ABSTRACT

It is surprising how many people undertake a piece of research and carry it almost to completion, but fail to take the final steps of writing about it in a formal paper and seeing it through to publication. Many of us have some results lying in a drawer which we intend to write up—one day—or an idea for a paper which has not been written—yet. There are a number of reasons for this. Sometimes, having embarked on a project, one can become disillusioned with it, believing it not to be worth publishing. This may be true, but until you have written at least a draft of a possible paper, it is difficult to be sure. A much more common reason is that people lack confidence in writing and find it difficult. We sometimes forget that to write successfully needs practice, as with any skilled behaviour. Unfortunately it is a skill often neglected during clinical and research training, and many people do not have anyone to help them acquire it. This chapter aims to help the relatively inexperienced researcher at every stage of writing a research report. I shall focus on writing an empirical paper for publication in a journal, but many of the points apply equally to other forms of writing, such as a case report, a review article or a dissertation for examination.