<aside> 💡 Use this table of contents to navigate around this guide.

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<aside> 💡 This guide focuses on writing academic journal articles (also referred to as “papers” in the text). While some considerations may be applicable to (academic) writing in general, please refer to Writing a kappa or Writing a monograph respectively if that is what you are looking for. This guide is strongly inspired by this GTS course led by Christine Räisänen (which unfortunately seems to have been retired).

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The traditional and still-dominant way of communicating research is through written text. Writing is therefore a crucial activity for PhD students. Some consider writing a skill, some consider it a form of art. Regardless of how you view writing, becoming “better” at it will help you throughout your TME PhD journey. As expressed by Christine Räisänen (paraphrasing): “Most papers are not rejected because they lack the necessary information, but because they present it in a non-obvious manner.”

That said, there is no such thing as “one best way” of writing. Still, below you find some tips which might help you in writing your next journal article.

TL;DR: Executive summary

• There is no “one best way” of writing. Writing is individual and contextual.
• Most research papers follow a common base structure. They can be thought of as consisting of a frontend and backend part, with the backend part reversely mirroring the frontend.
• Academic writing is a conversation, not the production of a static artefact.
• Academic writing is a strategic endeavor. Still, the key to well-written research papers is in the doing - writing and (re-)writing, again and again.
• Academic writing is a collaborative process.

Structure

Traditions and preferences can vary heavily between fields, journals, and editors/reviewers. Still, most academic journal articles follow a conventional logic - a base structure that determines how you present your research. In this guide, we portray the journal article as consisting of two main parts - frontend and backend - each containing different sections of your paper. Please regard these sections as an orientation rather than a fixed guide. Again, traditions and preferences may vary heavily. Still, most articles will contain sections fulfilling the functions of the sections outlined below, even if they might be called differently.

In general, the frontend and backend of an article are reversely mirroring each other:

• Frontend: talking to the past → argumentative
  • From general to specific (outside-in)
  • What? Why?
• Backend: talking to the future → argumentative
  • From specific to general (inside-out)

<aside> 💡 Note that the Methodology and Results section, though sometimes considered to lie outside the “frontend” - “backend” distinction, are in the following treated as parts of the frontend (Methodology) and backend (Results) respectively.

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Frontend

The frontend is where you frame your article: Which field do you address? What is the problem? How will your paper address this problem? Why should people care? As said before, the frontend is oriented towards the past, and moving from the general to the specific (outside-in).

The frontend is the first thing editors, reviewers and eventually readers will read. If you don’t catch their attention here, they won’t read on. Therefore, the frontend may be regarded as more important than the backend, at least for the first version you submit to the journal. If editors/reviewers think that your frontend is sound and interesting, they tend to be more forgiving in the backend.