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Research papers and laboratory reports

When instructors refer to research papers, they may have different assignments in mind. One assignment might ask you to read articles written by researchers in the field and then present your synthesis of those sources of information. For instance, you might write about a genetic syndrome to demonstrate your understanding of the characteristics of the disorder and other researchers’ investigations of the causes of the syndrome.

Another assignment might require you to report on the results of an experiment you conducted and to interpret your results; this document is typically called a laboratory report. Unlike the laboratory notebook, a lab report may relate your interpretations to what others in the field have concluded from their own experiments. Biologists publish research papers and reports in journals after the papers have undergone rigorous and impartial review by other biologists, called a peer review, to make sure that the scientific process used by the researchers is sound.

Whether published in a journal or written for a college course, research papers and reports based on original experiments follow a standard format and include the following sections:

abstract (a 100- to 125-word summary of your report)
introduction (the context for your experiment, such as what has been published on the topic in the field, as well as the purpose of the experiment)
materials and methods (details of how you conducted the experiment so that other researchers can repeat the experiment to try to reproduce your results; your description of the methodology you used so that readers can determine if your interpretations are supported by the data)
results (a presentation of what you observed in the experiment)
figures and tables
discussion (your interpretation of the results as well as a comparison of your interpretation and that of other researchers in the field)
references (a list of the sources cited in your paper)

Sample student paper: Laboratory report