along with the time you'll have to devote to the project, means that you will be well-equipped to say something original about your topic.

Even when you write these longer papers, it's still important to understand what it means to say something original. Academic work is very specialized, and scholars build theories and ideas based on the knowledge and ideas that they have studied. In practical terms, this means that ideas evolve slowly, and every original idea doesn't have to be E=mc2 or Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." While there's nothing wrong with hoping to discover a new element to add to the periodic table or trying to figure out the true identity of Shakespeare, it's more likely that your ideas will be original in any of the following ways.

You might discover, in your study of a particular topic, that no one has considered a question or problem that interests you. Or you might bring new information or a new perspective to a question that others have asked. For example, you might look at newly released government documents to consider a question about how the Reagan administration shaped economic policies. While the question may have been asked before, the newly available data will allow you to provide a fresh, original perspective. Similarly, while many people have written about Shakespeare’s plays, you might find that comparing a new production to a more traditional version would bring you a fresh perspective on the play.

Sometimes collecting and analyzing your own data will provide an original take on a topic. For example, if you were writing a senior thesis in a lab science or social science concentration, you might collect and analyze your own data in pursuit of an answer to a question that other scholars have attempted to answer before with different types of data. In psychology, for example, you might conduct an experiment under the supervision of a professor and then analyze your data. In a sociology or anthropology course, you might conduct a series of interviews and analyze them in order to answer a question in a new way.

As appealing as it might seem to discover an entirely new idea, it's just as valuable to add a new step or a new way of thinking to an idea that someone else has already presented. It's also valuable—and original—to consider ideas in relation to each other that have not been considered or connected to each other in this way before.

Whether you're working on a short assignment or a semester-long project, remember that even in the context of all the thinking that has come before yours, you are always capable of bringing your own unique point of view to a paper. In fact, you're doing your own thinking all the time, long before you start writing—in class discussion, in the dining hall, and in your instructor's office hours. When you bring sources into the equation, you're able to go beyond your gut reactions and feelings ("capitalism is good" or “capitalism is bad”) to develop more nuanced ideas ("capitalism does a better job of creating incentives for innovation than other systems" or "a capitalist society cannot protect the most vulnerable"). Sources also introduce you to competing arguments and interpretations and help to lay the groundwork for your own thinking. When you read what has already been written on a particular topic, or when you analyze data that has already been produced in addition to new data, you become more qualified to contribute to the conversation.

Many students tackling college-level writing for the first time find the expectations of college writing new and difficult. There are resources to help you as you embark on your writing assignments at Harvard, and you should feel free to make use of them. Writing Center tutors , Departmental Writing Fellows , and House tutors are all excellent resources. The Harvard Writing Project publishes a number of guides to writing in different fields, and the Writing Center offers general writing resources in addition to individual conferences.

Before you can use sources effectively, you need to know how to locate them, how to know if they are reliable, and how to distinguish clearly between the ideas in a source and your own ideas. The information on this site provides an introduction to the research process, including how and where to find sources , how to decide if a source is reliable and useful , how to use sources accurately and effectively in your papers both to strengthen your own thinking and writing and to avoid plagiarism, and finally, how to integrate source material into your writing and how to cite sources responsibly .

What Does It Mean to Be Controversial?

Most of your college writing assignments will instruct you to take a position or to make an argument. While it's important to learn how to weigh the evidence and draw conclusions that may be different from those of other scholars, it's also important to remember that in academic writing, the most controversial position isn't necessarily the strongest one to take. It might be tempting to manufacture a controversial argument by over-generalizing or caricaturing the ideas you oppose, but ultimately this kind of argument will be neither convincing nor interesting. Any argument you make should be the result of careful thought, and it should follow from a fair reading of the evidence available to you.

Consider, for example, an essay that Aishani Aatresh wrote for her ESPP class, Technology, Environment, and Society. In the paper, Aatresh tries to answer the question of why hydrogen-powered vehicles have not been as successful as electric vehicles in the United States. While it would have sounded most controversial to argue something like “hydrogen-powered vehicles will always be too dangerous because hydrogen is so flammable,” or “hydrogen-powered vehicles are inferior to electric vehicles in every way,” Aatresh’s research suggested that this type of statement would oversimplify a complex situation. She ended up with a thesis that is still controversial in the sense that readers may disagree with it, but one that does not depend on over-simplifying the issues at stake.

Here is the thesis statement she drafted:

Instead of being a contest of modes of sustainability or “superior” technology, FCEVs largely fit into familiar modes of movement while EVs represent elite, material, and innovative “progress” and thus are differentially situated in American society based on how these visions relate to the idea of independence.

With this thesis statement, Aatresh was able to use the evidence that she uncovered to take a position on a controversial topic (alternative fuels) that was both nuanced and arguable.

What Are You Supposed to Do with Sources?
Writing "Original" Papers
Using Sources Beyond Harvard

PDFs for this Section

Why Use Sources

Scientific Manuscript Writing: Original Research, Case Reports, Review Articles

First Online: 02 March 2024

Cite this chapter

original research articles what does it mean

Kimberly M. Rathbun 5

12 Accesses

Manuscripts are used to communicate the findings of your work with other researchers. Writing your first manuscript can be a challenge. Journals provide guidelines to authors which should be followed closely. The three major types of articles (original research, case reports, and review articles) all generally follow the IMRAD format with slight variations in content. With planning and thought, manuscript writing does not have to be a daunting task.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Available as EPUB and PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Emergency Medicine, AU/UGA Medical Partnership, Athens, GA, USA

Kimberly M. Rathbun

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kimberly M. Rathbun .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Emergency Medicine, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA, USA

Robert P. Olympia

Elizabeth Barrall Werley

Jeffrey S. Lubin

MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, Camden, NJ, USA

Kahyun Yoon-Flannery

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Rathbun, K.M. (2023). Scientific Manuscript Writing: Original Research, Case Reports, Review Articles. In: Olympia, R.P., Werley, E.B., Lubin, J.S., Yoon-Flannery, K. (eds) An Emergency Physician’s Path. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47873-4_80

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47873-4_80

Published : 02 March 2024

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-47872-7

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-47873-4

eBook Packages : Medicine Medicine (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Chamberlain University
Ask Us Page and Public FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions: FAQ Entry

1 Alumni Resources
3 APA Citation
1 APA Manual
1 Book Store
1 Center for Academic Success
12 Database
2 Download article
1 Drug Guides
1 Drug Information Portal
1 DynamedPlus
1 Full Text
2 How To Login
2 Library Home Page login
1 Micromedex
1 Nursing Theory
1 Paper Review
1 Pathophysiology
2 Peer Review
1 Permalinks
4 Search Everything
4 Search Strategy
1 Textbooks

Answered By: Last Updated: Feb 17, 2024 Views: 1588

What is an original research or single study article, and how do i find it in the library databases.

Original research, also known as a single study, primary study or empirical study, is one that reports results of a scientific study rather than summarizing other articles. Basically, original research is where the researchers do the study and report their findings.

Find an Original Research Article in the Library

Start your search from the Search Everything box on the library homepage.
Enter your keywords, and select Search .
Under the Filter Results section on the left-hand side of the search results, select Peer-Reviewed Journals and Articles , and change the Publication Date range to reflect your assignment requirements.
Read the abstract of the article(s) to determine if it is original research. The abstract of the article usually contains subdivision headings where each of the key sections are summarized individually such as Literature Review or Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions and Discussion. The methodology section will tell you what they are doing in the study.

Note! There is no way to limit the results to only show original research articles in this search system. If you are having trouble identifying the type of study, please contact your professor.

For more information on types of research, see our Finding Types of Research guide .

Watch the Tutorial Video

Select the image below to watch a video on how to determine if an article is original research.

Watch the What is an Original Research Article video

Share on Facebook

Was this helpful? Yes 2 No 0

Search Website
Library Tech Support

Chamberlain College of Nursing is owned and operated by Chamberlain University LLC. In certain states, Chamberlain operates as Chamberlain College of Nursing pending state authorization for Chamberlain University.

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Content and form of original research articles in general major medical journals

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Institut für Medizinische Biometrie und Statistik (IMBS), Universität zu Lübeck, Universitätsklinikum-Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Cardio-CARE, Medizincampus Davos, Davos, Switzerland, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of KwaZulu Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Department of Cardiology, University Heart and Vascular Center Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, Centre for Population Health Innovation (POINT), University Heart and Vascular Center Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland

Nicole Heßler,
Andreas Ziegler

Published: June 28, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677
Peer Review
Reader Comments

The title of an article is the main entrance for reading the full article. The aim of our work therefore is to examine differences of title content and form between original research articles and its changes over time. Using PubMed we examined title properties of 500 randomly chosen original research articles published in the general major medical journals BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM and PLOS Medicine between 2011 and 2020. Articles were manually evaluated with two independent raters. To analyze differences between journals and changes over time, we performed random effect meta-analyses and logistic regression models. Mentioning of results, providing any quantitative or semi-quantitative information, using a declarative title, a dash or a question mark were rarely used in the title in all considered journals. The use of a subtitle, methods-related items, such as mentioning of methods, clinical context or treatment increased over time (all p < 0.05), while the use of phrasal tiles decreased over time (p = 0.044). Not a single NEJM title contained a study name, while the Lancet had the highest usage of it (45%). The use of study names increased over time (per year odds ratio: 1.13 (95% CI: [1.03‒1.24]), p = 0.008). Investigating title content and form was time-consuming because some criteria could only be adequately evaluated by hand. Title content changed over time and differed substantially between the five major medical journals. Authors are advised to carefully study titles of journal articles in their target journal prior to manuscript submission.

Citation: Heßler N, Ziegler A (2023) Content and form of original research articles in general major medical journals. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0287677. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677

Editor: Boyen Huang, University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, UNITED STATES

Received: March 10, 2023; Accepted: June 10, 2023; Published: June 28, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Heßler, Ziegler. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. AZ is a licensed Tim Albert trainer. Tim Albert trainings deal with advising people how to write medical papers. AZ has held several courses in the past based on Albert’s concept. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and material.

Introduction

Researchers have the duty to make the results of their research on human subjects publicly available according to the declaration of Helsinki [ 1 ], and many recommendations for the reporting of studies have been developed. An overview on these reporting guidelines is provided by the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) network, which aims to tackle the problems of poor reporting [ 2 ]. One consequence of systematic reporting is that many scientific articles are organized in the same way [ 3 , 4 ], and they generally follow the IMRAD structure, which stands for Introduction, Methods, Results, And Discussion. The IMRAD structure is also standard for the writing of abstracts. It is therefore of interest to researchers how they can individualize their reports to increase the citation counts, which is one important measure for career advancement [ 5 ].

Approximately 30 factors affecting citation frequency have already been identified [ 6 – 9 ]. While journal- and author related factors are generally not modifiable, some article-specific factors are subject to active modification by the authors. Especially the title has been proposed as a modifiable component of a research article [ 9 – 11 ]. Researchers should use titles that accurately reflect the content of their work and allow others easily to find and re-use their research [ 12 ]. Most research has focused on the form of article titles because these analyses could be performed automatically and are not very time-consuming [ 9 , 13 , 14 ].

While the article content has been studied well both in features, such as tense, voice and personal pronouns, and in the IMRAD sections between different research disciplines, title content has received less attention, and the main focus was title length [ 15 , 16 ]. One reason could be the lack of automated internet searches until approximately 25 years ago. For example, PubMed was first released in 1996, Web of Science is online since 1997 and Google Scholar started not earlier than in 2004. With the advent of automated internet-based searches the importance of the title has changed, and it is now the “billboard” of a research article [ 17 ]. Another reason could be that these evaluations have to be made manually, and they are thus time-consuming [ 18 ]. An additional time-consuming factor could be that guidelines such as the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) statement [ 19 ] strongly recommend that at least two observers should do an independent evaluation where applicable.

Most articles investigating the form of the title compared whether the title was a full sentence [ 20 ], descriptive, indicative, or a question [ 18 , 21 ], or whether the title included non-alphanumeric characters, such as a colon or dash [ 22 ]. Very few publications looked at other title components of a research article. Specifically, Kerans, Marshall [ 23 ] compared the frequency of Methods mentioning or Results mentioning for the general major medical journals, specifically the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the BMJ, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Lancet by analyzing the first approximately 60 articles published either in 2015 or 2017 in each of the journals. Both articles investigated only a few months from a single publication year per journal. The development of title content over time was thus not considered.

The aim of our work therefore was to examine properties of title content for original research articles published in one of the five major clinical journals (BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM, and PLOS Medicine (PLOS)) over the 10-year period from 2011 until 2020. Specifically, we aimed at identifying differences between the five journals and changes over time regarding title content and title form. We also compared our findings to those of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ].

Materials and methods

Search in medline and web of science.

The search strategy has been described in detail elsewhere [ 9 ]. In brief, we first extracted all original research articles finally published between 2011 and 2020 in the five major clinical journals BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM, and PLOS. The restriction to the publication year 2011 allows for proper comparisons between journals because PLOS was reshaped in 2009 [ 24 ].

The variables PubMed identifier (PMID), journal name, article title, author names, publication year, citation, PubMed Central identifier (PMCID) and digital object identifier (DOI) were extracted from the Medline search. From the Web of Science, we reduced available information to journal name, article title, PMID, abstract for the identification of original research articles, DOI and publication date. Both PMID and DOI were used to merge articles identified in Medline (n = 8396) and the Web of Science (n = 10267). Articles being listed with an abstract remained in the data set, while articles only listed in the Web of Science were excluded. Articles being only downloaded in the Medline files were checked whether they were indeed original research articles. If not, they were excluded as well. After data cleaning, a set of 8096 articles was available.

Evaluation of title content and form

To investigate title content and form, we randomly selected 500 original articles from the years 2011 to 2020. The random selection was done with stratification by journal and year so that ten original articles per year (100 articles per journal) were randomly chosen. To avoid a priori information on the specific journal article, only the title and the PMID were presented in the database. In addition, the order of the 500 articles was randomized prior to evaluation. All article titles were evaluated manually by two raters/authors. Both raters performed a training and independently evaluated 25 randomly selected journal articles—five per journal—prior to the evaluation of the 500 articles. These training articles were excluded from the main evaluation. Conflicts in ratings were solved by agreement.

Items for title content and form are displayed in Table 1 and were inspired by other works [ 15 , 25 , 26 ]. One reviewer asked for the discoverability in each of the title items, therefore, we provided two examples of article titles with the result of our evaluation in Table 1 .

PPT PowerPoint slide
PNG larger image
TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677.t001

The first block of Table 1 reports results on title content. Title content was divided into the topics Methods and Results. The former is concerned with the mentioning of methods in the title, such as the study design or a novel technique used in the paper [ 15 ]. Other elements from the methods concern the mentioning of a patient population, the geography, the clinical context, an intervention, and the use of study names in the title. The latter examines results mentioned in the manuscript. The first question was whether results were stated in the title at all. More detailed were the questions whether quantitative information or semiquantitative or ordinal information was provided [ 26 ]. It was also noted whether the title reported on a relation between two or more variables [ 26 ].

The second block of Table 1 is related to the form of a title divided into the topics Methods, and Conclusion/Discussion. The use of abbreviations, dashes and subtitles was investigated for the Methods. The three single items for Conclusion/Discussion were whether the title was declarative, phrasal, or formulated as a question.

Recently, we performed an analysis after an automatic search for country and city mentioning in the title by the use of the R package maps [ 9 ], and we did not expect substantial differences to our hand search.

Sample size considerations

The main aim of our work was to investigate trends over time by a regression model. In general, regression models have a sufficient sample for a single independent variable, such as time, if n ≈ 50 [ 27 , 28 ]. Specifically, for a weak effect size of R 2 = 0.14 [ 29 ], the required sample size is 51. In case of a weak effect size of Cohen’s f [ 29 ] with f 2 = R 2 / (1 –R 2 ) = 0.14, the required sample size is 403 to achieve a power of 80%. A sample size of 500 as used in our work yields a power of 87.75% at a significance level of 5%.

Descriptive statistics for the specified title properties, i.e., absolute and relative frequencies were reported for each journal over time, refraining of descriptive p-values for investigating journal differences. Fisher’s exact tests were performed at a significance level of 5% to compare the findings of this study with those of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] regarding methods mentioning, patient population, geography, clinical context, and treatment. Corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were provided. Furthermore, overall tests were performed to compare frequencies of these items between all journals. Bias-corrected Cramérs V effect measures were estimated with corresponding parametric bootstrapped CIs. The DerSimonian and Laird [ 30 ] (DSL) approach was used to perform random effect (RE) meta-analyses, which allows for variability in the variables of interest properties between journals and over time. The logit transformation was used for estimating the pooled proportions [ 31 ], and standard errors were not back-transformed.

The effect of time regarding the specific title properties was investigated by logistic regression models, if appropriate. Post hoc comparisons for the identification of homogeneous subgroups were performed using Tukey’s HSD. Associations between title properties and the journals were analyzed using likelihood ratio tests. Effect estimates, i.e., odds ratios and corresponding 95% CI were reported for all analyses, and the journal BMJ was used as reference category. An odds ratio of x.x being greater than 1 indicates an x.x fold increased chance containing the specific item for an one-year difference adjusted for the variable journal.

Data and R code for all analyses are provided in S1 and S2 Files , respectively.

A total of 500 randomly selected original research articles from 5 medical journals were analyzed regarding the selected title items (see Table 1 ) . In Table 2 , the descriptive statistics, i.e., absolute and relative frequencies for all title properties over the years are shown, respectively for each journal. Results of the meta-analyses are provided in detail in S3 File , sections 4 and 5 .

Absolute and relative frequencies (parenthesis) are shown.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677.t002

Items–Content

In terms of the title content topic methods, the NEJM deviated from the other journals regarding the methods mentioning. While methods were mentioned in at least 93% of the article titles in BMJ, Lancet and PLOS, about the half (47%) was in JAMA and 11% in NEJM article titles. Similar results were reported by Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] for BMJ, JAMA and Lancet, but proportions differed between Lancet titles ( Table 3 ). The mentioning of methods increased over time (OR: 1.12 (95% CI: [1.01‒1.24]), p = 0.025, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.1 ), i.e., methods were mentioned more frequently in the article titles more recently.

Displayed are odds ratios (square) per increase by one year, corresponding 95% confidence intervals (whisker) and p-values (numbers).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677.g001

Corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) are shown in brackets. Results of PLOS Medicine are missing because Kerans et al. did not examine article titles of this journal.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677.t003

Lowest and highest numbers for the mentioning of the patient population were in the BMJ (62%) and the NEJM (78%), respectively. For the mentioning of the patient population, neither an increase over time (OR: 1.06 (95% CI: [0.99‒1.13]), p = 0.100, Fig 1 ) nor substantial differences between the journals ( S3 File , section 6.1.2 ) could be observed.

About half of the PLOS titles (52%) contained any geographic information, but only 31% of the BMJ titles (see Table 2 ). Frequencies were only 16% and 17% for JAMA and Lancet, respectively, and 9% for NEJM titles. These findings are in line with Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ], except for the BMJ, where Kerans et al. observed that 15.8% of the articles mentioned geographic information ( Table 3 ). Mentioning of geographic information varied over time both within each journal ( S3 File , section 4.1.3.1) and over the journals ( S3 File , section 4.1.3.2 ). This is consistent with the results from the logistic regression analysis (OR: 1.07 (95% CI: [0.99‒1.16]), p = 0.072, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.3 ).

The clinical context was mentioned in 73% of BMJ titles, while it was mentioned at least 80% in the other four journals. This is in line with Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] ( Table 3 ). Additionally, we observed an increase of clinical context mentioning over time (OR: 1.10 (95% CI: [1.01‒1.19]), p = 0.025, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.4 ).

Only 27% in PLOS and 30% in BMJ provided some treatment information in the title, while for the other three journals at least 50% of the article titles mentioned a treatment. Our results did not show any differences from those of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] ( Table 3 ). Over time the naming of treatments in the title increased (OR: 1.08 (95% CI: [1.02‒1.16]), p = 0.015, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 6.1.5 ).

There was no NEJM title containing a study name while Lancet had the highest usage of it (45%). The analysis over time showed a trend over time (OR: 1.13 (95% CI: [1.03‒1.24]), p = 0.008) and substantial differences between the journals ( S3 File , section 6.1.6 ).

Regarding the title topic results, only 6 out of the total of 500 articles mentioned results in their titles. This is in line with the findings of Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ], who reported that 1.9% of NEJM titles mentioned results. No article provided any quantitative information in its title, and only 4 of 500 articles provided semi-quantitative information in their title. Because of very low numbers, no further analyses were performed for these criteria.

A relation between variables was used least frequently in the NEJM (23%), followed by the Lancet (35%). The other three journals mentioned a relation in more than half of the articles ( Table 2 ). These differences between journals were confirmed in regression analysis ( S3 File , section 6.2.4 ). However, an increase over time could not be observed (p = 0.858, Fig 1 ).

In terms of the title form topic methods, abbreviations were less used in NEJM titles and most used in Lancet titles, 24% and 55 respectively (see Table 2 ). An increase use over time was observed (OR: 1.13 (95% CI: [1.05‒1.20]), p < 0.001, Fig 1 ) as well as differences between journals ( S3 File , section 7.1.1) .

Dashes were rarely used. Only three articles in BMJ and two articles in NEJM used a dash ( Table 2 ). Further analyses were not performed because of these low frequencies.

A subtitle was used in at least 98% of the articles in BMJ, Lancet, and PLOS, while only 41% of JAMA titles and only 2% of NEJM titles used subtitles. These clear differences between the journals were confirmed with the regression analysis ( S3 File , section 7.1.2 ). Moreover, the usage of subtitles increased over time (OR: 1.22 (95% CI: [1.07‒1.38]), p < 0.003 , Fig 1 ).

Finally, regarding the title form topic discussion, not a single article had a declarative title in our analyses ( Table 2 ). Phrasal titles were present in 3% of JAMA, 7% of NEJM, 11% of BMJ, 12% of Lancet, and 15% of PLOS titles. Significant differences between journals could not be observed ( S3 File , section 7.2.2 ). A decrease of phrasal titles over time was observed in the regression analysis (OR: 0.90 (95% CI: [0.81‒1.00]), p < 0.044, Fig 1 and S3 File , section 7.2.2 ).

Only three of 500 article titles were written as a question ( Table 2 ). Kerans et al. [ 15 , 23 ] observed similar low frequencies; and they reported 3.9% for the BMJ and 1.3% for Lancet articles with a question symbol, and none for both JAMA and NEJM ( Table 3 ).

Geographic information–Manual versus automated search with the maps package

The comparison of our hand search on the mentioning of geographic information revealed substantial differences to the automated search with the R package maps [ 9 ].

In detail, respectively, 31% vs. 13% for BMJ, 16% vs. 3% for JAMA, 17% vs. 9% for the Lancet, 9% vs. 3% for the NEJM and 52% vs. 29% for PLOS articles contained any geographical information in their titles for the hand and automatic search. The automated search thus led to fewer titles with any geographic information.

Title content properties varied substantially between original research articles published in the general major medical journals. Furthermore, title content and form changed over time. Differences between journals were specifically observed in the use of subtitles. While almost all articles from the BMJ and PLOS had subtitles, only two of the NEJM articles had a subtitle. Previously, we and others showed that the colon was most used in titles to split a title into multiple parts rather than any other separator [ 9 , 15 , 23 ]. Here, we furthermore showed that the proportion of paper with subtitles increased over time.

Substantial differences between journals were also observed for the mentioning of methods, the patient population, the geography, the interventional treatment, and the use of an abbreviation in the title. In addition, there were substantial differences in the use of a study name in the title. For example, while no article published in the NEJM used a study name, almost half (45%) of the studies in the Lancet used one. Some content criteria were mainly not or rarely used in all considered journals, such as a dash, mentioning of results, using a declarative title, or a question mark. This was in contrast to Paiva, Lima [ 32 ] who showed for PLOS and BMC journals that approximately 40% of the articles mentioned the results, and such articles were more frequently cited than work mentioning methods. In our study, only 6 articles out of 500 mentioned results in the title, while 344 out of the 500 articles mentioned of methods. Our findings are in line with general guidelines that declamatory titles, i.e., titles that give study results should be avoided [ 33 ]; see, e.g., instructions to authors for the Lancet. Authors should thus avoid providing quantitative or semi-quantitative information in the title. In fact, since the title is a one-line summary, the conclusions could be spread out into the world without reading at least the abstract or the full text of the article. Aleixandre-Benavent and colleagues go a step further and provide recommendations what a title should contain, and how it should not be constructed [ 16 ].

Our work focused on the general major medical journals plus the online only journal PLOS. Between the printed journals, there were substantial differences regarding the content of article titles [ 9 ]. One of the reasons could be in the instructions for authors, which differ in the provided information on the construction of a title. Specifically, the NEJM title had the lowest number of frequencies for a couple of criteria, such as the subtitle, methods mentioning, geography, abbreviations, and relation. No NEJM title contained a study name. However, the clinical context and the patient population was most frequently described in NEJM article titles. Differences between printed and online journals were obvious using geographic information in the title or usage of a phrasal title occurring more often in the online journal PLOS.

Subtitles are now more frequently used than a decade ago. Furthermore, the mentioning of methods increased in the 10 years from 2011 to 2020. This change in the title may be caused by the increased use of reporting guidelines, such as the CONSORT statement [ 34 ], which states that a randomized controlled trial should be identifiable as randomized in the title. The instructions for authors of all considered journals state that subtitles should be used for reporting the study design and/or authors should follow the respective reporting guidelines of their study. In fact, authors should look out a copy of the target journal and identify its preferences [ 35 ].

Our results are in line with the recommendations from the journal-specific instructions for authors, except NEJM. The NEJM does not follow the CONSORT statement using subtitles for randomized controlled trials, see also [ 1 ]. For the other four journals, the mentioning of the study design or the type of analysis is almost always done using subtitles as recommended. Furthermore, our results for JAMA using no declarative titles, no results mentioning or using questions in the title match with its recommendations.

Research has so far concentrated on the form of article titles rather than its content. While some authors investigated title content in BMJ, JAMA, Lancet and NEJM for a specific time, generally a single year [ 15 , 23 , 36 ], the development of title content over time has rarely been studied [ 37 ]. A strength of our work thus is the availability of all original articles over a time span of 10 years [ 9 ]. From this database, we randomly selected a subset of articles for manual assessment. These articles were evaluated by two raters according to a pre-specified coding plan with examples and training. Title evaluations were then done blinded by year and journal.

We did not expect different journal-specific frequencies regarding the geographic information in the title compared to our recent work [ 9 ], in which we performed an automatic search for country and city mentioning in the title by the use of the R package maps [ 9 ]. However, frequencies differed substantially. The automated search led to fewer titles with any geographic information. For example, the maps package did not contain countries, such as ‘England’, continents, abbreviation, such as ‘U.S.’, or terms, such as ‘English’. The main reasons for the discrepancies were for the use of country-specific abbreviations and additional country-specific terms. However, other tools or packages might have been more appropriate for the geographical query than the maps package.

One limitation of our study is that we relied on the quality of the data provided by the PubMed database [ 38 ]. Another limitation of our work is that additional variables could have been considered, e.g., more complex title content [ 12 , 16 , 22 ].

A further limitation is the sample size of 500 articles, i.e., 10 articles per journal and year. With a sample size substantially larger than 1000 articles we would have been able to study the association of title characteristics with citation counts. For example, the total sample size of our previous study, which was based on an automated search was 8096 articles [ 9 ]. With 500 articles, 95% confidence intervals are approximately 4 times larger (√8096 / √500 = 4.02), and many results, such as the association between the number of citations would not have been significant. The sample size used in this study is approximately twice that of [ 15 , 23 ], and this study with 500 articles was powered to reliably detect trends over time.

In future research, it would be of interest to analyze the effect of title content properties on citation frequencies. It would also be interesting to compare specific journals with general medical journals.

In conclusion, title content differed substantially between the five major medical journals BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM and PLOS. Furthermore, title content changed over time. We recommend that authors study titles of articles recently published in their target journal when formulating the manuscript title. Analyses of title content may generally require manual time-consuming inspections.

Supporting information

S1 file. data..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677.s001

S2 File. R markdown file for analyses.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677.s002

S3 File. Results.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287677.s003

View Article
Google Scholar
PubMed/NCBI
17. Belcher WL. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks. A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. 2 ed. London: Sage; 2021.
29. Cohen J. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. 2nd ed ed. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum; 1988.
31. Lipsey MW, Wilson DB. Practical Meta-Analysis. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publishing; 2000.
35. Albert T. Winning the Publications Game: The Smart Way to Write Your Paper and Get It Published. 4th ed. Boca Raton: CRC Press; 2016.

Finding Scholarly Articles: Home

What's a Scholarly Article?

Your professor has specified that you are to use scholarly (or primary research or peer-reviewed or refereed or academic) articles only in your paper. What does that mean?

Scholarly or primary research articles are peer-reviewed , which means that they have gone through the process of being read by reviewers or referees before being accepted for publication. When a scholar submits an article to a scholarly journal, the manuscript is sent to experts in that field to read and decide if the research is valid and the article should be published. Typically the reviewers indicate to the journal editors whether they think the article should be accepted, sent back for revisions, or rejected.

To decide whether an article is a primary research article, look for the following:

The author’s (or authors') credentials and academic affiliation(s) should be given;
There should be an abstract summarizing the research;
The methods and materials used should be given, often in a separate section;
There are citations within the text or footnotes referencing sources used;
Results of the research are given;
There should be discussion and conclusion ;
With a bibliography or list of references at the end.

Caution: even though a journal may be peer-reviewed, not all the items in it will be. For instance, there might be editorials, book reviews, news reports, etc. Check for the parts of the article to be sure.

You can limit your search results to primary research, peer-reviewed or refereed articles in many databases. To search for scholarly articles in HOLLIS , type your keywords in the box at the top, and select Catalog&Articles from the choices that appear next. On the search results screen, look for the Show Only section on the right and click on Peer-reviewed articles . (Make sure to login in with your HarvardKey to get full-text of the articles that Harvard has purchased.)

Many of the databases that Harvard offers have similar features to limit to peer-reviewed or scholarly articles. For example in Academic Search Premier , click on the box for Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals on the search screen.

Review articles are another great way to find scholarly primary research articles. Review articles are not considered "primary research", but they pull together primary research articles on a topic, summarize and analyze them. In Google Scholar , click on Review Articles at the left of the search results screen. Ask your professor whether review articles can be cited for an assignment.

A note about Google searching. A regular Google search turns up a broad variety of results, which can include scholarly articles but Google results also contain commercial and popular sources which may be misleading, outdated, etc. Use Google Scholar through the Harvard Library instead.

About Wikipedia . W ikipedia is not considered scholarly, and should not be cited, but it frequently includes references to scholarly articles. Before using those references for an assignment, double check by finding them in Hollis or a more specific subject database .

Still not sure about a source? Consult the course syllabus for guidance, contact your professor or teaching fellow, or use the Ask A Librarian service.

Last Updated: Oct 3, 2023 3:37 PM
URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/FindingScholarlyArticles

Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy

ENGL 101/102

Background information and exploring your topic
Make a great research question

Finding original research articles

Searching Syntax This link opens in a new window
Citations Guide
Does NJIT have it?
Interlibrary Loan This link opens in a new window
Assignment Tips

Finding Research Articles About Your Topic

What kind of research has been done on your topic? Where can you find original research articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals? Use this page to learn about sources for finding peer-reviewed original research articles . Also, learn about the nature and characteristics of peer-reviewed and original research articles.

Best bets for Original Research Articles-- Library databases for ENGL102

<p>Also explore the <a href="https://researchguides.njit.edu/az.php">Library's AZ Database list </a>to find scholarly resources dedicated to specific subjects (Psychology, Education, Transportation, etc.)</p>

Also explore the Library's A-Z Database list to find scholarly resources dedicated to specific subjects (Psychology, Education, Transportation, etc.)

Understanding Peer Review and Original Research

Understanding what peer review is all about.

What is a peer-reviewed article anyways? What is the big deal about peer review? What is it? How does it work? Why do my instructors ask me to find peer-reviewed articles to use in my paper? If an article has been "Peer reviewed" it has earned a kind of authority and credibility from an academic/scientific community. It's a process that research has to go through before it is published. When we're talking about peer review, we're usually talking about scholarly and academic publications. They are usually original research -- research that's never been done before.

Consult these sources to learn more about it:

Learn about peer review -- and its imperfections -- by watching All About Peer Review , a video from the CSUDH Library. Consult the Research Guide on Peer Review from NJIT Library to learn more. Watch Peer Review in 5 minutes from NCSU Library to learn more about the process of peer review and how to identify peer reviewed research. Read the information sheet What's the Difference? from Purdue University. Look over the peer-review process infographic on the LibGuide from UC San Diego. Want to learn more? Read Peer Review in Scientific Publications: Benefits, Critiques & A Survival Guide for an extensive and in-depth treatment of peer review including its history and problems.

What do peer-reviewed articles look like?

What do peer reviewed articles look like.

Probably the most known peer-reviewed journal is Nature . Take a look at the current issue of Nature -- notice that it has all kinds of articles of interest to a lot of people -- news, editorials, book reviews. Take a look at the "Research Articles" section. There you will see the peer reviewed articles from Nature such as: Physiological measurements in social acceptance of self driving technologies Modeling innovation in the cryptocurrency ecosystem Human preferences toward algorithmic bias in a word association task Notice that the articles have a "received" or "submitted", "accepted by" and "published" dates. These are the marking of peer reviewed articles -- finding these dates can be a quick and easy way of identifying peer-reviewed research. These articles also describe an original scientific study or experiment. They follow the scientific method and have sections with names like "Introduction", "Methodology", "Results", etc. Peer-reviewed articles often, but don't always, have multiple authors whose affiliations are given in the article.

<< Previous: Make a great research question
Next: Searching Syntax >>
Last Updated: May 3, 2024 9:43 AM
URL: https://researchguides.njit.edu/engl101-2

What does originality in research mean? A student's perspective

Affiliation.

1 University of South Wales Cardiff, UK.
PMID: 25059081
DOI: 10.7748/nr.21.6.8.e1254

Aim: To provide a student's perspective of what it means to be original when undertaking a PhD.

Background: A review of the literature related to the concept of originality in doctoral research highlights the subjective nature of the concept in academia. Although there is much literature that explores the issues concerning examiners' views of originality, there is little on students' perspectives.

Review methods: A snowballing technique was used, where a recent article was read, and the references cited were then explored. Given the time constraints, the author recognises that the literature review was not as extensive as a systematic literature review.

Discussion: It is important for students to be clear about what is required to achieve a PhD. However, the vagaries associated with the formal assessment of the doctoral thesis and subsequent performance at viva can cause considerable uncertainty and anxiety for students.

Conclusion: Originality in the PhD is a subjective concept and is not the only consideration for examiners. Of comparable importance is the assessment of the student's ability to demonstrate independence of thought and increasing maturity so they can become independent researchers.

Implications for research/practice: This article expresses a different perspective on what is meant when undertaking a PhD in terms of originality in the doctoral thesis. It is intended to help guide and reassure current and potential PhD students.

Keywords: PhD; Student perspectives; doctoral research; originality.

Education, Nursing, Graduate
Nursing Research*
Students, Nursing / psychology*
United Kingdom

Original Research Articles

Preparing your manuscript.

The title page should:

present a title that includes, if appropriate, the study design
if a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the Group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT , do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria . Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript
indicate the corresponding author

The abstract should not exceed 350 words. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. The abstract must include the following separate sections:

Background : the context and purpose of the study
Results : the main findings
Conclusions : a brief summary and potential implications

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

The Background section should explain the background to the study, its aims, a summary of the existing literature and why this study was necessary.

This should include the findings of the study including, if appropriate, results of statistical analysis which must be included either in the text or as tables and figures.

For research articles this section should discuss the implications of the findings in context of existing research and highlight limitations of the study. For study protocols and methodology manuscripts this section should include a discussion of any practical or operational issues involved in performing the study and any issues not covered in other sections.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study to the field.

Methods (can also be placed after Background)

The methods section should include:

the aim, design and setting of the study
the characteristics of participants or description of materials
a clear description of all processes, interventions and comparisons. Generic names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses
the type of statistical analysis used, including a power calculation if appropriate

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Consent for publication.

Availability of data and material

Competing interests

Authors' contributions, acknowledgements.

Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval.

See our editorial policies for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including individual details, images or videos), consent to publish must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent to publish.

You can use your institutional consent form if you prefer. You should not send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication).

See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

Availability of data and materials

All manuscripts must include an ‘Availability of data and materials’ statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. By data we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. We recognise it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available here .

SpringerOpen also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]. [Reference number]

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors’ initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. The role of the funding body in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript should be declared.

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies .

Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section, for example: "FC analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the hematological disease and the transplant. RH performed the histological examination of the kidney, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript."

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

Authors' information

This section is optional.

You may choose to use this section to include any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader's interpretation of the article, and understand the standpoint of the author(s). This may include details about the authors' qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials. Note this section should not be used to describe any competing interests.

Footnotes should be designated within the text using a superscript number. It is not allowed to use footnotes for references/citations.

Radiochemistry Nomenclature Guidelines

The EJNMMI Journal Family endorses the application of the International Consensus Radiochemistry Nomenclature Guidelines for contributions to the journals. A three page summary of the guidelines, highlighting the most relevant issues used in the notation of radiopharmaceuticals and related terms, is available at EJNMMI Radiopharmacy and Chemistry . The Editors-in-Chief of the EJNMMI Journal Family strongly recommend all manuscripts meet these guidelines submission, and all reviewers are asked to check, wherever possible, that the guidelines are followed. Their endorsement can be found here .

The full paper with all recommendations is published in “Consensus nomenclature rules for radiopharmaceutical chemistry — setting the record straight”, Coenen and Gee et al. (2017), Nuclear Medicine and Biology here .

Examples of the Vancouver reference style are shown below.

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do . Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal

Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999;36:234-5.

Article within a journal (no page numbers)

Rohrmann S, Overvad K, Bueno-de-Mesquita HB, Jakobsen MU, Egeberg R, Tjønneland A, et al. Meat consumption and mortality - results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. BMC Medicine. 2013;11:63.

Article within a journal by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. 2000; doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Article within a journal supplement

Frumin AM, Nussbaum J, Esposito M. Functional asplenia: demonstration of splenic activity by bone marrow scan. Blood 1979;59 Suppl 1:26-32.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. p. 251-306.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito Y, Hyuga H. Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Top Curr Chem. 2007. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Complete book, authored

Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

Online document

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase. US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. 1998. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J. Title of supplementary material. 2000. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe, J: Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html (1999). Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

Doe, J: Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt (1999). Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre: The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org (2006). Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

Dataset with persistent identifier

Zheng L-Y, Guo X-S, He B, Sun L-J, Peng Y, Dong S-S, et al. Genome data from sweet and grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). GigaScience Database. 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100012 .

General formatting information

Manuscripts must be written in concise English. For help on scientific writing, or preparing your manuscript in English, please see Springer's Author Academy .

Quick points:

Use double line spacing
Include line and page numbering
Use SI units: Please ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF
Do not use page breaks in your manuscript

File formats

The following word processor file formats are acceptable for the main manuscript document:

Microsoft word (DOC, DOCX)
Rich text format (RTF)
TeX/LaTeX

Please note: editable files are required for processing in production. If your manuscript contains any non-editable files (such as PDFs) you will be required to re-submit an editable file if your manuscript is accepted.

For more information, see ' Preparing figures ' below.

Additional information for TeX/LaTeX users

You are encouraged to use the Springer Nature LaTeX template when preparing a submission. A PDF of your manuscript files will be compiled during submission using pdfLaTeX and TexLive 2021. All relevant editable source files must be uploaded during the submission process. Failing to submit these source files will cause unnecessary delays in the production process.

Style and language

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider:

Getting a fast, free online grammar check .
Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
Asking a colleague who is proficient in English to review your manuscript for clarity.
Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review. Two such services are provided by our affiliates Nature Research Editing Service and American Journal Experts . SpringerOpen authors are entitled to a 10% discount on their first submission to either of these services. To claim 10% off English editing from Nature Research Editing Service, click here . To claim 10% off American Journal Experts, click here .

Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in EJNMMI Research and does not imply or guarantee that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted. 为便于编辑和评审专家准确评估您稿件中陈述的研究工作，您需要确保文稿英语语言质量足以令人理解。如果您需要英文写作方面的帮助，您可以考虑：

获取快速、免费的在线语法检查。
查看一些有关英语写作中常见语言错误的教程。
请一位以英语为母语的同事审阅您的稿件是否表意清晰。
使用专业语言编辑服务，编辑人员会对英语进行润色，以确保您的意思表达清晰，并提出需要您复核的问题。例如我们的附属机构 Nature Research Editing Service 以及合作伙伴 American Journal Experts 都可以提供此类专业服务。SpringerOpen作者享受首次订单10%优惠，该优惠同时适用于两家公司。您只需点击以下链接即可开始。使用 Nature Research Editing Service的编辑润色10%的优惠服务，请点击这里。使用 American Journal Experts的10%优惠服务，请点击这里。

请注意，使用语言编辑服务并非在期刊上发表文章的必要条件，这也并不意味或保证文章将被选中进行同行评议或被接受。エディターと査読者があなたの論文を正しく評価するには、使用されている英語の質が十分であることが必要とされます。英語での論文執筆に際してサポートが必要な場合には、次のオプションがあります：

高速なオンライン文法チェックを無料で受ける。
英語で執筆する際のよくある間違いに関する英語のチュートリアルを参照する。
英語を母国語とする同僚に、原稿内の英語が明確であるかをチェックしてもらう。
プロの英文校正サービスを利用する。校正者が原稿の意味を明確にしたり、問題点を指摘し、英語を向上させます。 Nature Research Editing Service と American Journal Experts の2つは弊社と提携しているサービスです。SpringerOpenのジャーナルの著者は、いずれかのサービスを初めて利用する際に、10%の割引を受けることができます。Nature Research Editing Serviceの10%割引を受けるには、こちらをクリックしてください。. American Journal Expertsの10%割引を受けるには、こちらをクリックしてください。

英文校正サービスの利用は、このジャーナルに掲載されるための条件ではないこと、また論文審査や受理を保証するものではないことに留意してください。 영어 원고의 경우, 에디터 및 리뷰어들이 귀하의 원고에 실린 결과물을 정확하게 평가할 수 있도록, 그들이 충분히 이해할 수 있을 만한 수준으로 작성되어야 합니다. 만약 영작문과 관련하여 도움을 받기를 원하신다면 다음의 사항들을 고려하여 주십시오:

영어 튜토리얼 페이지 에 방문하여 영어로 글을 쓸 때 자주하는 실수들을 확인합니다.
귀하의 원고의 표현을 명확히 해줄 영어 원어민 동료를 찾아서 리뷰를 의뢰합니다
리뷰에 대비하여, 원고의 의미를 명확하게 해주고 리뷰에서 요구하는 문제점들을 식별해서 영문 수준을 향상시켜주는 전문 영문 교정 서비스를 이용합니다. Nature Research Editing Service 와 American Journal Experts 에서 저희와 협약을 통해 서비스를 제공하고 있습니다. SpringerOpen에서는 위의 두 가지의 서비스를 첫 논문 투고를 위해 사용하시는 경우, 10%의 할인을 제공하고 있습니다. Nature Research Editing Service이용시 10% 할인을 요청하기 위해서는 여기 를 클릭해 주시고, American Journal Experts 이용시 10% 할인을 요청하기 위해서는 여기 를 클릭해 주십시오.

영문 교정 서비스는 게재를 위한 요구사항은 아니며, 해당 서비스의 이용이 피어 리뷰에 논문이 선택되거나 게재가 수락되는 것을 의미하거나 보장하지 않습니다.

Data and materials

For all journals, SpringerOpen strongly encourages all datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely to be either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main paper or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spread sheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible. Please see the list of recommended repositories in our editorial policies.

For some journals, deposition of the data on which the conclusions of the manuscript rely is an absolute requirement. Please check the Instructions for Authors for the relevant journal and article type for journal specific policies.

For all manuscripts, information about data availability should be detailed in an ‘Availability of data and materials’ section. For more information on the content of this section, please see the Declarations section of the relevant journal’s Instruction for Authors. For more information on SpringerOpen's policies on data availability, please see our editorial policies .

Formatting the 'Availability of data and materials' section of your manuscript

The following format for the 'Availability of data and materials section of your manuscript should be used:

"The dataset(s) supporting the conclusions of this article is(are) available in the [repository name] repository, [unique persistent identifier and hyperlink to dataset(s) in http:// format]."

The following format is required when data are included as additional files:

"The dataset(s) supporting the conclusions of this article is(are) included within the article (and its additional file(s))."

For databases, this section should state the web/ftp address at which the database is available and any restrictions to its use by non-academics.

For software, this section should include:

Project name: e.g. My bioinformatics project
Project home page: e.g. http://sourceforge.net/projects/mged
Archived version: DOI or unique identifier of archived software or code in repository (e.g. enodo)
Operating system(s): e.g. Platform independent
Programming language: e.g. Java
Other requirements: e.g. Java 1.3.1 or higher, Tomcat 4.0 or higher
License: e.g. GNU GPL, FreeBSD etc.
Any restrictions to use by non-academics: e.g. licence needed

Information on available repositories for other types of scientific data, including clinical data, can be found in our editorial policies .

What should be cited?

Only articles, clinical trial registration records and abstracts that have been published or are in press, or are available through public e-print/preprint servers, may be cited.

Unpublished abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be included in the text and referred to as "unpublished observations" or "personal communications" giving the names of the involved researchers. Obtaining permission to quote personal communications and unpublished data from the cited colleagues is the responsibility of the author. Either footnotes or endnotes are permitted. Journal abbreviations follow Index Medicus/MEDLINE.

Any in press articles cited within the references and necessary for the reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the editorial office.

Preparing figures

When preparing figures, please follow the formatting instructions below.

Figure titles (max 15 words) and legends (max 300 words) should be provided in the main manuscript, not in the graphic file.
Tables should NOT be submitted as figures but should be included in the main manuscript file.
Multi-panel figures (those with parts a, b, c, d etc.) should be submitted as a single composite file that contains all parts of the figure.
Figures should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text, and uploaded in this order.
Figures should be uploaded in the correct orientation.
Figure keys should be incorporated into the graphic, not into the legend of the figure.
Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration. Cropping figures improves accuracy when placing the figure in combination with other elements when the accepted manuscript is prepared for publication on our site. For more information on individual figure file formats, see our detailed instructions.
Individual figure files should not exceed 10 MB. If a suitable format is chosen, this file size is adequate for extremely high quality figures.
Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures (or tables) that have previously been published elsewhere. In order for all figures to be open access, authors must have permission from the rights holder if they wish to include images that have been published elsewhere in non open access journals. Permission should be indicated in the figure legend, and the original source included in the reference list.

Figure file types

We accept the following file formats for figures:

EPS (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
PDF (suitable for diagrams and/or images)
Microsoft Word (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
PowerPoint (suitable for diagrams and/or images, figures must be a single page)
TIFF (suitable for images)
JPEG (suitable for photographic images, less suitable for graphical images)
PNG (suitable for images)
BMP (suitable for images)
CDX (ChemDraw - suitable for molecular structures)

Figure size and resolution

Figures are resized during publication of the final full text and PDF versions to conform to the SpringerOpen standard dimensions, which are detailed below.

Figures on the web:

width of 600 pixels (standard), 1200 pixels (high resolution).

Figures in the final PDF version:

width of 85 mm for half page width figure
width of 170 mm for full page width figure
maximum height of 225 mm for figure and legend
image resolution of approximately 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size

Figures should be designed such that all information, including text, is legible at these dimensions. All lines should be wider than 0.25 pt when constrained to standard figure widths. All fonts must be embedded.

Figure file compression

Vector figures should if possible be submitted as PDF files, which are usually more compact than EPS files.

TIFF files should be saved with LZW compression, which is lossless (decreases file size without decreasing quality) in order to minimize upload time.
JPEG files should be saved at maximum quality.
Conversion of images between file types (especially lossy formats such as JPEG) should be kept to a minimum to avoid degradation of quality.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with figures, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

Preparing tables

When preparing tables, please follow the formatting instructions below.

Tables should be numbered and cited in the text in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, Table 2 etc.).
Tables less than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed in the appropriate location within the manuscript.
Tables larger than one A4 or Letter page in length can be placed at the end of the document text file. Please cite and indicate where the table should appear at the relevant location in the text file so that the table can be added in the correct place during production.
Larger datasets, or tables too wide for A4 or Letter landscape page can be uploaded as additional files. Please see [below] for more information.
Tabular data provided as additional files can be uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (.xls ) or comma separated values (.csv). Please use the standard file extensions.
Table titles (max 15 words) should be included above the table, and legends (max 300 words) should be included underneath the table.
Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files, but should be formatted using ‘Table object’ function in your word processing program.
Color and shading may not be used. Parts of the table can be highlighted using superscript, numbering, lettering, symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend.
Commas should not be used to indicate numerical values.

If you have any questions or are experiencing a problem with tables, please contact the customer service team at [email protected] .

Preparing additional files

As the length and quantity of data is not restricted for many article types, authors can provide datasets, tables, movies, or other information as additional files.

All Additional files will be published along with the accepted article. Do not include files such as patient consent forms, certificates of language editing, or revised versions of the main manuscript document with tracked changes. Such files, if requested, should be sent by email to the journal’s editorial email address, quoting the manuscript reference number.

Results that would otherwise be indicated as "data not shown" should be included as additional files. Since many web links and URLs rapidly become broken, SpringerOpen requires that supporting data are included as additional files, or deposited in a recognized repository. Please do not link to data on a personal/departmental website. Do not include any individual participant details. The maximum file size for additional files is 20 MB each, and files will be virus-scanned on submission. Each additional file should be cited in sequence within the main body of text.

Submit manuscript

Editorial Board
Sign up for article alerts and news from this journal

Annual Journal Metrics

2022 Citation Impact 3.2 - 2-year Impact Factor 3.3 - 5-year Impact Factor 0.932 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) 0.853 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

2023 Speed 12 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median) 87 days submission to accept (Median)

2023 Usage 604,325 downloads 175 Altmetric mentions

More about our metrics
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Facebook
ISSN: 2191-219X (electronic)

Affiliated with

European Association of Nuclear Medicine

Visit and follow the EANM on their social media channels:

The Research Error That Gave Us the Phrase ‘Missionary Position’

By ellen gutoskey | may 4, 2024.

A pixelated version of an illustration by Édouard-Henri Avril from the 1824 book ‘De figuris Veneris.’

In his 1972 sex manual The Joy of Sex , author Alex Comfort described “matrimonial” sex, in which a man is on top of a supine woman, as “the good old Adam and Eve missionary position.”

Though missionary is by no means exclusive to that gender pairing, the fact that some people just recently learned so while watching 2023’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves that Comfort’s representation from over half a century ago still has some gas in the cultural relevance tank.

Missionary position, if in stereotype only, is the kind of vanilla sex favored by husbands and wives either too in love to unlock eyes or too lazy to try something else. It’s chaste enough to have made the final cut of a Marvel movie and so strongly associated with baby-making ( sans scientific evidence , mind you) that even the medieval Catholic Church gave it a gold stamp .

rock carving showing a man on top of a woman

With that perception in mind, you can see how the position, in all its Adam-and-Eve glory, ended up with a religious nickname.

But that’s not how it happened. In fact, missionaries were mostly involved in this christening by mistake.

“The Way Squares Peg Round Holes”

Many a modern reader could glance at some datasets from Alfred Kinsey ’s 1948 book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male or its 1953 follow-up, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female , and spot flaws in the research (e.g. nearly all the survey participants were white). But for an American society starved for candid discussions about sex , the Kinsey reports were easy to take at face value when they first hit shelves. Both volumes achieved something not many statistical studies ever aspire to, let alone accomplish: They became bestsellers.

Alfred Kinsey smiling in a polka-dotted bow tie as he points to a passage in a book

Even as researchers turned a critic’s eye on Kinsey’s work during the back half of the 20th century, certain details escaped further interrogation. One of them was the origin of the phrase missionary position .

In Sexual Behavior in the Human Male , to illustrate that the missionary position—or “the English-American position”—was far from global, Kinsey referenced anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski’s 1929 text about the Indigenous communities of Papua New Guinea’s Trobriand Islands. Malinowski, Kinsey wrote , “notes that caricatures of the English-American position are performed around the communal campfires, to the great amusement of the natives who refer to the position as the ‘missionary position.’” The implication was that the Indigenous islanders had learned this ridiculous copulation formation from Christian missionaries.

By the time English speakers embraced the term missionary position in full force during the sexual revolution, some had also begun to scorn the thing itself. Plenty of sexually liberated women continued to favor the bottom spot, but reactionaries tended to fixate on the notion that all this experimentation made missionary seem stuffy and uncool. One 1970 piece in The Guardian called it “the tatty old missionary position,” while a 1973 one in The Montreal Star described it as “the way squares peg round holes.”

black and white photo of a scarf-wearing woman dancing, arms tossed up in ecstasy, as people in the background look on

It wasn’t just the phrase that got picked up from the Kinsey reports. Its origin story did, too, repeated (and often embellished) in everything from academic articles to newspaper advice columns. In a 1976 edition of The Ottawa Citizen , for example, advisor Dr. Aaron Rutledge asserted that missionary “was taught to Pacific Islanders and African tribespeople as the one religiously approved approach to husband-wife sexuality.”

But even if the good doctor hadn’t botched Kinsey’s account, he still would have accidentally been spreading misinformation —because Kinsey’s account wasn’t accurate in the first place.

“Sketchy and Flabby Movements”

Around the early 2000s, anthropologist and missiologist Robert J. Priest did something that countless scholars before him apparently hadn’t troubled to do: He read Malinowski’s 1929 book to locate the original reference to missionary position .

Curiously, not once does that exact term appear in the text. What Priest did find, which he laid out in a 2001 paper published in Current Anthropology , were other elements of Kinsey’s anecdote.

At one point, Malinowski chronicled the Trobriand people convening under a full moon (not around campfires, as Kinsey said) to play games and sing songs that sometimes involved sexual jokes . At another point, while outlining the islanders’ customary sex positions, Malinowski mentioned that they “despise the European position and consider it unpractical and improper.” He wasn’t talking about all arrangements wherein a woman is lying on her back—many of which were popular in the community—but specifically the one where the man subjects her to his whole body weight. In their words, per Malinowski, “he presses her heavily downwards, she cannot respond.”

about ten Trobriand Island dancers dressed in red bottoms, black arm bands, jewelry, and headgear

“Altogether the natives are certain that white men do not know how to carry out intercourse effectively,” he wrote. They did, as Kinsey alluded to, enjoy caricaturing what Malinowski described as “the sketchy and flabby movements” and “the brevity and lack of vigour of the European performance.”

Though they reportedly learned those ways from “white traders, planters, or officials,” Malinowski did mention missionaries in a later section about public displays of affection like “holding hands, leaning against each other, [and] embracing.” A man named Tokolibeba told him that this frowned-upon behavior, which some Trobriander couples had adopted from missionaries, was called “ misinari si bubunela ,” or “missionary fashion.”

In short, it seems that Kinsey may have conflated several true stories into one succinct and specious one. As Priest put it, “Kinsey apparently invented a legend while believing himself to be reporting historical fact and coined a new expression while thinking he was reporting an old one.”

It’s a mark of Kinsey’s influence that the expression’s origin went more or less unquestioned for so long. And also an indicator that most people thinking about sex probably aren’t too hung up on how any given position got its name.

Discover More Fascinating Phrase Origins:

Election 2024
Entertainment
Newsletters
Photography
Personal Finance
AP Investigations
AP Buyline Personal Finance
AP Buyline Shopping
Press Releases
Israel-Hamas War
Russia-Ukraine War
Global elections
Asia Pacific
Latin America
Middle East
Election Results
Delegate Tracker
AP & Elections
Auto Racing
2024 Paris Olympic Games
Movie reviews
Book reviews
Personal finance
Financial Markets
Business Highlights
Financial wellness
Artificial Intelligence
Social Media

What marijuana reclassification means for the United States

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country.

FILE - Marijuana plants are seen at a secured growing facility in Washington County, N.Y., May 12, 2023. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

Copy Link copied

Budtender Rey Cruz weighs cannabis for a customer at the Marijuana Paradise on Friday, April 19, 2024, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Beau McQueen, right, helps a customer, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board’s social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The Justice Department proposal would recognize the medical uses of cannabis , but wouldn’t legalize it for recreational use.

The proposal would move marijuana from the “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III.”

So what does that mean, and what are the implications?

WHAT HAS ACTUALLY CHANGED? WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Technically, nothing yet. The proposal must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and then undergo a public-comment period and review from an administrative judge, a potentially lengthy process.

FILE - A marijuana plant is visible at a medical marijuana dispensary in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., March 22, 2019 The Biden administration's move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous but still illegal drug was hailed as a monumental step in reshaping national policy. But it appears it would do little to ease a longstanding problem in the industry, a lack of loans and banking services other businesses take for granted. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

Still, the switch is considered “paradigm-shifting, and it’s very exciting,” Vince Sliwoski, a Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and psychedelics attorney who runs well-known legal blogs on those topics, told The Associated Press when the federal Health and Human Services Department recommended the change.

“I can’t emphasize enough how big of news it is,” he said.

It came after President Joe Biden asked both HHS and the attorney general, who oversees the DEA, last year to review how marijuana was classified. Schedule I put it on par, legally, with heroin, LSD, quaaludes and ecstasy, among others.

Biden, a Democrat, supports legalizing medical marijuana for use “where appropriate, consistent with medical and scientific evidence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “That is why it is important for this independent review to go through.”

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Beau McQueen, right, helps a customer, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. The shop is one of the first dispensaries to open under the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board's social equity program, established in efforts to remedy some of the disproportionate effects marijuana prohibition had on communities of color. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Cloud 9 Cannabis employee Beau McQueen, right, helps a customer, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Arlington, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

IF MARIJUANA GETS RECLASSIFIED, WOULD IT LEGALIZE RECREATIONAL CANNABIS NATIONWIDE?

Ap audio: what marijuana reclassification means for the united states.

AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on a proposal for the federal government to reclassify marijuana in what would be a historic shift that could have wide ripple effects across the country.

No. Schedule III drugs — which include ketamine, anabolic steroids and some acetaminophen-codeine combinations — are still controlled substances.

They’re subject to various rules that allow for some medical uses, and for federal criminal prosecution of anyone who traffics in the drugs without permission.

No changes are expected to the medical marijuana programs now licensed in 38 states or the legal recreational cannabis markets in 23 states, but it’s unlikely they would meet the federal production, record-keeping, prescribing and other requirements for Schedule III drugs.

There haven’t been many federal prosecutions for simply possessing marijuana in recent years, even under marijuana’s current Schedule I status, but the reclassification wouldn’t have an immediate impact on people already in the criminal justice system.

“Put simple, this move from Schedule I to Schedule III is not getting people out of jail,” said David Culver, senior vice president of public affairs at the U.S. Cannabis Council.

But rescheduling in itself would have some impact, particularly on research and marijuana business taxes.

WHAT WOULD THIS MEAN FOR RESEARCH?

Because marijuana is on Schedule I, it’s been very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve administering the drug. That has created something of a Catch-22: calls for more research, but barriers to doing it. (Scientists sometimes rely instead on people’s own reports of their marijuana use.)

Marijuana plants are seen at a secured growing facility in Washington County, N.Y., May 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

Schedule III drugs are easier to study, though the reclassification wouldn’t immediately reverse all barriers to study.

“It’s going to be really confusing for a long time,” said Ziva Cooper, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids. “When the dust has settled, I don’t know how many years from now, research will be easier.”

Among the unknowns: whether researchers will be able to study marijuana from state-licensed dispensaries and how the federal Food and Drug Administration might oversee that.

Some researchers are optimistic.

“Reducing the schedule to schedule 3 will open up the door for us to be able to conduct research with human subjects with cannabis,” said Susan Ferguson, director of University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute in Seattle.

WHAT ABOUT TAXES (AND BANKING)?

Under the federal tax code, businesses involved in “trafficking” in marijuana or any other Schedule I or II drug can’t deduct rent, payroll or various other expenses that other businesses can write off. (Yes, at least some cannabis businesses, particularly state-licensed ones, do pay taxes to the federal government, despite its prohibition on marijuana.) Industry groups say the tax rate often ends up at 70% or more.

The deduction rule doesn’t apply to Schedule III drugs, so the proposed change would cut cannabis companies’ taxes substantially.

They say it would treat them like other industries and help them compete against illegal competitors that are frustrating licensees and officials in places such as New York .

“You’re going to make these state-legal programs stronger,” says Adam Goers, of The Cannabist Company, formerly Columbia Care. He co-chairs a coalition of corporate and other players that’s pushing for rescheduling.

It could also mean more cannabis promotion and advertising if those costs could be deducted, according to Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Center.

Rescheduling wouldn’t directly affect another marijuana business problem: difficulty accessing banks, particularly for loans, because the federally regulated institutions are wary of the drug’s legal status. The industry has been looking instead to a measure called the SAFE Banking Act . It has repeatedly passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

ARE THERE CRITICS? WHAT DO THEY SAY?

Indeed, there are, including the national anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. President Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration drug policy official, said the HHS recommendation “flies in the face of science, reeks of politics” and gives a regrettable nod to an industry “desperately looking for legitimacy.”

Some legalization advocates say rescheduling weed is too incremental. They want to keep the focus on removing it completely from the controlled substances list, which doesn’t include such items as alcohol or tobacco (they’re regulated, but that’s not the same).

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that simply reclassifying marijuana would be “perpetuating the existing divide between state and federal marijuana policies.” Kaliko Castille, a past president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association, said rescheduling just “re-brands prohibition,” rather than giving an all-clear to state licensees and putting a definitive close to decades of arrests that disproportionately pulled in people of color.

“Schedule III is going to leave it in this kind of amorphous, mucky middle where people are not going to understand the danger of it still being federally illegal,” he said.

This story has been corrected to show that Kaliko Castille is a past president, not president, of the Minority Cannabis Business Association and that Columbia Care is now The Cannabist Company.

___ Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington and Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. This includes personalizing content and advertising. To learn more, click here . By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Service .

New to Zacks? Get started here.

Member Sign In

Don't Know Your Password?

Zacks #1 Rank
Zacks Industry Rank
Zacks Sector Rank
Equity Research
Mutual Funds
Mutual Fund Screener
ETF Screener
Earnings Calendar
Earnings Releases
Earnings ESP
Earnings ESP Filter
Stock Screener
Premium Screens
Basic Screens
Research Wizard
Personal Finance
Money Management
Retirement Planning
Tax Information
My Portfolio
Create Portfolio
Style Scores
Testimonials
Zacks.com Tutorial

Services Overview

Zacks Ultimate
Zacks Investor Collection
Zacks Premium

Investor Services

ETF Investor
Home Run Investor
Income Investor
Stocks Under $10
Value Investor
Top 10 Stocks

Other Services

Method for Trading
Zacks Confidential

Trading Services

Black Box Trader
Counterstrike
Headline Trader
Insider Trader
Large-Cap Trader
Options Trader
Short Sell List
Surprise Trader
Alternative Energy

You are being directed to ZacksTrade, a division of LBMZ Securities and licensed broker-dealer. ZacksTrade and Zacks.com are separate companies. The web link between the two companies is not a solicitation or offer to invest in a particular security or type of security. ZacksTrade does not endorse or adopt any particular investment strategy, any analyst opinion/rating/report or any approach to evaluating individual securities.

If you wish to go to ZacksTrade, click OK . If you do not, click Cancel.

Image: Bigstock

Ouster (OUST) Upgraded to Strong Buy: What Does It Mean for the Stock?

Ouster, Inc. ( OUST Quick Quote OUST - Free Report ) could be a solid addition to your portfolio given its recent upgrade to a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). An upward trend in earnings estimates -- one of the most powerful forces impacting stock prices -- has triggered this rating change.

A company's changing earnings picture is at the core of the Zacks rating. The system tracks the Zacks Consensus Estimate -- the consensus measure of EPS estimates from the sell-side analysts covering the stock -- for the current and following years.

The power of a changing earnings picture in determining near-term stock price movements makes the Zacks rating system highly useful for individual investors, since it can be difficult to make decisions based on rating upgrades by Wall Street analysts. These are mostly driven by subjective factors that are hard to see and measure in real time.

As such, the Zacks rating upgrade for Ouster is essentially a positive comment on its earnings outlook that could have a favorable impact on its stock price.

Most Powerful Force Impacting Stock Prices

The change in a company's future earnings potential, as reflected in earnings estimate revisions, and the near-term price movement of its stock are proven to be strongly correlated. The influence of institutional investors has a partial contribution to this relationship, as these big professionals use earnings and earnings estimates to calculate the fair value of a company's shares. An increase or decrease in earnings estimates in their valuation models simply results in higher or lower fair value for a stock, and institutional investors typically buy or sell it. Their transaction of large amounts of shares then leads to price movement for the stock.

Fundamentally speaking, rising earnings estimates and the consequent rating upgrade for Ouster imply an improvement in the company's underlying business. Investors should show their appreciation for this improving business trend by pushing the stock higher.

Harnessing the Power of Earnings Estimate Revisions

Empirical research shows a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock movements, so it could be truly rewarding if such revisions are tracked for making an investment decision. Here is where the tried-and-tested Zacks Rank stock-rating system plays an important role, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions.

The Zacks Rank stock-rating system, which uses four factors related to earnings estimates to classify stocks into five groups, ranging from Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) to Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive externally-audited track record, with Zacks Rank #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .

Earnings Estimate Revisions for Ouster

For the fiscal year ending December 2024, this company is expected to earn -$3.54 per share, which is a change of 42.9% from the year-ago reported number.

Analysts have been steadily raising their estimates for Ouster. Over the past three months, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company has increased 1.7%.

Bottom Line

Unlike the overly optimistic Wall Street analysts whose rating systems tend to be weighted toward favorable recommendations, the Zacks rating system maintains an equal proportion of 'buy' and 'sell' ratings for its entire universe of more than 4000 stocks at any point in time. Irrespective of market conditions, only the top 5% of the Zacks-covered stocks get a 'Strong Buy' rating and the next 15% get a 'Buy' rating. So, the placement of a stock in the top 20% of the Zacks-covered stocks indicates its superior earnings estimate revision feature, making it a solid candidate for producing market-beating returns in the near term.

You can learn more about the Zacks Rank here >>>

The upgrade of Ouster to a Zacks Rank #1 positions it in the top 5% of the Zacks-covered stocks in terms of estimate revisions, implying that the stock might move higher in the near term.

See More Zacks Research for These Tickers

Normally $25 each - click below to receive one report free:.

Ouster, Inc. (OUST) - free report >>

Published in

This file is used for Yahoo remarketing pixel add

Due to inactivity, you will be signed out in approximately:

Distressed woman holds her head in her hands

Our research shows a strong link between unemployment and domestic violence: what does this mean for income support?

Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

Professor of Health Economics, Monash University

Senior Research Fellow, Monash University

Disclosure statement

David Johnston receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Karinna Saxby and Rachel Knott do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University and University of Melbourne provide funding as founding partners of The Conversation AU.

View all partners

Increasing income support could help keep women and children safe according to new work demonstrating strong links between financial insecurity and domestic violence.

Our mapping of local government areas in Melbourne and Sydney reinforces the relationship between unemployment and the greater risk of violence.

At a time when the nation is speaking out against the killing of women by men – with at least 27 deaths recorded since the start of this year – the federal government is under increasing pressure to help those at greatest risk.

How money might help

Financial dependence can trap people in abusive relationships. The dependency creates barriers to leaving , as victim-survivors may not have the money necessary for alternative housing, legal help and basic living expenses.

Higher income support for women can change the dynamics within relationships by enhancing their financial decision-making and bargaining power within the household.

However, the relationship between economic factors and domestic violence is complex.

While higher income generally corresponds with lower domestic violence, overseas evidence suggests higher unemployment benefits may lengthen unemployment spells. In such situations, joblessness could lead to violence due to increased exposure between perpetrators and victim-survivors at home.

Economic downturns and personal financial crises can also cause uncertainty and household stress, which may escalate into abuse .

These economic patterns are clear in Australia. Areas with low-income and high-unemployment tend to have the highest levels of domestic violence.

Problem areas

The graphics below illustrate this by mapping unemployment and violence rates across local government areas in greater Sydney and greater Melbourne. The patterns are striking. High rates, marked in darker red, often occur in similar locations.

In Melbourne, the areas with the highest levels of both unemployment and domestic violence are greater Dandenong, Frankston, Casey, Cardinia, Maribyrnong, Brimbank, Melton and Hume. They are marked in red.

In Sydney, the highest rates are in Campbelltown, Liverpool, Canterbury-Bankstown, Fairfield, Penrith, Cumberland, Blacktown and Hawkesbury.

The economic disparities in domestic violence have also increased in recent years. In 2001, rates of violence in the most disadvantaged parts of New South Wales were about 5.6 times higher in the most advantaged suburbs. In 2023, these differences were almost 6.5 times higher.

Long lasting impact

Domestic violence disproportionately impacts women and children and can create significant long lasting social, health, psychological and financial damage.

Estimates suggest the lifetime cost of domestic violence for every victim-survivor is in the tens of thousands of dollars. Healthcare costs alone are close to A$50,000 for every person directly affected.

And the broader costs are staggering.

National data from 2016 which looked at costs including medical care, lost productivity, legal fees, and extended social services, puts the total annual costs at about $22 billion .

This shows the problem is not just a critical social and health issue, but a major economic challenge for victim-survivors and the nation.

Helping to solve the problem

Providing adequate financial support to vulnerable people during times of economic uncertainty is critical to reduce domestic violence and its harmful effects.

But unemployment benefits in Australia are much lower than in other OECD countries. JobSeeker is only $386 per week – 43% of the full-time minimum wage. Australia is ranked among the lowest of all OECD countries when it comes to unemployment benefits, second only to Greece.

International evidence , based on more generous support schemes, suggests raising benefits may lead to extended periods out of work and therefore greater exposure to violence at home.

But this is unlikely to occur in Australia if JobSeeker payments are raised. Given the current low rate, there will still be a considerable financial incentive for JobSeeker recipients to get paid work if the rate is increased.

Analysis of the almost doubling of payments during 2020 supports this conclusion.

Improving economic safety nets could help prevent environments that breed violence. Investing in safety is an essential step towards combating Australia’s domestic violence crisis.

Domestic violence
Income support
Family violence
Financial Empowerment
Women's empowerment
Federal budget 2024

Faculty of Law - Academic Appointment Opportunities

Events and Communications Coordinator

Assistant Editor - 1 year cadetship

Executive Dean, Faculty of Health

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Earth System Science (School of Science)

Skip to main content
Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

IDF fires artillery shells into Gaza as fighting between Israeli troops and Islamist Hamas militants continues on Oct. 12, 2023.

Middle East crisis — explained

The conflict between Israel and Palestinians — and other groups in the Middle East — goes back decades. These stories provide context for current developments and the history that led up to them.

What is a keffiyeh, who wears it, and how did it become a symbol for Palestinians?

Linah Mohammad

A protestor wearing a keffiyeh waves a Palestinian flag during a rally in support of Palestinians in Lisbon in October. Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A protestor wearing a keffiyeh waves a Palestinian flag during a rally in support of Palestinians in Lisbon in October.

Ashish Prashar was at a Brooklyn playground with his 18-month-old son in early November when he said a woman approached him and asked if he supported Hamas.

She got angrier and angrier, Prashar said, and the situation escalated.

In a recording of part of the interaction posted on social media, the woman, Hadasa Bozakkaravani, can be seen yelling and throwing things at Prashar, saying "you and your son go away." She has been charged with a number of hate crimes and plead not guilty when arraigned last month, according to court records . Bozakkaravani's lawyer did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Prashar is not Palestinian, or Muslim, or Arab. He's British-Punjabi. But he was wearing a scarf that's become synonymous with Palestinians: A black and white keffiyeh.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel's bombardment of Gaza in response, the keffiyeh has drawn increased attention in the United States. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, three students of Palestinian descent were shot in Vermont — two of them were wearing the keffiyeh.

So what is a keffiyeh, who wears it, and how did it become a symbol for Palestinians?

From left: Tahseen Ali Ahmed, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Hisham Awartani, three college students of Palestinian descent who were shot in Burlington, Vermont, on Nov. 25, are seen in this undated handout photo. Awartani family/via REUTERS hide caption

What is a keffiyeh and what does it mean?

First, the basics.

The keffiyeh, also known as a hatta , is a traditional Arab headdress. Historically, it was worn by nomadic communities — or Bedouins — in historic Palestine. It's typically made of cotton and adorned with distinctive woven patterns. It comes in a variety of colors, though over the last century, the black and white one has become synonymous with Palestinians.

A worker cuts excess strings at a textile factory producing the keffiyeh in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron on Nov. 20. Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Some say patterns on the keffiyeh symbolize different aspects of Palestinian life: the bold black stripes on the edges symbolize the historical trade routes that used to go through Palestine; the fishnet-like design represents the Palestinians' ties to the Mediterranean Sea; and the curvy lines resemble olive trees, a major point of pride for Palestinians.

Though none of these claims can be backed up by historical evidence, over the past 10 years they've become embraced by Palestinians in the diaspora to be the meaning behind their keffiyeh's patterns.

"In my research and in my experience, often interacting with the keffiyeh from the 19th century, I often see a variety of colors," said Wafa Ghnaim, a Palestinian dress expert and a senior research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "I see white-black like we see today, but also green. And sometimes I see threads of gold and red. It's really not until the 1930s that we start to see the keffiyeh change in meaning, not by the patterning that's in the scarf, but in its use."

Listen to All Things Considered each day here or on your local member station for more stories like this.

How has its meaning changed over time?

Until the 1920s, the keffiyeh was almost exclusively worn by Bedouin men, according to Ghnaim, and it was simply a way to identify nomadic men in historic Palestine from villagers, fellaheen , and town people.

According to Ghnaim, the first time we see the keffiyeh used as a political statement was during the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936 — an uprising against British rule that included demands for independence and an end to Jewish immigration.

At that time, the majority of the armed resistance was taking place in the villages, and the fighters used the keffiyeh to hide their features — helping it to become associated with the revolution. The revolution's leaders issued an order for men to wear the keffiyeh to express solidarity with the revolutionaries and so that the British could not distinguish the fighters from others.

Palestinian student shot in Vermont is paralyzed from chest down, his family says

In the 1960s, it became associated with Palestinian nationalism, particularly due to its adoption by leaders like Yasser Arafat. During this era, it represented solidarity and resistance against the Israeli occupation.

The apocryphal story among many Palestinians is that Arafat folded his keffiyeh in a way that reminded him of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and let the side panel drape in a way that resembled the historic map of Palestine.

Around the same time, the fedayeen — a term used to describe nationalist Palestinian militants — conducted guerilla operations while wearing the keffiyeh.

Other prominent Palestinians also donned the keffiyeh during that time, included Leila Khaled — who was involved in two plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970 as part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

A mural version of the famous photo of a young Leila Khaled wearing the keffiyeh is seen on the Israeli West Bank barrier in Bethlehem in April 2014. Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

"That's when we start to see women wearing the black and white keffiyeh, specifically Palestinian women," Ghnaim said. "So it wasn't just a male headdress anymore. By the 1960s, it became something worn by Palestinian women as well around their neck."

What does it mean now?

It depends who you ask.

For many Palestinians, it symbolizes their yearning for freedom and serves a nod to their history. For some non-Palestinians, it's a show of solidarity.

Recently, it has also been associated with the Hamas spokesperson known only by his nom de guerre, Abu Obeida. He became known as al-mulatham or the "masked one" because his face is always covered by a red and white keffiyeh that shows only his eyes.

His voice — and his keffiyeh — have become familiar in Arab households during this current conflict. He has praised the Oct. 7 attack that the Israeli government says killed 1,200, including women and children, as a victory for the Palestinian cause. He has maintained that stance, even as the Israeli response has killed more than 16,000 people in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which includes mostly women and children.

A person identifying as Abu Obeida delivers a statement in July 2015. Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

There is a long history of Palestinians wearing the keffiyeh to cover their faces, according to Ghnaim, not just as a form of activism but also to protect them from tear gas or from identification during protests.

For others, like queer Palestinian content creator Rand Jitan, who lives in New York, the keffiyeh has no connection to a specific group or organization — but, rather, to her heritage. Her keffiyeh was a gift from her therapist, and she said she wears it whenever she can and in a variety of ways: draped around her neck, wrapped around her head, and sometimes even as a blanket when she goes to the beach or the park.

"I put it on and it gives me a feeling," she said. "How powerful is that? Like years and years, these histories that we have in a f---ing cloth. It's crazy. It's awesome. It's incredible. It's beautiful."

Jitan styles her keffiyeh in different ways, which she said garners different reactions from people.

"Sometimes when I wear it on my head and it kind of looks like a hijab — or it looks like what somebody might see on TV and assume to be a 'terrorist' — like, I feel even more empowered doing that," Jitan said. "I'm not looking for a reaction, I'm looking for people to internally challenge themselves. And I like that."

Civilian deaths are being dismissed as 'crisis actors' in Gaza and Israel

For others, however, like Prashar and the students in Vermont, there is a fear that the keffiyeh can provoke a violent reaction. Ghnaim sees this violence as a reflection of how dehumanized Palestinians and their cause for independence have become.

"The keffiyeh and our clothing will always reflect our current context and our identity," she said. "This is the history of Palestinian dress. We always express identity through our dress. And I think right now we see that, also, it seems people reflect their own beliefs and judgements of our identity onto our dress."

For Prashar, the confrontation in the Brooklyn playground has made him more defiant.

"It means that I stand in solidarity with all oppressed people, especially Palestinians," he said of wearing the keffiyeh. "I understand that it means a lot of different things to a lot of people. But for me, it's showing that I see them, I'm there for them."

"I'm never taking it off."

palestinian

Watch CBS News

Target says it's cutting back on Pride merchandise at some stores after backlash

By Aimee Picchi

Updated on: May 10, 2024 / 12:14 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Target is cutting back on the number of its stores that will cary Pride Month-related merchandise in June, a decision that comes after the retail chain last year faced a backlash and threats over some of the products.

Minneapolis-based Target said in a statement that its Pride merchandise will be available next month "in select stores, based on historical sales performance." A spokeswoman declined to disclose the number of stores that won't be carrying the merchandise. But a full assortment will be offered online, Target said.

In prior years, Target had typically sold the full Pride assortment across its 2,000 stores, but the decision to pare back comes after the retailer faced criticism last year over some of the collection's swimsuits. Some people made claims that the swimwear, labeled as "tuck-friendly" with "extra crotch coverage," was sold for children, although swimsuits with these labels were only available in adult sizes.

The decision to cut back on Pride merchandise availability, first reported by Bloomberg, also comes after some customers last year confronted workers and tipped over displays. Target also moved Pride displays to the back of its stores in certain Southern locations last year.

Target's latest moves are just another example of how companies are grappling with catering to different groups of customers at a time of extreme cultural divides, particularly around transgender rights. Last year, Bud Light's sales plunged after customers were angered by its attempt to broaden its customer base by partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Target said the stores chosen to carry the Pride merchandise this year will be based on "guest insights and consumer research."

" Target is committed to supporting the LGBTQIA+ community during Pride Month and year-round," Target added. "Most importantly, we want to create a welcoming and supportive environment for our LGBTQIA+ team members, which reflects our culture of care for the over 400,000 people who work at Target."

This year's Pride merchandise will include adult clothing, home products and food and beverages, with the items starting at $3, Target said.

—With reporting by the Associated Press.

Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

More from CBS News

Sacramento City Unified to start next 2 school years early. Here's when school will start

2 suspects, including former MLB pitcher, ordered to stand trial in Lake Tahoe murder case

Chinese community located on Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta maintains its charm

City of Marysville implements measures aimed at reducing highway traffic on residential streets

IMAGES

Original Research
How to write an original research article- tips for research scholars
PPT
(PDF) How to write an original research paper (and get it published)I
(PDF) How to Write an Original Research Article: A Guide for
Scholarly Sources: The A-Z Guide

VIDEO

Day 2: Basics of Scientific Research Writing (Batch 18)
Metho1: What Is Research?
Top 3 Favorite Original Research from 2023
Ten Types of Sentences Every Scientific Paper Should Have
TYPES OF PUBLICATIONS IN MEDICAL LITERATURE
Research Article Example: Deconstructing How To Write A Journal Article Through an Example

COMMENTS

Original Research
Definition: Original research refers to a type of research that involves the collection and analysis of new and original data to answer a specific research question or to test a hypothesis. This type of research is conducted by researchers who aim to generate new knowledge or add to the existing body of knowledge in a particular field or ...
Finding and Identifying Original Research Articles in the Sciences
An original research article is a report of research activity that is written by the researchers who conducted the research or experiment. Original research articles may also be referred to as: "primary research articles" or "primary scientific literature." In science courses, instructors may also refer to these as "peer-reviewed ...
What is an original research article?
An original research article is written by the person or people that conducted the experiment or observations. Original research articles are considered empirical or primary sources and present an original study. Articles that look at multiple studies are not considered original research articles. Search library databases using keywords like ...
Home
it is the report of a study written by the researchers who actually did the study. the researchers describe their hypothesis or research question and the purpose of the study. the researchers detail their research methods. the results of the research are reported. the researchers interpret their results and discuss possible implications.
Structure of a Research Article
Knowing these elements and the purpose of each serves help you to read and understand academic texts efficiently and effectively, and then apply what you read to your paper or project. Social Science (and Science) original research articles generally follow IMRD: Introduction- Methods-Results-Discussion. Introduction. Introduces topic of article.
Original Research
Original Research. An original research paper should present a unique argument of your own. In other words, the claim of the paper should be debatable and should be your (the researcher's) own original idea. Typically an original research paper builds on the existing research on a topic, addresses a specific question, presents the findings ...
Finding original (or "scientific") research articles: Definition and
Original research articles are primary sources: An "original" research article is a detailed account of research activity written by the scientists who did the research--not by someone else who is reporting on the research; it is a primary resource. Some instructors may refer to these as "scientific research" articles or as "empirical" research.
A young researcher's guide to writing an original research article
What does an original research article mean? For a manuscript to be considered an original research article, the following conditions need to be met: It should be written by the researchers who actually conducted the study. It should include the hypothesis or research question, the purpose of the study, and the details of the research methods. ...
Successful Scientific Writing and Publishing: A Step-by-Step Approach
Sections of an Original Research Article. Original research articles make up most of the peer-reviewed literature (), follow a standardized format, and are the focus of this article.The 4 main sections are the introduction, methods, results, and discussion, sometimes referred to by the initialism, IMRAD.
How to write an original research paper (and get it published)
Other tips to help you with the Results section: . If you need to cite the number in the text (not just in the table), and the total in the group is less than 50, do not include percentage. Write "7 of 34," not "7 (21%).". . Do not forget, if you have multiple comparisons, you probably need adjustment.
About Original Research
Definition: An original research article communicates the research question, methods, results, and conclusions of a research study or experiment conducted by the author(s). These articles present original research data or findings generated through the course of the authors' study and an analysis of that data or information.
Original Research
Research articles, empirical, research primary research, are based on original research. If you need to limit your sources to research articles, you must be able to tell the difference. Most research articles will contain the following: Abstract. A summary of the article. (Note: Abstracts appear in reviews or secondary articles as well.) Methods
Types of journal articles
Original Research: This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies.
Writing "Original" Papers
Writing Situation #1: Short Non-Research Papers. In the context of certain assignments, it's enough to come up with a thesis that's original to you—a thesis that you arrived at after thinking about the material you read, rather than an idea you encountered in one of the assigned sources. This will be true for the papers you write in Expos, as ...
Scientific Manuscript Writing: Original Research, Case Reports, Review
Journals provide guidelines to authors which should be followed closely. The three major types of articles (original research, case reports, and review articles) all generally follow the IMRAD format with slight variations in content. With planning and thought, manuscript writing does not have to be a daunting task. Download chapter PDF.
Empirical analysis of the text structure of original research articles
Successful publishing of an article depends on several factors, including the structure of the main text, the so-called introduction, methods, results and discussion structure (IMRAD). The first objective of our work is to provide recent results on the number of paragraphs (pars.) per section used in articles published in major medical journals.
What is an original research or single study article, and how do I find
Original research, also known as a single study, primary study or empirical study, is one that reports results of a scientific study rather than summarizing other articles. Basically, original research is where the researchers do the study and report their findings. Find an Original Research Article in the Library
What is originality in research?
The originality of a research including the results as well as the writing of the article. The best original research in which the findings are reported for the first time in the literature ...
Content and form of original research articles in general major medical
The title of an article is the main entrance for reading the full article. The aim of our work therefore is to examine differences of title content and form between original research articles and its changes over time. Using PubMed we examined title properties of 500 randomly chosen original research articles published in the general major medical journals BMJ, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM and PLOS ...
Research Guides: Finding Scholarly Articles: Home
What does that mean? Scholarly or primary research articles are peer-reviewed, which means that they have gone through the process of being read by reviewers or referees before being accepted for publication. When a scholar submits an article to a scholarly journal, the manuscript is sent to experts in that field to read and decide if the ...
Finding original research articles
Also, learn about the nature and characteristics of peer-reviewed and original research articles. Best bets for Original Research Articles-- Library databases for ENGL102. Scopus This link opens in a new window. Abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed literature covering the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and ...
What does originality in research mean? A student's perspective
Aim: To provide a student's perspective of what it means to be original when undertaking a PhD. Background: A review of the literature related to the concept of originality in doctoral research highlights the subjective nature of the concept in academia. Although there is much literature that explores the issues concerning examiners' views of originality, there is little on students' perspectives.
Original Research Articles
The methods section should include: the aim, design and setting of the study. the characteristics of participants or description of materials. a clear description of all processes, interventions and comparisons. Generic names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in research, include the brand names in parentheses.
Gain-of-function research is more than just tweaking risky viruses
Some research on emerging viruses can result in variants that gain the ability to infect people but this does not necessarily mean the research is dangerous or that it is not fruitful.
Why Is It Called "Missionary Position"?
Curiously, not once does that exact term appear in the text. What Priest did find, which he laid out in a 2001 paper published in Current Anthropology , were other elements of Kinsey's anecdote.
What marijuana reclassification means for the U.S.
WHAT WOULD THIS MEAN FOR RESEARCH? Because marijuana is on Schedule I, it's been very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve administering the drug. That has created something of a Catch-22: calls for more research, but barriers to doing it. (Scientists sometimes rely instead on people's own reports of their marijuana ...
Ouster (OUST) Upgraded to Strong Buy: What Does It Mean for the Stock?
Empirical research shows a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock movements, so it could be truly rewarding if such revisions are tracked for making ...
Our research shows a strong link between unemployment and domestic
The economic disparities in domestic violence have also increased in recent years. In 2001, rates of violence in the most disadvantaged parts of New South Wales were about 5.6 times higher in the ...
What is a keffiyeh and how did it become a symbol for Palestinians
What is a keffiyeh and what does it mean? First, the basics. The keffiyeh, also known as a hatta, is a traditional Arab headdress.Historically, it was worn by nomadic communities — or Bedouins ...
Target says it's cutting back on Pride merchandise at some stores after
Target is cutting back on the number of its stores that will cary Pride Month-related merchandise in June, a decision that comes after the retail chain last year faced a backlash and threats over ...

Original Research – Definition, Examples, Guide

Original Research

Types of Original Research

Basic Research

Applied Research

Exploratory Research

Descriptive Research

Correlational Research

Experimental Research

Longitudinal Research

Original Research Methods

Observational Research

Survey Research

Case Study Research

Qualitative research

Quantitative research

Data Collection Methods

Data Analysis Methods

How to Conduct Original Research

Purpose of Original Research

How to publish Original Research

How to Identify Original Research

Advantages of Original Research

Limitations of Original Research

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

You may also like

Documentary Research – Types, Methods and...

Scientific Research – Types, Purpose and Guide

Humanities Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Historical Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Artistic Research – Methods, Types and Examples

What is an original research article?

Identifying Original Research: What to Look For

Review articles

Press releases, newspaper or magazine articles

Tips for Finding Original research Articles

Tips for Finding the Source of a News Report about Science

Search The Site

WCU FAQs: Research Help

Research Help Question

Related Topics

Have a Question?

Original Research

What is Original Research?

Reading for Research: Social Sciences

Guide Acknowledgements

Librarian for Sociology, Environmental Sociology, MHS and Public Policy Studies

Original Research

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Body of the Report

Introduction

Literature Review

Methods (Procedures)

References/Works Cited

Finding original (or "scientific") research articles: Definition and description

Original research articles are primary sources:

Defining "empirical" research:

Anatomy of a scholarly article

Common characteristics of most original research articles

Here's what a citation might look like

Biology 303L: Ecology and Evolution

Original Research Articles

Other types of journal articles

Why is Published Original Research Important?

Scholarly Articles and Journals

Original Research Articles

Types of journal articles

fa3d988da6f218669ec27d6b6019a0cd

Writing "Original" Papers

Writing Situation #1: Short Non-Research Papers

Writing Situation #2: Short Research Papers and Term Papers

Writing Situation #3: The Junior Tutorial and the Senior Thesis

What Does It Mean to Be Controversial?

PDFs for this Section

Scientific Manuscript Writing: Original Research, Case Reports, Review Articles

Cite this chapter

Access this chapter

Suggested Readings