what is the structure of a article

Scientific Writing: Structuring a scientific article

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• Structuring a scientific article
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How to Structure a Scientific Article

Many scientific articles include the following elements:

I. Abstract: The abstract should briefly summarize the contents of your article. Be sure to include a quick overview of the focus, results and conclusion of your study.

II. Introduction:  The introduction should include any relevant background information and articulate the idea that is being investigated. Why is this study unique? If others have performed research on the topic, include a literature review. 

III. Methods and Materials:  The methods and materials section should provide information on how the study was conducted and what materials were included. Other researchers should be able to reproduce your study based on the information found in this section. 

IV. Results:  The results sections includes the data produced by your study. It should reflect an unbiased account of the study's findings. 

V.  Discussion and Conclusion:  The discussion section provides information on what researches felt was significant and analyzes the data. You may also want to provide final thoughts and ideas for further research in the conclusion section. 

For more information, see How to Read a Scientific Paper.  

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Module 4: Strategic Reading

The Structure of an Academic Article

Generally speaking, there is a common flow to scholarly articles. While not a template per se, you can be assured that the following components will be present in most articles. Learning to identify each component is a key step in the strategic reading process, and will help you save time as you screen articles for relevance. Check out the interactive example below that describes each section.

Click on the purple question marks to learn more about each component of an academic article.

Structure of an Academic Article by Emma Seston. Licenced under Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 .

Key Takeaways

Learning to identify each component is a key step in the strategic reading process, and will help you save time as you screen articles for relevance.

Advanced Research Skills: Conducting Literature and Systematic Reviews Copyright © 2021 by Kelly Dermody; Cecile Farnum; Daniel Jakubek; Jo-Anne Petropoulos; Jane Schmidt; and Reece Steinberg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Article Contents

Primacy of the research question, structure of the paper, writing a research article: advice to beginners.

• Article contents
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Thomas V. Perneger, Patricia M. Hudelson, Writing a research article: advice to beginners, International Journal for Quality in Health Care , Volume 16, Issue 3, June 2004, Pages 191–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzh053

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Writing research papers does not come naturally to most of us. The typical research paper is a highly codified rhetorical form [ 1 , 2 ]. Knowledge of the rules—some explicit, others implied—goes a long way toward writing a paper that will get accepted in a peer-reviewed journal.

A good research paper addresses a specific research question. The research question—or study objective or main research hypothesis—is the central organizing principle of the paper. Whatever relates to the research question belongs in the paper; the rest doesn’t. This is perhaps obvious when the paper reports on a well planned research project. However, in applied domains such as quality improvement, some papers are written based on projects that were undertaken for operational reasons, and not with the primary aim of producing new knowledge. In such cases, authors should define the main research question a posteriori and design the paper around it.

Generally, only one main research question should be addressed in a paper (secondary but related questions are allowed). If a project allows you to explore several distinct research questions, write several papers. For instance, if you measured the impact of obtaining written consent on patient satisfaction at a specialized clinic using a newly developed questionnaire, you may want to write one paper on the questionnaire development and validation, and another on the impact of the intervention. The idea is not to split results into ‘least publishable units’, a practice that is rightly decried, but rather into ‘optimally publishable units’.

What is a good research question? The key attributes are: (i) specificity; (ii) originality or novelty; and (iii) general relevance to a broad scientific community. The research question should be precise and not merely identify a general area of inquiry. It can often (but not always) be expressed in terms of a possible association between X and Y in a population Z, for example ‘we examined whether providing patients about to be discharged from the hospital with written information about their medications would improve their compliance with the treatment 1 month later’. A study does not necessarily have to break completely new ground, but it should extend previous knowledge in a useful way, or alternatively refute existing knowledge. Finally, the question should be of interest to others who work in the same scientific area. The latter requirement is more challenging for those who work in applied science than for basic scientists. While it may safely be assumed that the human genome is the same worldwide, whether the results of a local quality improvement project have wider relevance requires careful consideration and argument.

Once the research question is clearly defined, writing the paper becomes considerably easier. The paper will ask the question, then answer it. The key to successful scientific writing is getting the structure of the paper right. The basic structure of a typical research paper is the sequence of Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (sometimes abbreviated as IMRAD). Each section addresses a different objective. The authors state: (i) the problem they intend to address—in other terms, the research question—in the Introduction; (ii) what they did to answer the question in the Methods section; (iii) what they observed in the Results section; and (iv) what they think the results mean in the Discussion.

In turn, each basic section addresses several topics, and may be divided into subsections (Table 1 ). In the Introduction, the authors should explain the rationale and background to the study. What is the research question, and why is it important to ask it? While it is neither necessary nor desirable to provide a full-blown review of the literature as a prelude to the study, it is helpful to situate the study within some larger field of enquiry. The research question should always be spelled out, and not merely left for the reader to guess.

Typical structure of a research paper

The Methods section should provide the readers with sufficient detail about the study methods to be able to reproduce the study if so desired. Thus, this section should be specific, concrete, technical, and fairly detailed. The study setting, the sampling strategy used, instruments, data collection methods, and analysis strategies should be described. In the case of qualitative research studies, it is also useful to tell the reader which research tradition the study utilizes and to link the choice of methodological strategies with the research goals [ 3 ].

The Results section is typically fairly straightforward and factual. All results that relate to the research question should be given in detail, including simple counts and percentages. Resist the temptation to demonstrate analytic ability and the richness of the dataset by providing numerous tables of non-essential results.

The Discussion section allows the most freedom. This is why the Discussion is the most difficult to write, and is often the weakest part of a paper. Structured Discussion sections have been proposed by some journal editors [ 4 ]. While strict adherence to such rules may not be necessary, following a plan such as that proposed in Table 1 may help the novice writer stay on track.

References should be used wisely. Key assertions should be referenced, as well as the methods and instruments used. However, unless the paper is a comprehensive review of a topic, there is no need to be exhaustive. Also, references to unpublished work, to documents in the grey literature (technical reports), or to any source that the reader will have difficulty finding or understanding should be avoided.

Having the structure of the paper in place is a good start. However, there are many details that have to be attended to while writing. An obvious recommendation is to read, and follow, the instructions to authors published by the journal (typically found on the journal’s website). Another concerns non-native writers of English: do have a native speaker edit the manuscript. A paper usually goes through several drafts before it is submitted. When revising a paper, it is useful to keep an eye out for the most common mistakes (Table 2 ). If you avoid all those, your paper should be in good shape.

Common mistakes seen in manuscripts submitted to this journal

Huth EJ . How to Write and Publish Papers in the Medical Sciences , 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins, 1990 .

Browner WS . Publishing and Presenting Clinical Research . Baltimore, MD: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 1999 .

Devers KJ , Frankel RM. Getting qualitative research published. Educ Health 2001 ; 14 : 109 –117.

Docherty M , Smith R. The case for structuring the discussion of scientific papers. Br Med J 1999 ; 318 : 1224 –1225.

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• Research Guides

Reading for Research: Social Sciences

Structure of a research article.

• Structural Read

Guide Acknowledgements

How to Read a Scholarly Article from the Howard Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University

Strategic Reading for Research   from the Howard Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University

Bridging the Gap between Faculty Expectation and the Student Experience: Teaching Students toAnnotate and Synthesize Sources

Librarian for Sociology, Environmental Sociology, MHS and Public Policy Studies

Academic writing has features that vary only slightly across the different disciplines. Knowing these elements and the purpose of each serves help you to read and understand academic texts efficiently and effectively, and then apply what you read to your paper or project.

Social Science (and Science) original research articles generally follow IMRD: Introduction- Methods-Results-Discussion

Introduction

• Introduces topic of article
• Presents the "Research Gap"/Statement of Problem article will address
• How research presented in the article will solve the problem presented in research gap.
• Literature Review. presenting and evaluating previous scholarship on a topic.  Sometimes, this is separate section of the article. 

​Method & Results

• How research was done, including analysis and measurements.  
• Sometimes labeled as "Research Design"
• What answers were found
• Interpretation of Results (What Does It Mean? Why is it important?)
• Implications for the Field, how the study contributes to the existing field of knowledge
• Suggestions for further research
• Sometimes called Conclusion

You might also see IBC: Introduction - Body - Conclusion

• Identify the subject
• State the thesis 
• Describe why thesis is important to the field (this may be in the form of a literature review or general prose)

Body  

• Presents Evidence/Counter Evidence
• Integrate other writings (i.e. evidence) to support argument 
• Discuss why others may disagree (counter-evidence) and why argument is still valid
• Summary of argument
• Evaluation of argument by pointing out its implications and/or limitations 
• Anticipate and address possible counter-claims
• Suggest future directions of research
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Structuring your article correctly

Anthony Newman

About this module

One of the key goals when writing a journal article is to communicate the findings clearly. In order to help researchers achieve that objective, scientific papers share a common structure (with slight variations per journal). Clear communication isn’t the only reason these article elements are so important; for example, the title, abstract, and keywords all help to ensure the article is found, indexed, and advertised to potential readers.

In this interactive module, we walk early career researchers through each of the building blocks. We help you understand the type of content each element should contain. We also share tips on how you can maximize their potential, such as key points to consider when writing your article title.

You will come away with the detailed knowledge you need to write an effective scientific article, increasing your chances of publication success.

About the presenter

Senior Publisher, Life Sciences, Elsevier

Anthony Newman is a Senior Publisher with Elsevier and is based in Amsterdam. Each year he presents numerous Author Workshops and other similar trainings worldwide. He is currently responsible for fifteen biochemistry and laboratory medicine journals, he joined Elsevier over thirty years ago and has been Publisher for more than twenty of those years. Before then he was the marketing communications manager for the biochemistry journals of Elsevier.  By training he is a polymer chemist and was active in the surface coating industry before leaving London and moving to Amsterdam in 1987 to join Elsevier.

Guide to reference managers: How to effectively manage your references

How to prepare your manuscript

How to write an abstract and improve your article

Generative AI in the Publishing Community

Author policies on the use of Generative AI

Writing a scientific paper: from clutter to clarity, elements of style for writing scientific journal articles, preparing to write for an interdisciplinary journal, how to get published, how to publish in scholarly journals.

Elsevier Early Career Resources -- Advice for young and ambitious scientists

Elsevier Early Career Resources -- Look for the seed of brilliance

How to Write Great Papers (workshop on edition & publication)

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Writing an article

Topic outline.

The purpose of an article is often to inform and persuade the reader. 

Articles give the reader information about a certain topic, bringing together and discussing different perspectives to provide a balanced argument which lets the reader make up their own mind about the topic. 

Articles can also be used to persuade the reader that a certain viewpoint is correct. For example, articles in newspapers or magazines might express a particular viewpoint or perspective; this may be positive or negative depending on the topic. 

The ways you use language and organise your ideas when writing an article will depend on the audience and the purpose you are writing for.

• think about the audience that the article is for – w hen writing an article, you do not usually know your readers personally and so you will need to think about their likely interests and experience before you write
• how you expect, or want, your audience to react – re member that the tone of most articles should be semi-formal, so before deciding on your tone imagine your article being read out loud and how that might sound to your reader. For example, an article reviewing a film may be humorous, even sarcastic, but that would not work well for more serious readers or topics
• the purpose for the article – is th e purpose, or reason, for writing your article to persuade your readers to agree with you or to invite your readers to think about different points of view and decide for themselves? For example, do you need to sound reliable and well informed, or choose words that strongly convey a particular emotion?
• how to keep your readers interest – ima gine how boring it would be for your reader if you used the same kind of sentences and simple repetitive vocabulary all the way through your article. Try to include a range of grammatical structures and relevant vocabulary to make sure that your reader wants to keep reading.
• Plan a route through your article before you start writing it – th e structure of an article is usually in three parts. For example:
• An introduction – engage your reader’s interest and introduce your argument or the main points of the topic to be discussed.
• A middle – develop relevant and interesting points about the topic to interest and/or convince your readers to think about a particular perspective.
• An end – d raw your points together and leave your reader with a clear impression of the argument you want them to believe or the viewpoints you would like them to consider.
• Organise your ideas into paragraphs as appropriate – this will help you to develop and support your points convincingly, to build your argument and/or offer a full explanation of a particular point of view.
• Show your reader at a glance what your article is about – articles usually have a suitable headline to attract their readers’ attention and you can choose to use subheadings (a bit like mini headlines) to help break your article up and move your reader on. Do not overdo these, but well-chosen subheadings can help to catch and keep your reader’s attention, as well as sum up the main points you are making.
• Show the connections between ideas in sentences and paragraphs – for example, where a new point or idea follows on from what you have already said you might use linking words or phrases such as, 'in addition’, ‘likewise’ or ‘similarly’.
• Example of an article

Read a scholarly article

• Introduction
• Types of Scholarly Articles
• Interactive Article Diagram
• Reading for different purposes

The Structure of Scholarly Articles

Understanding the structure of scholarly articles is probably the most important part of understanding the article. The following structure is used in most scholarly articles, with the exception of (a) articles which are  entirely  literature reviews and (b) humanities articles. 

These sections may not always be labeled this way, and sometimes multiple sections will be merged into one (like the introduction & literature review). 

Article sections in the order in which they appear

• Literature Review (sometimes not labeled)
• Methodology
• Discussion / Conclusion

Article sections in order of importance

You should always read..., the abstract.

The abstract is usually a one-paragraph summary of the article. If the article doesn't seem useful after reading the abstract, don't read any further.

The Introduction & Literature Review

The introduction and literature review will help you understand:

• What the authors are writing about (their research questions )
• Why the authors are writing about this topic
• What others have written on this topic

The Discussion & Conclusion

The discussion and conclusion are at the end (just before the reference list). If the authors conducted an experiment, these sections should provide a summary of what the authors found, how their findings fit into the larger conversation about the topic, and what they believe should be researched in the future.

You may not need to read...

Methodology & results.

Do you need to read the methodology & results sections? It depends on your purpose for reading the article. You may want to read these sections if:

You're using the article as a source in a research paper *

If you're a first or second year student, or the research paper is on a topic unrelated to your major , you may want to skip over these sections. These sections are the most difficult to understand unless you have a high level of expertise in both the topic and research in your discipline.

If you're a junior, a senior, or a graduate student, and the article is in your discipline, then you most likely have the level of expertise necessary to understand most of these sections.

You're conducting your own research project *

You may be required to read this section in a particular class.

If you're not sure whether you should read these sections, ask your professor.

* Research has two meanings:

• Doing a thorough investigation of a topic (this would include things like searching Google, doing library research, etc.). When we say "research paper", we're referring to this kind of research.
• Trying to answer a specific question through experimentation and analysis. When we say "research project", we're referring to this kind of research.

The methodology section:

• Explains how the authors intend to answer their research questions
• What kind of data they are going to collect, and from who (or what)
• How they are going to (or how they did) collect that data

The results section usually involves analysis of the data collected.

• Search Google or Wikipedia for unfamiliar terms or concepts
• Ask your professor for help with other questions

Here's a real-life example:

• Researchers wanted to know whether pet ownership and/or medication had the best effects on high blood pressure caused by stress.
• They tested this by having some participants adopt a pet and take a medication, while others just took medication.
• The data they collected included blood pressure readings.
• They analyzed this data using statistical methods.

Source : Allen, K., Shykoff, B. E., & Izzo Jr, J. L. (2001). Pet ownership, but not ACE inhibitor therapy, blunts home blood pressure responses to mental stress. Hypertension, 38 (4), 815-820.

Other Important Sections to Review

These parts of a scholarly article probably won't contribute to your understanding of the article, but they're helpful in other ways:

References / Bibliographies

If you've read the introduction and literature review, you may have come across some sources that might be useful for your topic. All their sources should be at the end of the article or in footnotes! Check out our guide on finding sources using bibliographies .

Citation information

Many articles have the journal title, volume and issue numbers, and page numbers listed right on the article. This information is usually at the top of the first page of the article.

Author credentials

Author credentials are usually listed on the first page of the article, underneath the authors' names, or listed as footnotes. These credentials usually indicate where the authors work. This should help if you want to contact the authors with questions!

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How to Read a Scientific Paper: Structure of an Article

• Structure of an Article
• Online Tutorials

STOP:  Reading a scientific article is not like reading a book, trying to plow right through is often overwhelming. Some of the research might be new to you or beyond your level of expertise. However, reading scientific articles is good practice to learn how to identify the important points and conclusions made by the authors and critically evaluate those ideas as well.

INSTEAD : Articles are meant to be skimmed and perused first. For example: look at the abstract, see if it interests you, jump to the discussion and conclusions, what did the authors learn? Do you want to know more then pop back to the methods and see how they did it or look at the results and see if the discussion accurately captures the findings. 

The Abstract of an article is a short summary of the article's contents. Often it includes the focus, results, and conclusions of the study. Since the abstract does not contain all the information found in the article, it's best to view it as a tool for deciding if you should investigate the article further. An article's abstract will always be freely available to view. 

Questions to ask while reading the abstract :

• Does this interest me?
• Is this related to my area of research?

Introduction and Literature Review

The Introduction of an article explains the idea being investigated, and gives background information if necessary. The introduction should also indicate why the study done in this particular article is unique, or how it adds to the overall discussion. The latter part of the introduction will also contain a literature review, this is a brief summary of related research that occurred before this article was written and that this article seeks to expand on.

Questions to ask while reading the introduction :

• What is the author's goal in writing this article?
• What area is the article building on?
• How is this research unique?
• Will this article tell me anything new?

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods of an article tells you how the study was performed. It should include the specific steps of the experiment or study, so as to be repeatable. 

Questions to ask while reading materials and methods : 

• Is all the information present in order to repeat the experiment or study carried out?
• Are the steps the authors took clearly explained?

The Results of an article should give an unbiased account of what the study's findings were, with data included. 

Sometimes the Results and Discussion section (described next) are combined.

Questions to ask while reading the results:

• Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way?
• Is data provided to complement the findings?
• Is the data clear and understandable?

The Discussion of an article tells you what the researchers felt was significant about the results. This section contains an analysis of the data, and may point to facts and figures.

Questions to ask while reading the discussion:  

• Is the argument made by the authors supported by the data present in the results?
• After reading the discussion do you find that more data should have been provided in the results?
• Are there weaknesses in their argument?

The Conclusion of an article gives you the final thoughts of the researchers. It may reiterate what they noted in the discussion, or may be combined with the discussion. It may provide limitations present in the study or give recommendations for further research. This is the chance for the authors to clearly and succinctly state the ultimate finding or purpose of the article.

Questions to ask while reading the conclusion:

• Is the conclusion valid?
• Based on what you have read, what other research should be explored next?

The References of an article lists the works used in the research and writing of the article. Any articles mentioned in the introduction should be present here, as should any studies that were modeled in the materials and methods.

Question to ask while reviewing the references:

• What other articles should I read?
• What other authors are respected in this field?
• What journals are frequently cited in this area?

Suggested Further Reading

Dean, R. (2013). How to read a paper and appraise the evidence . In Practice , 35(5) , 282-285.

Pain, Elisabeth. “ How to (Seriously) Read a Scientific Paper .” Science , 21 Mar. 2016.

Ruben, Adam. “ How to Read a Scientific Paper .” Science , 20 Jan. 2016.

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How to write a review article?

In the medical sciences, the importance of review articles is rising. When clinicians want to update their knowledge and generate guidelines about a topic, they frequently use reviews as a starting point. The value of a review is associated with what has been done, what has been found and how these findings are presented. Before asking ‘how,’ the question of ‘why’ is more important when starting to write a review. The main and fundamental purpose of writing a review is to create a readable synthesis of the best resources available in the literature for an important research question or a current area of research. Although the idea of writing a review is attractive, it is important to spend time identifying the important questions. Good review methods are critical because they provide an unbiased point of view for the reader regarding the current literature. There is a consensus that a review should be written in a systematic fashion, a notion that is usually followed. In a systematic review with a focused question, the research methods must be clearly described. A ‘methodological filter’ is the best method for identifying the best working style for a research question, and this method reduces the workload when surveying the literature. An essential part of the review process is differentiating good research from bad and leaning on the results of the better studies. The ideal way to synthesize studies is to perform a meta-analysis. In conclusion, when writing a review, it is best to clearly focus on fixed ideas, to use a procedural and critical approach to the literature and to express your findings in an attractive way.

The importance of review articles in health sciences is increasing day by day. Clinicians frequently benefit from review articles to update their knowledge in their field of specialization, and use these articles as a starting point for formulating guidelines. [ 1 , 2 ] The institutions which provide financial support for further investigations resort to these reviews to reveal the need for these researches. [ 3 ] As is the case with all other researches, the value of a review article is related to what is achieved, what is found, and the way of communicating this information. A few studies have evaluated the quality of review articles. Murlow evaluated 50 review articles published in 1985, and 1986, and revealed that none of them had complied with clear-cut scientific criteria. [ 4 ] In 1996 an international group that analyzed articles, demonstrated the aspects of review articles, and meta-analyses that had not complied with scientific criteria, and elaborated QUOROM (QUality Of Reporting Of Meta-analyses) statement which focused on meta-analyses of randomized controlled studies. [ 5 ] Later on this guideline was updated, and named as PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). [ 6 ]

Review articles are divided into 2 categories as narrative, and systematic reviews. Narrative reviews are written in an easily readable format, and allow consideration of the subject matter within a large spectrum. However in a systematic review, a very detailed, and comprehensive literature surveying is performed on the selected topic. [ 7 , 8 ] Since it is a result of a more detailed literature surveying with relatively lesser involvement of author’s bias, systematic reviews are considered as gold standard articles. Systematic reviews can be diivded into qualitative, and quantitative reviews. In both of them detailed literature surveying is performed. However in quantitative reviews, study data are collected, and statistically evaluated (ie. meta-analysis). [ 8 ]

Before inquring for the method of preparation of a review article, it is more logical to investigate the motivation behind writing the review article in question. The fundamental rationale of writing a review article is to make a readable synthesis of the best literature sources on an important research inquiry or a topic. This simple definition of a review article contains the following key elements:

• The question(s) to be dealt with
• Methods used to find out, and select the best quality researches so as to respond to these questions.
• To synthetize available, but quite different researches

For the specification of important questions to be answered, number of literature references to be consulted should be more or less determined. Discussions should be conducted with colleagues in the same area of interest, and time should be reserved for the solution of the problem(s). Though starting to write the review article promptly seems to be very alluring, the time you spend for the determination of important issues won’t be a waste of time. [ 9 ]

The PRISMA statement [ 6 ] elaborated to write a well-designed review articles contains a 27-item checklist ( Table 1 ). It will be reasonable to fulfill the requirements of these items during preparation of a review article or a meta-analysis. Thus preparation of a comprehensible article with a high-quality scientific content can be feasible.

PRISMA statement: A 27-item checklist

Contents and format

Important differences exist between systematic, and non-systematic reviews which especially arise from methodologies used in the description of the literature sources. A non-systematic review means use of articles collected for years with the recommendations of your colleagues, while systematic review is based on struggles to search for, and find the best possible researches which will respond to the questions predetermined at the start of the review.

Though a consensus has been reached about the systematic design of the review articles, studies revealed that most of them had not been written in a systematic format. McAlister et al. analyzed review articles in 6 medical journals, and disclosed that in less than one fourth of the review articles, methods of description, evaluation or synthesis of evidence had been provided, one third of them had focused on a clinical topic, and only half of them had provided quantitative data about the extend of the potential benefits. [ 10 ]

Use of proper methodologies in review articles is important in that readers assume an objective attitude towards updated information. We can confront two problems while we are using data from researches in order to answer certain questions. Firstly, we can be prejudiced during selection of research articles or these articles might be biased. To minimize this risk, methodologies used in our reviews should allow us to define, and use researches with minimal degree of bias. The second problem is that, most of the researches have been performed with small sample sizes. In statistical methods in meta-analyses, available researches are combined to increase the statistical power of the study. The problematic aspect of a non-systematic review is that our tendency to give biased responses to the questions, in other words we apt to select the studies with known or favourite results, rather than the best quality investigations among them.

As is the case with many research articles, general format of a systematic review on a single subject includes sections of Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion ( Table 2 ).

Structure of a systematic review

Preparation of the review article

Steps, and targets of constructing a good review article are listed in Table 3 . To write a good review article the items in Table 3 should be implemented step by step. [ 11 – 13 ]

Steps of a systematic review

The research question

It might be helpful to divide the research question into components. The most prevalently used format for questions related to the treatment is PICO (P - Patient, Problem or Population; I-Intervention; C-appropriate Comparisons, and O-Outcome measures) procedure. For example In female patients (P) with stress urinary incontinence, comparisons (C) between transobturator, and retropubic midurethral tension-free band surgery (I) as for patients’ satisfaction (O).

Finding Studies

In a systematic review on a focused question, methods of investigation used should be clearly specified.

Ideally, research methods, investigated databases, and key words should be described in the final report. Different databases are used dependent on the topic analyzed. In most of the clinical topics, Medline should be surveyed. However searching through Embase and CINAHL can be also appropriate.

While determining appropriate terms for surveying, PICO elements of the issue to be sought may guide the process. Since in general we are interested in more than one outcome, P, and I can be key elements. In this case we should think about synonyms of P, and I elements, and combine them with a conjunction AND.

One method which might alleviate the workload of surveying process is “methodological filter” which aims to find the best investigation method for each research question. A good example of this method can be found in PubMed interface of Medline. The Clinical Queries tool offers empirically developed filters for five different inquiries as guidelines for etiology, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis or clinical prediction.

Evaluation of the Quality of the Study

As an indispensable component of the review process is to discriminate good, and bad quality researches from each other, and the outcomes should be based on better qualified researches, as far as possible. To achieve this goal you should know the best possible evidence for each type of question The first component of the quality is its general planning/design of the study. General planning/design of a cohort study, a case series or normal study demonstrates variations.

A hierarchy of evidence for different research questions is presented in Table 4 . However this hierarchy is only a first step. After you find good quality research articles, you won’t need to read all the rest of other articles which saves you tons of time. [ 14 ]

Determination of levels of evidence based on the type of the research question

Formulating a Synthesis

Rarely all researches arrive at the same conclusion. In this case a solution should be found. However it is risky to make a decision based on the votes of absolute majority. Indeed, a well-performed large scale study, and a weakly designed one are weighed on the same scale. Therefore, ideally a meta-analysis should be performed to solve apparent differences. Ideally, first of all, one should be focused on the largest, and higher quality study, then other studies should be compared with this basic study.

Conclusions

In conclusion, during writing process of a review article, the procedures to be achieved can be indicated as follows: 1) Get rid of fixed ideas, and obsessions from your head, and view the subject from a large perspective. 2) Research articles in the literature should be approached with a methodological, and critical attitude and 3) finally data should be explained in an attractive way.

Review articles: purpose, process, and structure

• Published: 02 October 2017
• Volume 46 , pages 1–5, ( 2018 )

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• Robert W. Palmatier 1 ,
• Mark B. Houston 2 &
• John Hulland 3  

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Many research disciplines feature high-impact journals that are dedicated outlets for review papers (or review–conceptual combinations) (e.g., Academy of Management Review , Psychology Bulletin , Medicinal Research Reviews ). The rationale for such outlets is the premise that research integration and synthesis provides an important, and possibly even a required, step in the scientific process. Review papers tend to include both quantitative (i.e., meta-analytic, systematic reviews) and narrative or more qualitative components; together, they provide platforms for new conceptual frameworks, reveal inconsistencies in the extant body of research, synthesize diverse results, and generally give other scholars a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of a domain, often written by topic experts (Bem 1995 ). Many premier marketing journals publish meta-analytic review papers too, though authors often must overcome reviewers’ concerns that their contributions are limited due to the absence of “new data.” Furthermore, relatively few non-meta-analysis review papers appear in marketing journals, probably due to researchers’ perceptions that such papers have limited publication opportunities or their beliefs that the field lacks a research tradition or “respect” for such papers. In many cases, an editor must provide strong support to help such review papers navigate the review process. Yet, once published, such papers tend to be widely cited, suggesting that members of the field find them useful (see Bettencourt and Houston 2001 ).

In this editorial, we seek to address three topics relevant to review papers. First, we outline a case for their importance to the scientific process, by describing the purpose of review papers . Second, we detail the review paper editorial initiative conducted over the past two years by the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science ( JAMS ), focused on increasing the prevalence of review papers. Third, we describe a process and structure for systematic ( i.e. , non-meta-analytic) review papers , referring to Grewal et al. ( 2018 ) insights into parallel meta-analytic (effects estimation) review papers. (For some strong recent examples of marketing-related meta-analyses, see Knoll and Matthes 2017 ; Verma et al. 2016 ).

Purpose of review papers

In their most general form, review papers “are critical evaluations of material that has already been published,” some that include quantitative effects estimation (i.e., meta-analyses) and some that do not (i.e., systematic reviews) (Bem 1995 , p. 172). They carefully identify and synthesize relevant literature to evaluate a specific research question, substantive domain, theoretical approach, or methodology and thereby provide readers with a state-of-the-art understanding of the research topic. Many of these benefits are highlighted in Hanssens’ ( 2018 ) paper titled “The Value of Empirical Generalizations in Marketing,” published in this same issue of JAMS.

The purpose of and contributions associated with review papers can vary depending on their specific type and research question, but in general, they aim to

Resolve definitional ambiguities and outline the scope of the topic.

Provide an integrated, synthesized overview of the current state of knowledge.

Identify inconsistencies in prior results and potential explanations (e.g., moderators, mediators, measures, approaches).

Evaluate existing methodological approaches and unique insights.

Develop conceptual frameworks to reconcile and extend past research.

Describe research insights, existing gaps, and future research directions.

Not every review paper can offer all of these benefits, but this list represents their key contributions. To provide a sufficient contribution, a review paper needs to achieve three key standards. First, the research domain needs to be well suited for a review paper, such that a sufficient body of past research exists to make the integration and synthesis valuable—especially if extant research reveals theoretical inconsistences or heterogeneity in its effects. Second, the review paper must be well executed, with an appropriate literature collection and analysis techniques, sufficient breadth and depth of literature coverage, and a compelling writing style. Third, the manuscript must offer significant new insights based on its systematic comparison of multiple studies, rather than simply a “book report” that describes past research. This third, most critical standard is often the most difficult, especially for authors who have not “lived” with the research domain for many years, because achieving it requires drawing some non-obvious connections and insights from multiple studies and their many different aspects (e.g., context, method, measures). Typically, after the “review” portion of the paper has been completed, the authors must spend many more months identifying the connections to uncover incremental insights, each of which takes time to detail and explicate.

The increasing methodological rigor and technical sophistication of many marketing studies also means that they often focus on smaller problems with fewer constructs. By synthesizing these piecemeal findings, reconciling conflicting evidence, and drawing a “big picture,” meta-analyses and systematic review papers become indispensable to our comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon, among both academic and practitioner communities. Thus, good review papers provide a solid platform for future research, in the reviewed domain but also in other areas, in that researchers can use a good review paper to learn about and extend key insights to new areas.

This domain extension, outside of the core area being reviewed, is one of the key benefits of review papers that often gets overlooked. Yet it also is becoming ever more important with the expanding breadth of marketing (e.g., econometric modeling, finance, strategic management, applied psychology, sociology) and the increasing velocity in the accumulation of marketing knowledge (e.g., digital marketing, social media, big data). Against this backdrop, systematic review papers and meta-analyses help academics and interested managers keep track of research findings that fall outside their main area of specialization.

JAMS’ review paper editorial initiative

With a strong belief in the importance of review papers, the editorial team of JAMS has purposely sought out leading scholars to provide substantive review papers, both meta-analysis and systematic, for publication in JAMS . Many of the scholars approached have voiced concerns about the risk of such endeavors, due to the lack of alternative outlets for these types of papers. Therefore, we have instituted a unique process, in which the authors develop a detailed outline of their paper, key tables and figures, and a description of their literature review process. On the basis of this outline, we grant assurances that the contribution hurdle will not be an issue for publication in JAMS , as long as the authors execute the proposed outline as written. Each paper still goes through the normal review process and must meet all publication quality standards, of course. In many cases, an Area Editor takes an active role to help ensure that each paper provides sufficient insights, as required for a high-quality review paper. This process gives the author team confidence to invest effort in the process. An analysis of the marketing journals in the Financial Times (FT 50) journal list for the past five years (2012–2016) shows that JAMS has become the most common outlet for these papers, publishing 31% of all review papers that appeared in the top six marketing journals.

As a next step in positioning JAMS as a receptive marketing outlet for review papers, we are conducting a Thought Leaders Conference on Generalizations in Marketing: Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses , with a corresponding special issue (see www.springer.com/jams ). We will continue our process of seeking out review papers as an editorial strategy in areas that could be advanced by the integration and synthesis of extant research. We expect that, ultimately, such efforts will become unnecessary, as authors initiate review papers on topics of their own choosing to submit them to JAMS . In the past two years, JAMS already has increased the number of papers it publishes annually, from just over 40 to around 60 papers per year; this growth has provided “space” for 8–10 review papers per year, reflecting our editorial target.

Consistent with JAMS ’ overall focus on managerially relevant and strategy-focused topics, all review papers should reflect this emphasis. For example, the domains, theories, and methods reviewed need to have some application to past or emerging managerial research. A good rule of thumb is that the substantive domain, theory, or method should attract the attention of readers of JAMS .

The efforts of multiple editors and Area Editors in turn have generated a body of review papers that can serve as useful examples of the different types and approaches that JAMS has published.

Domain-based review papers

Domain-based review papers review, synthetize, and extend a body of literature in the same substantive domain. For example, in “The Role of Privacy in Marketing” (Martin and Murphy 2017 ), the authors identify and define various privacy-related constructs that have appeared in recent literature. Then they examine the different theoretical perspectives brought to bear on privacy topics related to consumers and organizations, including ethical and legal perspectives. These foundations lead in to their systematic review of privacy-related articles over a clearly defined date range, from which they extract key insights from each study. This exercise of synthesizing diverse perspectives allows these authors to describe state-of-the-art knowledge regarding privacy in marketing and identify useful paths for research. Similarly, a new paper by Cleeren et al. ( 2017 ), “Marketing Research on Product-Harm Crises: A Review, Managerial Implications, and an Agenda for Future Research,” provides a rich systematic review, synthesizes extant research, and points the way forward for scholars who are interested in issues related to defective or dangerous market offerings.

Theory-based review papers

Theory-based review papers review, synthetize, and extend a body of literature that uses the same underlying theory. For example, Rindfleisch and Heide’s ( 1997 ) classic review of research in marketing using transaction cost economics has been cited more than 2200 times, with a significant impact on applications of the theory to the discipline in the past 20 years. A recent paper in JAMS with similar intent, which could serve as a helpful model, focuses on “Resource-Based Theory in Marketing” (Kozlenkova et al. 2014 ). The article dives deeply into a description of the theory and its underlying assumptions, then organizes a systematic review of relevant literature according to various perspectives through which the theory has been applied in marketing. The authors conclude by identifying topical domains in marketing that might benefit from additional applications of the theory (e.g., marketing exchange), as well as related theories that could be integrated meaningfully with insights from the resource-based theory.

Method-based review papers

Method-based review papers review, synthetize, and extend a body of literature that uses the same underlying method. For example, in “Event Study Methodology in the Marketing Literature: An Overview” (Sorescu et al. 2017 ), the authors identify published studies in marketing that use an event study methodology. After a brief review of the theoretical foundations of event studies, they describe in detail the key design considerations associated with this method. The article then provides a roadmap for conducting event studies and compares this approach with a stock market returns analysis. The authors finish with a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the event study method, which in turn suggests three main areas for further research. Similarly, “Discriminant Validity Testing in Marketing: An Analysis, Causes for Concern, and Proposed Remedies” (Voorhies et al. 2016 ) systematically reviews existing approaches for assessing discriminant validity in marketing contexts, then uses Monte Carlo simulation to determine which tests are most effective.

Our long-term editorial strategy is to make sure JAMS becomes and remains a well-recognized outlet for both meta-analysis and systematic managerial review papers in marketing. Ideally, review papers would come to represent 10%–20% of the papers published by the journal.

Process and structure for review papers

In this section, we review the process and typical structure of a systematic review paper, which lacks any long or established tradition in marketing research. The article by Grewal et al. ( 2018 ) provides a summary of effects-focused review papers (i.e., meta-analyses), so we do not discuss them in detail here.

Systematic literature review process

Some review papers submitted to journals take a “narrative” approach. They discuss current knowledge about a research domain, yet they often are flawed, in that they lack criteria for article inclusion (or, more accurately, article exclusion), fail to discuss the methodology used to evaluate included articles, and avoid critical assessment of the field (Barczak 2017 ). Such reviews tend to be purely descriptive, with little lasting impact.

In contrast, a systematic literature review aims to “comprehensively locate and synthesize research that bears on a particular question, using organized, transparent, and replicable procedures at each step in the process” (Littell et al. 2008 , p. 1). Littell et al. describe six key steps in the systematic review process. The extent to which each step is emphasized varies by paper, but all are important components of the review.

Topic formulation . The author sets out clear objectives for the review and articulates the specific research questions or hypotheses that will be investigated.

Study design . The author specifies relevant problems, populations, constructs, and settings of interest. The aim is to define explicit criteria that can be used to assess whether any particular study should be included in or excluded from the review. Furthermore, it is important to develop a protocol in advance that describes the procedures and methods to be used to evaluate published work.

Sampling . The aim in this third step is to identify all potentially relevant studies, including both published and unpublished research. To this end, the author must first define the sampling unit to be used in the review (e.g., individual, strategic business unit) and then develop an appropriate sampling plan.

Data collection . By retrieving the potentially relevant studies identified in the third step, the author can determine whether each study meets the eligibility requirements set out in the second step. For studies deemed acceptable, the data are extracted from each study and entered into standardized templates. These templates should be based on the protocols established in step 2.

Data analysis . The degree and nature of the analyses used to describe and examine the collected data vary widely by review. Purely descriptive analysis is useful as a starting point but rarely is sufficient on its own. The examination of trends, clusters of ideas, and multivariate relationships among constructs helps flesh out a deeper understanding of the domain. For example, both Hult ( 2015 ) and Huber et al. ( 2014 ) use bibliometric approaches (e.g., examine citation data using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques) to identify emerging versus declining themes in the broad field of marketing.

Reporting . Three key aspects of this final step are common across systematic reviews. First, the results from the fifth step need to be presented, clearly and compellingly, using narratives, tables, and figures. Second, core results that emerge from the review must be interpreted and discussed by the author. These revelatory insights should reflect a deeper understanding of the topic being investigated, not simply a regurgitation of well-established knowledge. Third, the author needs to describe the implications of these unique insights for both future research and managerial practice.

A new paper by Watson et al. ( 2017 ), “Harnessing Difference: A Capability-Based Framework for Stakeholder Engagement in Environmental Innovation,” provides a good example of a systematic review, starting with a cohesive conceptual framework that helps establish the boundaries of the review while also identifying core constructs and their relationships. The article then explicitly describes the procedures used to search for potentially relevant papers and clearly sets out criteria for study inclusion or exclusion. Next, a detailed discussion of core elements in the framework weaves published research findings into the exposition. The paper ends with a presentation of key implications and suggestions for the next steps. Similarly, “Marketing Survey Research Best Practices: Evidence and Recommendations from a Review of JAMS Articles” (Hulland et al. 2017 ) systematically reviews published marketing studies that use survey techniques, describes recent trends, and suggests best practices. In their review, Hulland et al. examine the entire population of survey papers published in JAMS over a ten-year span, relying on an extensive standardized data template to facilitate their subsequent data analysis.

Structure of systematic review papers

There is no cookie-cutter recipe for the exact structure of a useful systematic review paper; the final structure depends on the authors’ insights and intended points of emphasis. However, several key components are likely integral to a paper’s ability to contribute.

Depth and rigor

Systematic review papers must avoid falling in to two potential “ditches.” The first ditch threatens when the paper fails to demonstrate that a systematic approach was used for selecting articles for inclusion and capturing their insights. If a reader gets the impression that the author has cherry-picked only articles that fit some preset notion or failed to be thorough enough, without including articles that make significant contributions to the field, the paper will be consigned to the proverbial side of the road when it comes to the discipline’s attention.

Authors that fall into the other ditch present a thorough, complete overview that offers only a mind-numbing recitation, without evident organization, synthesis, or critical evaluation. Although comprehensive, such a paper is more of an index than a useful review. The reviewed articles must be grouped in a meaningful way to guide the reader toward a better understanding of the focal phenomenon and provide a foundation for insights about future research directions. Some scholars organize research by scholarly perspectives (e.g., the psychology of privacy, the economics of privacy; Martin and Murphy 2017 ); others classify the chosen articles by objective research aspects (e.g., empirical setting, research design, conceptual frameworks; Cleeren et al. 2017 ). The method of organization chosen must allow the author to capture the complexity of the underlying phenomenon (e.g., including temporal or evolutionary aspects, if relevant).

Replicability

Processes for the identification and inclusion of research articles should be described in sufficient detail, such that an interested reader could replicate the procedure. The procedures used to analyze chosen articles and extract their empirical findings and/or key takeaways should be described with similar specificity and detail.

We already have noted the potential usefulness of well-done review papers. Some scholars always are new to the field or domain in question, so review papers also need to help them gain foundational knowledge. Key constructs, definitions, assumptions, and theories should be laid out clearly (for which purpose summary tables are extremely helpful). An integrated conceptual model can be useful to organize cited works. Most scholars integrate the knowledge they gain from reading the review paper into their plans for future research, so it is also critical that review papers clearly lay out implications (and specific directions) for research. Ideally, readers will come away from a review article filled with enthusiasm about ways they might contribute to the ongoing development of the field.

Helpful format

Because such a large body of research is being synthesized in most review papers, simply reading through the list of included studies can be exhausting for readers. We cannot overstate the importance of tables and figures in review papers, used in conjunction with meaningful headings and subheadings. Vast literature review tables often are essential, but they must be organized in a way that makes their insights digestible to the reader; in some cases, a sequence of more focused tables may be better than a single, comprehensive table.

In summary, articles that review extant research in a domain (topic, theory, or method) can be incredibly useful to the scientific progress of our field. Whether integrating the insights from extant research through a meta-analysis or synthesizing them through a systematic assessment, the promised benefits are similar. Both formats provide readers with a useful overview of knowledge about the focal phenomenon, as well as insights on key dilemmas and conflicting findings that suggest future research directions. Thus, the editorial team at JAMS encourages scholars to continue to invest the time and effort to construct thoughtful review papers.

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Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

John Hulland

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Palmatier, R.W., Houston, M.B. & Hulland, J. Review articles: purpose, process, and structure. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 46 , 1–5 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-017-0563-4

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Published : 02 October 2017

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-017-0563-4

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The Correct Way to Structure an Article

Table of Contents

Writing non-fiction has a set format that can be followed, which makes it not all that different from writing fiction.

Similar to how you can divide a story into three acts, an article can be divided into its first and third sections. Once this is established, it serves as the article’s backbone, around which the skeleton can be built.

Our minds anticipate that information will be presented in a specific manner that adheres to this format. Although it may go by different names or headings, there is a beginning, middle, and end to everything.

This is a logical and well-established order that corresponds to the way we think. In today’s guide, we are going to look establishing the structure of an article to help you write your own.

Sounds exciting? Well then, dig in!

Why Is Structure Important of an Article?

The most crucial thing to remember before learning the format is that the purpose of your writing is to convey useful information in the best way possible. These days, the majority of writers and bloggers focus on SEO in an effort to rank higher. Despite using the best SEO practices, the article fails to remember that its reader is looking for helpful information.

As advised by Google Webmaster, write content that demonstrates your expertise, authority, and reliability. Something you want to read, believe in, and use in your personal and professional life.

It doesn’t matter whether you are writing an article for a peer-reviewed journal, a blog post online, or a newspaper. The structures of all articles follow a similar line, where they have three parts.

They have an introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs. There isn’t a rule regarding the number of paragraphs for each section. You can have two introductory paragraphs and a single conclusion paragraph.

You can divide the body part of your article into numerous divisions with their own subheaders . Or not. You have the freedom to choose whatever you want as long as you follow the basic structure of an article.

Structure of an Article

Now we know why the structure is important for any kind of article. Let’s look at these parts that make up the structure one by one, shall we?

Introduction

Create the scene. Put some life into it. Whether you begin with a question, a narrative, or a description, the first paragraph must entice readers to continue reading your story.

Here’s a quick tip: After you’ve finished writing the rest of the paper, it’s usually a good idea to write the introduction last. Write it down and come back to it after the rest of the feature is complete. If the first paragraph we draft turns out to be utter nonsense, we can change it.

Your first or second paragraph will provide a brief explanation of the feature so that the reader understands what they are reading and why they are reading it.

You can captivate the reader with your writing by including an introduction in your article. It enables you to explain the subject of the article and the information the reader will learn from it.

As a result, when writing an essay, this section should be given the most attention. Because if it’s subpar, the user may leave, which lowers your search ranking.

Additionally, the introduction aids the reader in comprehending the writing style and flow. They can then adjust themselves appropriately and continue reading the article without problems.

Body Paragraphs

Maintain their interest in your writing after you’ve captured their attention. This is where your writer’s ability to construct a logically developed narrative is put to use. Your story will progress with each paragraph, which will also provide more details for the reader. Include details in your scenes so that with each paragraph, something new is revealed.

If you have conducted interviews, use direct quotes from the subjects to reveal their portions of the narrative. You are narrating a story with characters; let them speak. Your feature story will be made more vivid by their voices.

Avoid information overload. In order to include everything necessary without impairing the flow of your narrative, space out your information. 

If there isn’t enough room to include all the information, shorten your prose rather than omit facts that will increase the reader’s knowledge.

The reader advances to this section once they are aware of what your article has to offer, where you can give them all the pertinent details.

The information must be presented clearly, in simple language, and with the appropriate use of images, headings, bullet points, and other formatting elements. This is so that users can comprehend it quickly and in a better way.

To prevent your well-written article from being ruined, make sure the blog theme or platform you’ve chosen has good clarity and readability.

Conclusion Paragraph

Make sure to give the story a satisfying ending so that the reader can see that it is over. Avoid letting a strong feature wane or making it bottom-heavy by cramming in details that ought to have been woven in higher up.

Additionally, take care to avoid sounding trite or press release-like. Since real life is complex and rarely comes to a tidy conclusion, feature writing often deals with actual life stories. One-liners or, if you have one, a strong quote that encapsulates everything you’ve said in the entire feature can be an excellent way to end a piece.

To Conclude

This format, which reflects how we process information , can be used in essays, speeches, lessons, letters, and anything else that aims to explain a point clearly. It is not just appropriate for articles. Authors, salespeople, and marketing professionals have used it throughout history because it is a typical structure for a sales pitch.

These fundamental principles ensure that the article flows as we anticipate it to by assisting the writer in making their points or communicating their information clearly and coherently. The structure is vague enough to be used for any kind of article while still being very specific in its requirements. Each article can be different and almost infinitely variable as a result, and the reader never gets lost.

We hope you enjoyed our guide on the structure of an article .

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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'Spring mania' impacts people with bipolar disorder and can be life-threatening. A therapist shared how she preps for the season every year.

• People with bipolar disorder may experience "spring mania" between winter and summer.
• Changes in daylight and circadiam rhythm can trigger manic episodes.
• A therapist shared the warning signs, and how sleep and structure help mitigate symptoms.

Ushering in warmer weather and brighter evenings, spring is often synonymous with optimism and peacefulness.

But for some people, the season can trigger the opposite feelings. People with bipolar disorder might be vulnerable to "spring mania," or manic episodes in the springtime.

Claudia Skowron , a licensed clinical professional counselor in Illinois, told Business Insider that people with bipolar disorder oscillate between manic and depressive episodes. She said manic episodes typically last a week or longer and are characterized by "racing thoughts, decreased need for sleep, impulsivity, grandiose thinking, irritability, and rapid speech."

The reason spring can trigger manic episodes in people with bipolar disorder is because they're more sensitive to light and circadian rhythm shifts, Skowron said.

"Not only do we begin to get more daylight naturally just due to the Earth's rotation, but in many parts of the US, we also have daylight savings, which adds an additional hour of daylight," she said. "All this actually really happens rather quickly and creates this misalignment."

While daylight savings impacts many people's health , Skowron said the symptoms in people with bipolar disorder can be extra heightened. She shared the signs to watch out for, as well as how she preps her clients and colleagues for the season, which she said lasts from mid-March through May.

The risks include life-threatening behavior

Skowron said the worst-case scenario for a patient is suicide, because there's "actually a significant increase in manic episodes that could lead to suicidality in the springtime."

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Manic episodes trigger impulsivity, and patients who are not properly medicated or in therapy are at greater risk of attempting suicide. "That's kind of the part that we have to look out for most," she said.

Skowron said she has a very collaborative relationship with the psychiatrists who work with her patients, and that there's sometimes a "temporary increase" in medications around springtime.

If she starts to notice symptoms in a patient, she might bump up their sessions to twice a week for the time being.

Patients learn to spot the warning signs

One of the best defenses against spring mania is noticing your patterns, Skowron said. "If there's a past history of springtime struggles, there's a pretty good chance that this can happen again," she said. For example, if a person has a history of impulsive behavior, she might ask them to make a list of any changes they're experiencing. Are they going to bed later ? Do they have a sudden burst of energy? These check-ins can help them "stay ahead of the curve" and get treatment before an episode , she said.

With clients who experience spring mania every year, Skowron helps them come up with a plan to mitigate symptoms. "Maybe that is a vacation, maybe that is investing into another hobby to direct that energy into something else that can be a little bit more productive," she said.

Sleep and structure are key

To reduce symptoms around the springtime, Skowron said she stresses a consistent sleep routine .

"Sleep is a key player when it comes to mood disorders," she said. "It's really crucial to create healthy sleep routines — going to bed at the same time each night, waking up at the same time each morning."

She recommends that patients invest in supplements like melatonin , blackout curtains, or a good sleep mask if they have trouble falling asleep or waking up.

At the same time, she's careful not to overly anticipate a manic episode for a patient, "because weirdly, that can trigger one," she said. Her focus is on providing patients with the education and resources they need to spot symptoms and add structure to their lives, "but also making sure that we're not feeding into a self-fulfilled prophecy" and creating spring mania.

People with bipolar disorder face a lot of stigma , and Skowron said it's never good to assume someone will have a manic episode just because of their diagnosis. "It's more of: 'Here are options, and let's take it week-by-week and see where you're at," she said.

If you or someone you know is experiencing depression or has had thoughts of harming themself or taking their own life, get help. In the US, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline , which provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress, as well as best practices for professionals and resources to aid in prevention and crisis situations. Help is also available through the Crisis Text Line — just text "HOME" to 741741. The International Association for Suicide Prevention offers resources for those outside the US.

Watch: Should we end daylight-saving time?

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The history of Key Bridge, Baltimore’s engineering marvel of the 1970s

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore partially collapsed into the Patapsco River early Tuesday after a freighter crashed into it. The steel-arched bridge was considered an engineering feat when it was built in the 1970s.

Here’s what to know about the 47-year-old bridge, its history and its significance.

Baltimore bridge collapse

How it happened: Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship . The container ship lost power shortly before hitting the bridge, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said. Video shows the bridge collapse in under 40 seconds.

Victims: Divers have recovered the bodies of two construction workers , officials said. They were fathers, husbands and hard workers . A mayday call from the ship prompted first responders to shut down traffic on the four-lane bridge, saving lives.

Economic impact: The collapse of the bridge severed ocean links to the Port of Baltimore, which provides about 20,000 jobs to the area . See how the collapse will disrupt the supply of cars, coal and other goods .

Rebuilding: The bridge, built in the 1970s , will probably take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild , experts said.

Baltimore bridge collapse: a bridge engineer explains what happened, and what needs to change

Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Monash University

Disclosure statement

Colin Caprani receives funding from the Department of Transport (Victoria) and the Level Crossing Removal Project. He is also Chair of the Confidential Reporting Scheme for Safer Structures - Australasia, Chair of the Australian Regional Group of the Institution of Structural Engineers, and Australian National Delegate for the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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When the container ship MV Dali, 300 metres long and massing around 100,000 tonnes, lost power and slammed into one of the support piers of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the bridge collapsed in moments . Six people are presumed dead, several others injured, and the city and region are expecting a months-long logistical nightmare in the absence of a crucial transport link.

It was a shocking event, not only for the public but for bridge engineers like me. We work very hard to ensure bridges are safe, and overall the probability of being injured or worse in a bridge collapse remains even lower than the chance of being struck by lightning.

However, the images from Baltimore are a reminder that safety can’t be taken for granted. We need to remain vigilant.

So why did this bridge collapse? And, just as importantly, how might we make other bridges more safe against such collapse?

A 20th century bridge meets a 21st century ship

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built through the mid 1970s and opened in 1977. The main structure over the navigation channel is a “continuous truss bridge” in three sections or spans.

The bridge rests on four supports, two of which sit each side of the navigable waterway. It is these two piers that are critical to protect against ship impacts.

And indeed, there were two layers of protection: a so-called “dolphin” structure made from concrete, and a fender. The dolphins are in the water about 100 metres upstream and downstream of the piers. They are intended to be sacrificed in the event of a wayward ship, absorbing its energy and being deformed in the process but keeping the ship from hitting the bridge itself.

The fender is the last layer of protection. It is a structure made of timber and reinforced concrete placed around the main piers. Again, it is intended to absorb the energy of any impact.

Fenders are not intended to absorb impacts from very large vessels . And so when the MV Dali, weighing more than 100,000 tonnes, made it past the protective dolphins, it was simply far too massive for the fender to withstand.

Read more: I've captained ships into tight ports like Baltimore, and this is how captains like me work with harbor pilots to avoid deadly collisions

Video recordings show a cloud of dust appearing just before the bridge collapsed, which may well have been the fender disintegrating as it was crushed by the ship.

Once the massive ship had made it past both the dolphin and the fender, the pier – one of the bridge’s four main supports – was simply incapable of resisting the impact. Given the size of the vessel and its likely speed of around 8 knots (15 kilometres per hour), the impact force would have been around 20,000 tonnes .

Bridges are getting safer

This was not the first time a ship hit the Francis Scott Bridge. There was another collision in 1980 , damaging a fender badly enough that it had to be replaced.

Around the world, 35 major bridge collapses resulting in fatalities were caused by collisions between 1960 and 2015, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure. Collisions between ships and bridges in the 1970s and early 1980s led to a significant improvement in the design rules for protecting bridges from impact.

Further impacts in the 1970s and early 1980s instigated significant improvements in the design rules for impact.

The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering’s Ship Collision with Bridges guide, published in 1993, and the American Association of State Highway and Transporation Officials’ Guide Specification and Commentary for Vessel Collision Design of Highway Bridges (1991) changed how bridges were designed.

In Australia, the Australian Standard for Bridge Design (published in 2017) requires designers to think about the biggest vessel likely to come along in the next 100 years, and what would happen if it were heading for any bridge pier at full speed. Designers need to consider the result of both head-on collisions and side-on, glancing blows. As a result, many newer bridges protect their piers with entire human-made islands.

Of course, these improvements came too late to influence the design of the Francis Scott Key Bridge itself.

Lessons from disaster

So what are the lessons apparent at this early stage?

First, it’s clear the protection measures in place for this bridge were not enough to handle this ship impact. Today’s cargo ships are much bigger than those of the 1970s, and it seems likely the Francis Scott Key Bridge was not designed with a collision like this in mind.

So one lesson is that we need to consider how the vessels near our bridges are changing. This means we cannot just accept the structure as it was built, but ensure the protection measures around our bridges are evolving alongside the ships around them.

Second, and more generally, we must remain vigilant in managing our bridges. I’ve written previously about the current level of safety of Australian bridges, but also about how we can do better.

This tragic event only emphasises the need to spend more on maintaining our ageing infrastructure. This is the only way to ensure it remains safe and functional for the demands we put on it today.

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Milky Way black hole has 'strong, twisted' magnetic field in mesmerizing new image

Bill Chappell

For the first time, we're seeing the Sagittarius A* black hole in polarized light. The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration says the image offers a new look at "the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole" at the center of the Milky Way. EHT Collaboration hide caption

For the first time, we're seeing the Sagittarius A* black hole in polarized light. The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration says the image offers a new look at "the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole" at the center of the Milky Way.

The black hole at the center of our galaxy has been compared to a doughnut — and as it turns out, this doughnut has swirls. Scientists shared a mesmerizing new image on Wednesday, showing Sagittarius A* in unprecedented detail. The polarized light image shows the black hole's magnetic field structure as a striking spiral.

"What we're seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy," Sara Issaoun, a project co-leader and NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement about the image .

Scientists have found a black hole so large it eats the equivalent of one sun per day

The image captures what the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration calls a "new view of the monster lurking at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy."

The doughnut analogy also applies to distance: Because of the Milky Way's distance from Earth, looking at it from our planet is similar to seeing a doughnut on the surface of the Moon.

Sagittarius A*, also often referred to as Sgr A*, is about 27,000 light years from Earth. The first image of the supermassive black hole was released two years ago, showing glowing gas around a dark center — and lacking the detail of the new image.

The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* is seen at left, in polarized light. The center inset image shows polarized emission from the Milky Way's center, captured by SOFIA. The background image shows the Planck Collaboration's mapping of polarized emission from dust across the Milky Way. S. Issaoun, EHT Collaboration hide caption

The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* is seen at left, in polarized light. The center inset image shows polarized emission from the Milky Way's center, captured by SOFIA. The background image shows the Planck Collaboration's mapping of polarized emission from dust across the Milky Way.

Black holes are famous for being "effectively invisible," as NASA says . But they dramatically affect their surrounding space, most obviously by creating an accretion disk — the swirl of gas and material that orbits a dark central region.

The first image of a black hole was released in 2019 , when the Event Horizon Telescope project shared an image of the black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87), some 55 million light years from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster. Although it's farther away, the black hole known as M87* is much larger than Sagittarius A*.

This is the first image of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way

When researchers recently compared views of the two black holes in polarized light, they were struck by their shared characteristics — most dramatically, those swirls.

"Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole," Issaoun said, "we've learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them."

Side-by-side images of M87* and Sagittarius A* reveal that the supermassive black holes have similar magnetic field structures, suggesting that the physical processes governing supermassive black hole may be universal. EHT Collaboration hide caption

Side-by-side images of M87* and Sagittarius A* reveal that the supermassive black holes have similar magnetic field structures, suggesting that the physical processes governing supermassive black hole may be universal.

On a practical level, the black holes do have one stark difference: While M87* has a knack for holding steady, our Sgr A* "is changing so fast that it doesn't sit still for pictures," the researchers said in their announcement.

At the time the Sgr A* observations were captured, the EHT collaboration was using eight telescopes around the world, linking them together to create a planet-sized, albeit virtual, instrument. The results of their work were published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters .

The collaboration is slated to observe Sgr A* again in April.

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The Five Minutes That Brought Down the Francis Scott Key Bridge

When a massive cargo ship lost power in Baltimore, crews scrambled to control the ship and to evacuate the bridge lying ahead. But it was too late.

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By Annie Correal ,  Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs ,  Campbell Robertson ,  Michael Forsythe and Mike Baker

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Campbell Robertson reported from Baltimore, Annie Correal and Michael Forsythe from New York, and Mike Baker from Seattle.

Follow our live coverage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore .

“Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge.”

The terse command from an officer in Baltimore’s busy commercial shipping port was one of the first warnings of a disaster that experts now predict will transform shipping on the Eastern Seaboard and change how ships and bridges function around the world. But after the cargo ship Dali lost power early Tuesday, there were precious few minutes to act.

In those minutes, many people — from the ship’s crew, who sent out a mayday signal, to the transportation authority police officers, who stopped traffic heading onto the Francis Scott Key Bridge — did what they could to avert catastrophe, most likely saving many lives.

And yet — no matter what anyone did — several factors made catastrophe all but inevitable. When a ship of this size loses engine power, there is little to be done to correct its course, even dropping an anchor down. And the Key Bridge was particularly vulnerable. As long ago as 1980, engineers had warned that the bridge, because of its design, would never be able to survive a direct hit from a container ship.

The collision and subsequent collapse of the bridge swallowed up seven road workers and an inspector who could not be alerted and pulled off the bridge in time; two were pulled alive out of the water, but four others are still missing and presumed dead. Two bodies were retrieved on Wednesday, authorities said.

Also caught up in the disaster were the ship’s 21 crew members, all from India, who had prepared for a long journey to Sri Lanka on the Dali. While none of them were hurt, they would be held on board for more than a day as the ship sat in the harbor, the ruins of the bridge tangled around it, as authorities began their investigation.

The accident, the deadliest bridge collapse in the United States in more than a decade, will have a lasting impact on the Port of Baltimore, with its 8,000 workers, and industries that rely on the port, which is the leading American hub for auto and other wheeled equipment, said Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. transportation secretary, on Wednesday.

“It’s difficult to overstate the impact of this collision,” Mr. Buttigieg said.

He compared the Dali, roughly as long a city block, to the size of an American aircraft carrier.

“A hundred thousand tons, all going into this pier all at once,” he said of the impact on the bridge support structure.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation into the accident, boarded the Dali on Tuesday night to gather documentation. They obtained data from the voyage data recorder, the equivalent of an aircraft’s black box, hoping that it could help investigators determine what led to the accident.

Mr. Buttigieg said that any private party found liable in the accident “will be held responsible.”

The ship left the Port

of Baltimore around

1 a.m. on Tuesday.

Ship called for

tugboats to return

Francis Scott

Alarms sounded on ship

Traffic onto bridge was halted

The ship hit

at 1:28 a.m.

Alarms sounded

Traffic onto bridge

Sources: MarineTraffic, Google Earth

By Agnes Chang, Weiyi Cai, and Leanne Abraham

It was about half an hour past midnight on Tuesday when the Dali, loaded with cargo containers, departed its dock, guided by two tugboats, as is customary. On board was a local harbor pilot with more than 10 years of experience and deep familiarity with Baltimore’s port, as well as an apprentice pilot in training.

The sky above the Patapsco River was clear and still, lit by a full moon.

At 1:25 a.m., after the two tugboats detached and turned back, the Dali had accelerated to about 10 miles per hour as it approached the Key Bridge. But just then, according to a timeline released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday, “numerous audible alarms” started sounding on the ship.

For reasons still being investigated, the ship’s powerful propulsion system stopped. The lights flickered out.

The ship had a “complete blackout,” according to Clay Diamond, head of the American Pilots’ Association, who was briefed on the account of the pilot of the Dali. (The chair of the N.T.S.B., Jennifer Homendy, said officials were still trying to determine whether the power failure was complete.)

The harbor pilot noticed the ship starting to swing right, in the direction of one of the piers holding up the Key Bridge. At 1:26, he called for the tugs to return; he urged the captain to try to get the engine back up and directed the crew to steer hard left. As a last ditch measure, at 1:27, he ordered the crew to throw down the port anchor.

One of the tugboats, the Eric McAllister, turned around and raced back toward the ship.

But the failures onboard were cascading. The emergency generator had kicked on, sending a puff of thick smoke belching from the ship’s exhaust stack and briefly restoring the lights, radar and steering. It did not help. With no effective propulsion, the 95,000-ton ship had become an unstoppable object, drifting toward one of the most heavily traveled bridges in Baltimore.

On land, officers with the Maryland Transportation Authority moved swiftly into action. “I need one of you guys on the South side, one of you guys on the North side, hold all traffic on the Key Bridge,” someone is heard saying on the audio recording of emergency radio traffic that night. “There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering. So until they get that under control, we’ve got to stop all traffic.”

Vehicles were held on either side of the bridge as the ship continued its inexorable drift toward the 1.6-mile-long span.

A minute later, the officers turned their attention to several workers, some of them immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, who were still laboring on the bridge in the chilly darkness, taking advantage of the light traffic at night to fix potholes.

“There’s a crew up there,” one officer is heard saying on the audio recording of the radio exchange between officers. “You might want to notify whoever the foreman is, see if we could get them off the bridge temporarily.”

But even then, the ship was striking the bridge. Almost at once, the pier buckled and collapsed, twisting over the ship, with its cargo containers stacked high on the deck. Then the rest of the bridge went, breaking into sections as it plummeted and splashed into the dark river waters below.

“The size and weight of these ships make them really difficult, even with propulsion, to stop them,” said Stash Pelkowski, a professor at State University of New York Maritime College and a retired Coast Guard rear admiral. With no power, he said, “There was very little the pilot or the crew on the Dali could do.”

The collapse had happened in seconds. Except for the stumps of the piers, the central span of the bridge had plunged into the frigid river — where divers would spend the whole day searching amid twisted metal for survivors — by 1:29 a.m.

“Dispatch, the whole bridge just fell down!” an officer called out. “Whoever, everybody, the whole bridge just collapsed.”

Stray ships had long been seen as a risk to the Key Bridge. Just a few years after the Baltimore structure was constructed in 1977, a vessel crash knocked down the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay, Fla., killing 35 people.

Officials acknowledged that the Key Bridge would not be able to withstand that kind of direct hit from a heavy cargo vessel. “I would have to say if that ship hit the Bay Bridge or the Key Bridge — I’m talking about the main supports, a direct hit — it would knock it down,” John Snyder, the director of engineering for the state Toll Facilities Administration told the Baltimore Sun at the time.

But building a bridge that could withstand such an impact was simply not economically feasible, he said. When the bridge was built, cargo ships were not the size they are today. A much smaller freighter did hit the bridge in 1980 , but the bridge stood strong.

Minutes after the bridge collapsed on Tuesday, both tugboats that had accompanied the Dali arrived on scene, followed soon by the Coast Guard and the Baltimore City Fire Department.

Two of the workers who had been on the bridge were rescued from the water. The others could not be found.

Jack Murphy, who owns Brawner Builders, the company whose workers had been on the bridge, got a phone call about the collapse and raced to the area, about a 30-minute drive away. He stayed by the bridge all night, and eventually began making calls to the men’s families.

Two workers’ bodies were discovered in a red pickup truck found near the bridge debris, police said Wednesday. They were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, an immigrant from Mexico, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, a native of Guatemala.

About two miles from the bridge, Andrew Middleton had been lying awake when he heard the crash. He first thought it was thunder, maybe a low-flying jet.

It was only when he awoke a few hours later that he saw the news of the collapsed bridge. “I thought to myself, I was just with those guys yesterday,” he said.

Mr. Middleton, who runs Apostleship of the Sea, a program that ministers to sailors coming through the port, had driven the ship’s captain and a few crew members to Walmart on Monday to stock up on goods for the 28-day voyage ahead — toothpaste, snacks, clothes, Bluetooth speakers.

He recalled the captain telling him their next port was Sri Lanka, but that they were taking a longer route, down around South Africa, in order to avoid recent Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.

Mr. Middleton immediately messaged the crew on WhatsApp after hearing the news on Tuesday, he said, and “they responded within a few minutes saying that everyone was OK,” he said.

Around the site of the bridge collapse, firefighters and rescuers in diving gear were swarming around the shore, followed by news crews. John McAvoy, who owns a nearby restaurant, had driven over with hot meals — chicken, crab balls and pretzel bites — to hand out to the crews.

But by nightfall on Tuesday, officials had called off the rescue efforts and said they would switch to searching for bodies. “The water’s deep, visibility’s low, it’s cold as I-don’t-know-what,” said Kevin Cartwright, a spokesman for the Fire Department.

The signs of all that had changed were only starting to become clear on Wednesday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it was mobilizing more than 1,100 specialists to clear the wreckage of the bridge and unblock the Port of Baltimore’s shipping lane. In the meantime, Mr. Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, said the East Coast would have to rely more heavily on ports outside Baltimore.

Mr. McAvoy said the tragedy would ripple over the port for years.

Fishing crews always have found their way home following the Key Bridge, he said. “It’s going to change a lot of things for a lot of people.”

Reporting was contributed by Daniel Victor , Jacey Fortin , Zach Montague , Eduardo Medina , Miriam Jordan and Judson Jones . Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Annie Correal reports from the U.S. and Latin America for The Times. More about Annie Correal

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice. He is from upstate New York. More about Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Campbell Robertson reports on Delaware, the District Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, for The Times. More about Campbell Robertson

Michael Forsythe a reporter on the investigations team at The Times, based in New York. He has written extensively about, and from, China. More about Michael Forsythe

Mike Baker is a national reporter for The Times, based in Seattle. More about Mike Baker