Scientific Report Writing: Overview

This resource will help you to:

• Recognise the importance, purpose, and general structure of scientific report writing. 
• Describe the main points to be covered in each part of the IMRaD structure (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion). 
• Identify the IMRaD structure in research papers.  
• Plan a scientific report by adapting this structure to your assignment or discipline.

Science is the investigation of physical and natural phenomena through observation, experimentation, and theoretical explanation.  The knowledge produced by such investigation forms our scientific understanding of these phenomena – from how our immune system defends us to how the Earth stays in orbit!  Although science covers a wide range of topics, all ‘good’ science starts with developing a systematic plan called the scientific method.

In general, the scientific method involves identifying a problem, performing some research or experimentation to help explain that problem, and then reporting your findings to contribute to our collective understanding to that problem.  This final step – reporting your results – is how we communicate our findings to other scientists and to the rest of the world, and is arguably the most important part of the scientific method.  One way we communicate these results is through scientific report writing.

“A scientific experiment, no matter how spectacular the results, is not completed until the results are published” (Day & Gastel, as cited in Wu, 2011).

In your training as scientists at university, it is important that you become effective communicators of science to a range of audiences and for a range of purposes.  Perhaps you are developing your own research project or experiment, turning your thesis into a research paper, or maybe you are writing up a report from an undergraduate laboratory class.  Regardless, scientific writing at university will generally follow the same structure, with slight differences depending on your discipline. For example, it is common to combine Results and Discussion for chemistry, but not for biology. Therefore, it is important that you follow the guidance provided by the academic and adhere to the task instructions.

Scientific reports generally follow the IMRaD structure: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.  As shown in the image below (Wu, 2011), the focus of the report should be shaped like an hourglass:

• Start broad in the Introduction (give background information beyond your study),
• then narrow your focus through the Methods and Results (focussing only on your study),
• then become broad again towards the end of your Discussion (linking back to implications and literature beyond your study). 

Each of these sections aims to answer one to two main questions, as summarised in the table below (Wu, 2011).

This video (10:18 min) from Steve Kirk (2020) provides a great walk-through of scientific report structure with annotated examples from real research papers.