The Elements of an Article: What Does the Reader Need to Know?

Abstract

In a prior Editors' Message, I discussed mentorship and writing. Authors often ask what core informational elements should be within an article. Over a decade ago, I worked with a team of software engineers and surgeon advisors to create scientific writing software that would, through the process of answering specific formatted questions, create an article. Each article having the same format would empower search capabilities and content analytics across multiple articles. Most research articles, whether in clinical or basic science, medicine or another discipline, should provide information according to a set of reader expectations. This is why we have the basic sections of an abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and author notes. Although I cannot be sure when consistency in structure truly began, it certainly was not routine even in the 1960s. Articles would typically merge an introduction with some clinical observations. Those observations would serve as the results section, followed by a “commentary.” There was no abstract and no abbreviated version with a “take home” message. At Neurosurgery Publications, we do have a number of article types (ie, review articles) that do have unique formats for the purpose of curating the message. Recently, software has been made available to format notes with some degree of intelligence. ChatGPT is one such approach from OpenAI. Using language generation software, writing for research purposes potentially can be enhanced. We will see where this goes and how it will be adopted. Indeed, even now we find errors in articles because coauthors did not seem to adequately review the work before submission. With computers assisting in writing, this must be checked even more. Research writing is not only about facts but also about nuance. There will always be limits has to how much information or discussion completes the message of the report while also remaining efficient and not verbose. Below are the article elements for traditional scientific research articles that were proposed. These are listed in our Instructions for Authors and associated article type instructions and templates to assist in manuscript composition. The following is an example for a clinical science report: ABSTRACT Background and Objectives What is the background behind your study? What is the purpose of your study? Methods Describe what you did. Describe your patient group. Results Describe your main findings. Describe the main limitation of this study. Conclusion Describe your main conclusion. Describe the importance of your findings and how they can be used by others. INTRODUCTION What is the background of your topic? What is the importance to the reader/community? What is your hypothesis? (What questions did you ask?) What was done in your study? What are the main conclusions from prior reports? What are the main limitations of your research method? METHODS Administrative IRB or Supervisory Authority Approval, patient consent for procedure and/or publication of any PHI. Describe the use of Artificial Intelligence software or other software tools used for writing or analysis. Patient Criteria Age. Sex. Other important patient features (presentation, prior treatment, employment…). Describe disease features. Evaluation Methodologies Describe the intervention. Describe the tests used. What percent of the study subjects completed the tests? Who conducted the tests (study investigators or other parties)? Were the tests validated for use in this kind of study? Statistics Describe the statistical methods or tests used. Describe the study power calculation (if any) and the chosen level of statistical significance. Describe relevant statistical controls (eg, multiple comparisons, matching). RESULTS Provide the results for the most important outcome of your research (ie, survival). Provide any additional outcomes of your study (ie, imaging, functional outcomes, complications). Provide the statistical outcomes (ie, multivariate analyses). DISCUSSION Provide the background and reason for your work and briefly summarize important prior research. Discuss the most important findings in your study. Discuss the various aspects of your work (ie, treatment-related complications, comparisons with other treatment or techniques, cost-effective analysis). Discuss future work and recommendations. Discuss any limitations that may qualify interpretation of the study's results or conclusions. CONCLUSION Describe the major conclusions of the study, implications of the findings, and future directions. We hope that new or experienced authors find these recommendations useful for writing, teaching, or mentoring. Our work continues towards the mutual goal of creating structured, useful, and efficient messages for our readers, be they in the scientific community or the general public. Douglas Kondziolka, MD, MSc Editor-in-Chief, Neurosurgery Publications New York, New York, USA