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First Time Authors
How to Write a Paper for Publication in a Medical Journal
TITLE PAGE
- Write the paper's title below
- List the study's authors (1 to a line, including middle initials and highest degrees)
- List the paper's authors' institutions (in the same order as the authors)
INTRODUCTION
- Provide a brief discussion of the general topic: Why is it important?
- Provide a brief discussion of prior work by you and/or others
- Provide an explicit statement of your study question/hypothesis
METHODS
- Describe your study site
- Describe your study population (source, inclusion, and exclusion criteria)
- Describe your recruitment methods in detail
- Describe your intervention (if an interventional study)
- Describe the data that you collected and how you collected them
- Describe your data analysis in detail (dependent variables, independent variables, comparisons, primary and secondary analyses, statistical methods used, P value accepted as significant, etc)
RESULTS
- Describe your subjects: numbers approached, enrolled, excluded, characteristics. (Do not repeat table data -- describe the table data in qualitative terms, where possible)
- Describe main analysis results. (Again, do not repeat table data)
- Describe secondary analysis results. (Again, do not repeat table data)
DISCUSSION
- Write down the most important take-home point that you want the reader to remember. Do not merely repeat the results. Then provide commentary based on what prior relevant studies have found
- Write down the second most important take-home point and discuss it
- Write down the third most important take-home point and discuss it. (Some papers will not have 3 take-home points.)
- List and discuss the study's limitations
- Write down your conclusions (usually a repeat of take-home point #1)
- Give future directions (often the next study you want to do following this one)
Adapted from Bill Tierney, IUPUI, Indianapolis, Indiana
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