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How to write a scientific paper: A hypothesis-based approach

February 2018
Global Psychiatry 1(1)

February 2018
1(1)

DOI:10.2478/gp-2018-0004

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Many books and other published recommendations provide a large, sometimes excessive amount of information to be included, and of mistakes to be avoided in research papers for academic journals. However, there is a lack of simple and clear recommendations on how to write such scientific articles. To make life easier for new authors, we propose a simple hypothesis-based approach, which consistently follows the study hypothesis, section by section throughout the manuscript: The introduction section should develop the study hypothesis, by introducing and explaining the relevant concepts, connecting these concepts and by stating the study hypotheses to be tested at the end. The material and methods section must describe the sample or material, the tools, instruments, procedures and analyses used to test the study hypothesis. The results section must describe the study sample, the data collected and the data analyses that lead to the confirmation or rejection of the hypothesis. The discussion must state if the study hypothesis has been confirmed or rejected, if the study result is comparable to, and compatible with other research. It should evaluate the reliability and validity of the study outcome, clarify the limitations of the study and explore the relevance of the supported or rejected hypothesis for clinical practice and future research. If needed, an abstract at the beginning of the manuscript, usually structured in objectives, material and methods, results and conclusions, should provide summaries in two to three sentences for each section. Acknowledgements, declarations of ethical approval, of informed consent by study subjects, of interests by authors and a reference list will be needed in most scientific journals.

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Global Psychiatry — Vol 1 | Issue 1 | 2018

PB ©  Reinhard Heun. This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-

NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/./).

MANUSCRIPT CONTENT AND STRUCTURE

Publication of new research is an essential step in scientic

progress (Szabo et al. in press). Many books and other

published recommendations provide a large, sometimes

excessive amount of issues and information to be included,

and of mistakes to be avoided in a scientic paper. However,

there is a lack of simple and clear recommendations on how

to write a manuscript. To make life easier for new authors,

we propose a simple hypothesis-based approach, which

consistently follows the study hypothesis, section by section,

throughout the manuscript. For simplicity, we will refer to

one study hypothesis in the following text, despite the fact

that larger studies may intend to test several independent,

connected or hierarchical hypotheses.

Scientic papers are usually structured in four sections, that

is, introduction, material and methods, results and discussion.

Other common parts of manuscripts are abstracts, the

reference list and acknowledgements. Declarations of ethical

approval by a registered committee, of informed consent

and of interests of the authors are needed when investigating

patient and control subjects.

Even though the headings and order may vary, the general

approach is usually the same for most psychiatric and other

medical journals. In simple terms, the introduction explains

the scientic relevance and the contents of the study hypothesis.

e methods section tells us how to test the hypothesis. e

results section should provide the answer to testing the study

hypothesis. e discussion should name and evaluate the

outcome of testing of the study hypothesis in more general

terms including its limitations and the potential implications

on clinical practice or future research.

e following paragraphs will provide essential details on the

roles and possible contents of the dierent sections using a

hypothesis-based approach.

Reinhard Heun1*

How to write a scientific paper: A hypothesis-based approach

Abstract

Many books and other published recommendations provide a large, sometimes excessive amount of information to be included, and

of mistakes to be avoided in research papers for academic journals. However, there is a lack of simple and clear recommendations

on how to write such scientic articles. To make life easier for new authors, we propose a simple hypothesis-based approach, which

consistently follows the study hypothesis, section by section throughout the manuscript: e introduction section should develop

the study hypothesis, by introducing and explaining the relevant concepts, connecting these concepts and by stating the study

hypotheses to be tested at the end. e material and methods section must describe the sample or material, the tools, instruments,

procedures and analyses used to test the study hypothesis. e results section must describe the study sample, the data collected

and the data analyses that lead to the conrmation or rejection of the hypothesis. e discussion must state if the study hypothesis

has been conrmed or rejected, if the study result is comparable to, and compatible with other research. It should evaluate the

reliability and validity of the study outcome, clarify the limitations of the study and explore the relevance of the supported or

rejected hypothesis for clinical practice and future research. If needed, an abstract at the beginning of the manuscript, usually

structured in objectives, material and methods, results and conclusions, should provide summaries in two to three sentences for

each section. Acknowledgements, declarations of ethical approval, of informed consent by study subjects, of interests by authors and

a reference list will be needed in most scientic journals.

1University of Bonn, Germany

*email: globalpsychiatry@gmx.com

DOI: 10.2478/gp-2018-0004

Received: 14 December 2017; Accepted: 20 December 2017

Keywords

Psychiatry, neuroscience, publication, manuscript, hypothesis

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How to write a scientific paper: A hypothesis-based approach

THE CONTENT OF THE ABSTRACT

e abstract is usually put at the beginning of a paper. It

should give two to three sentence summaries of each section

of the manuscript, usually structured in objectives, material

and methods, results and conclusions. e objectives

introduce the concepts relevant for the study, develop and

nally name the study hypothesis. e methods indicate the

tools and the ways the hypothesis was tested. Results describe

the data collection and analysis that lead to a conrmation

or rejection of the hypothesis. Conclusions must indicate

the conrmation or refusal of the hypothesis, validate the

outcome, may explore the practical or theoretical relevance of

the ndings and may provide specic recommendations for

necessary future research.

e importance of the abstract must not be underestimated as

most researchers will decide if they are going to acquire and

read the full paper based on the contents of the abstract.

ROLE OF THE INTRODUCTION

e introduction of the manuscript must develop and lead

towards the study hypothesis, paragraph by paragraph. An

initial paragraph may introduce the diseases or concepts to

be investigated. If there are several diseases or concepts to be

addressed, these could be explained in dierent paragraphs.

Parts of such paragraphs or, if need be, individual paragraphs

should introduce the general and specic relevance of the

diseases or concepts to be investigated. Depending on the

hypothesis to be developed, such relevance could be genetic,

biological, clinical, therapeutic, societal, epidemiologic,

nancial, and so on.

If there are dierent concepts or issues to be investigated by the

study, a later paragraph must explain the connections between

the dierent aspects of the study questions. Assuming that

most study hypotheses focus on the relevance of the possible

interactions of dierent concepts, for example, diseases,

prevalence, therapeutic approaches, and so on, there is a need

to review and present the relevant literature covering and

connecting these issues. is review of the relevant literature

must summarize what is known about the relevant issues

addressed by the study hypothesis, and what is unknown or

unclear about these issues.

e nal paragraph of the introduction should develop the

hypothesis by indicating the missing information in the

scientic literature, and what can be added to the scientic

knowledge by testing the study hypothesis. In other words,

what piece of the scientic puzzle can we get by testing the

study hypothesis. is last paragraph of the introduction

should nally explain and name the precise hypothesis in a

way that allows the systematic testing of the study hypothesis.

A precise description of the study hypothesis will introduce

the following section on materials and methods, and will

facilitate its understanding.

ROLE OF MATERIAL AND METHODS

e material and methods section may start by repeating the

study hypothesis in more formal and technical terms, relating

this to the dierent methods and conditions to be used for

testing it. It may be useful to name the null/alternative

hypothesis that is statistically tested.

It should be mentioned where and when the study was

performed, and why these conditions have been chosen.

Next, the sample selection, the inclusion and exclusion criteria

and the rationale for the choice of these must be described in a

way that other researchers can understand these and would be

able to reproduce these.

e choice of diagnostic instruments and interventions, and

the rationale for these choices must be explained with the

same precision. It will be important to dene by whom, how

and why the instruments and interventions were applied.

e outcome of the intervention or assessment must be

dened and must lead to the explanation of how the outcome

data have been collected, compiled, assessed and analysed to

test the study hypothesis.

e statistical section or paragraph must clarify how the raw

data were analysed to conrm or reject the hypothesis.

PROPOSED CONTENTS OF THE RESULTS SECTION

e results should start to give a precise description of the

sample or material as it nally has been selected. Depending on

the nature of the study hypothesis, the amount and necessary

precision of demographic or material description may vary.

Further paragraphs should describe the results of interventions

and assessments step by step following the course of the

procedures outlined in the methods.

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THE RELEVANCE OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements should be added when other persons

have substantially contributed or helped with dierent aspects

of the paper such as providing material or helping with

the literature search but do not qualify for full authorship.

Authorship would indicate that authors have contributed in

all aspects and stages of the study, and can claim scientic

responsibility and can support its scientic validity.

ROLE OF THE REFERENCES

e reference list should be compiled in line with the authors’

instructions of the journal for which the publication is

intended. Literature that is relevant, necessary and sucient to

understand the development, testing, outcome and discussion

of the study hypothesis must be cited, as long as it is not a part

of the general scientic knowledge and/or not a part of the

authors’ personal knowledge or conclusions.

LIMITATIONS OF THIS HYPOTHESISBASED PROPOSAL

is proposal for a hypothesis-based writing of a scientic

manuscript is formulated as a result of the experience of the

author as reader, author, reviewer and editor of psychiatric

and neurological papers. ese recommendations are meant

to help new researchers who are struggling with their rst

papers. ey cannot and do not intend to be exhaustive.

Covering all necessities, possibilities, complexities and

potential mistakes of scientic articles would defeat the initial

purpose of providing some simple and manageable guidance

in a highly complicated scientic framework.

ere are much more extensive recommendations and

checklists to be found for dierent types of papers including

the recommendations for systematic reviews such as

PRISMA (Liberati et al 2009) and AMSTAR (Kung et al

2010) or for guidance papers (Heun and Gaebel 2015).

Such recommendations may be helpful to check the format

and completeness of the relevant information for specic

types of papers. However, we are condent that using a

hypothesis-based approach in all parts of a manuscript may

be a reasonable and helpful aide-memoire and guidance for

writing a scientic paper. Using the current hypothesis-based

approach is unlikely to reduce the chances of acceptance and

publication of a research article in a medical journal.

e main results should be focussing on the evaluation of the

study hypothesis and must provide a clear answer if the study

hypothesis has been conrmed or rejected.

In case there are important and relevant results that have

not been part of the initial intention of testing the study

hypothesis, such results may be explained and summarised

under the headings of results of explorative data analyses.

Tables and gures should be used within the results section if

they can provide additional information or when study results

can be presented more clearly or more economically than in

text format. Table and gures should add to but not repeat the

text, and vice versa.

THE DISCUSSION SECTION

e discussion section should initially state the conrmation

or rejection of the hypothesis in more general and less

technical terms than in the results section.

Following paragraphs should assess if the outcome of the

study is in agreement and can be validated by similar studies

and by supporting evidence from comparable studies within

the research context of the hypothesis. Does the outcome of

the study match or contradict other comparable publications,

and if so, then why?

Another paragraph may explain if the outcome of the

conrmation or refusal of the study hypothesis ts into the

context of the relevant research covering the study question

or if there are any contradictions, and if so, what the possible

reasons for such inconsistencies may be.

Another essential paragraph may focus on the limitations

of the study, the data collection, the data analyses, and on

the limitations of the conclusion that can be made from the

acceptance or rejection of the study hypothesis. In other

words, how far can the results be generalised.

A conclusions paragraph may focus on what the outcome of

the hypothesis testing means in particular and in general. How

can this conrmation or rejection of the study hypothesis be

used for clinical practice or future research, that is, for the

testing of the next hypotheses?

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How to write a scientific paper: A hypothesis-based approach

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Kung J, Chiappelli F, Cajulis OO, Avezova R, Kossan G, Chew L, et

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Based Health Care: Validation of Revised Assessment of Multiple

Systematic Reviews (RAMSTAR) for Grading of Clinical Relevance.

Open Dent J 2010;4:84–91.

Liberati A, Altman DG, Tetzlaff J, Mulrow C, Gøtzsche PC, Ioannidis

JP, et al. The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic

reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate health care

interventions: explanation and elaboration. J Clin Epidemiol

2009;62(10):e1–34.

Szabo CP, Castaldelli-Maia JM; Chandra P, Cia A, Heun R, Lecic-

Tosevski D, Riba M, Tyrer P. Scientiﬁc publishing: a developmental

role for the World Psychiatric Association. Global Psychiatry (in

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