How to Write a Clear and Effective Research Paper Introduction

hey Professor David stuckler here today I'm going to show you how to write the hardest section of any paper the

introduction it's so hard that I recommend saving it for last it's a bit like you're delivering a present to the

world and when you want to wrap that present at the end you put the bow on top last and that's what you want to do

with the introduction you only want to dive into it when you have Crystal Clear clarity about what you want to say and

how everything's going to fit together which most often happens after you've already finished your res search that

said many programs departments might want an introduction just to see that you're on track that you have a coherent

feasible idea and you find yourself pushed in this corner where yes I realize professor suckler says I need to

do the introduction last but I have to get this done now so I at least want to do things in the right way so what I'm

going to do in this video is we're going to go through my formula for the introduction that's right our publishing

system has got the introduction the methods the results the conclusions every section research proposals down to

a formula and it truly is a publishing system I'm going to share with you some of those elements for the introduction

today and I'm going to show you an example from Natural Sciences and social sciences to show you that this system

really works across the board and you're going to be able to pick this up and apply it to your own introduction today

and that's going to be really useful if English is not your first language it's going to take some of the guesswork out

of the writing you're already fighting about on one front maybe grappling with the scientific English and writing at

least we can get the structure and the content right so so that you know what you want to say and then you can focus

on how you're going to express that in a very clear concise way so let's dive straight in I think the easiest way is

not to tell you but to show you an introduction so that you can identify the key elements and look critically at

your own so let me share my screen and as you can see I've come to the British medical journal to a paper that's hot

off the press don't worry too much uh about the topic but I just want to go straight to the introduction and what

you'll notice about this introduction is it has the threep part formula the first part of the three-part formula is why

are we having this conversation now what is the big debate what is a burning issue and think about it from The Mind's

Eye of a reader why do I want to stop what I'm doing and look at this paper and read this and you need to get that

right up front and you can see it's got this here this paper is saying look chronic pain is a big issue we've been

trying to stop an opioid crisis and so people have been getting off long-term opioids but we're worried that that's

creating new set of risks that maybe we haven't thought about so that's the first part second and you can see it in

the language right up front you need to describe the Gap and what does this introduction goes straight into the

second part of the three-part formula and it really can be that piffy it can be paragraph 1 paragraph two paragraph

three you see this especially in natural and Health Sciences what has previous research found what do we already know

and what do we still need to know to answer the big question to speak to this big issue that we just set up and you

can see it really in the first sentence here it's saying hey we there's all this previous work but has has important

limitations like the lack of high quality evidence and it's going to go through and using our Pier system which

is our system we used for writing check out the video here if you haven't seen that already it's going to give examples

and evidence of this to flush out this point so that the reader understands what the big gap is finally we've rolled

out the red carpet here and we get to your study your winning study right here what is what are you going to do now to

plug this Gap and and it you might lay out your main research question sayate that clearly say what your method is

going to be and really that's it no need to over complicate it is that simple that is the basic nuts and bolts of the

structure now sometimes you need to expand a little bit and give the reader crucial context maybe you need to define

a little bit more in this case about chronic pain about long-term opioids and alternative drugs that are available

these are things that give your reader context so that anybody reading it they may not be experts on this topic they

can access it they can participate in the conversation so you might need to quickly Define the key ideas terms and

Concepts that are going to be relevant that's really important for your reviewers because you want to signal to

them and in a very Rapid Way right what is important about this paper what is the novel what is the contribution

because if you make these mistakes and that's not there it's one of the most common sources of confusion that

reviewers come back and say well this paper just it's not novel it's not really clear what the contribution is I

don't think it should be published I I think that's one of the main reasons that papers get rejected and it's really

simple to fix by getting this formula right in the introduction let me show you another example so you can see that

I'm not just cherry-picking I'm going to show you an example from the social sciences now so here I've got a paper

from the prestigious American sociological review again hot off the press by the time I'm I'm doing this

video and you'll see a style that's very common in social sciences of being very clear of asking the big question right

up front even doing that in the introduction and personally working in social science as well as Natural

Science I I really like doing this because by asking that big question everybody knows oh what's this paper

about what's it asking what's this big question and if they misunderstand that big question um then it may be that the

question itself is not clear or they that the research question is just not really linked to a winning topic and you

want to make sure that you've written things clearly so that people understand what you're doing and you put it in the

best forward light there's a little bit of marketing in in this introduction to really sell the value ad of your papers

so by the way if your question is not on point I've always said that about 90 95% of your success comes down to getting

the right research question we often expect people to just figure that out but we've got a formula for that too

check out this video on how you can use our convergence method to find a winning Topic in research question it really

will change your research career if you can get that one skill right okay but let's come back to the paper and what I

like here is that this first paragraph again why are we having this conversation now well I mean it actually

uses language that just says it very clearly for the readers this is important because this is important

because it is making that very very clear for readers signaling right up front this is a burning issue we need we

need to understand it this paper because it's working conceptually it's actually comparing two big hypothesis to answer

these questions here this one of the questions about if low-wage jobs are a trap or they can actually help you

advance what it's going to do then in describing the frontier of research after quickly defining critical terms

and what people need to know about the cont of the research it's going to say well one hypothesis is this one

hypothesis is that and give evidence for both and that's really going to help outline here's the state of the evidence

for this hypothesis here's a state of the evidence for that but the Gap is and that really rolls out once again the red

carpet for in this study we're going to do this and this is how we're going to break new ground on these two competing

perspectives and often you'll see this bit of sign posting another video on sign posting we could do a dedicated

section on this and why it's so important to to your readers where you're going um that's more common in

social science articles but basically that same three-part formula that I'm talking about the debate the

conversation why is it so important part one part two the Gap and part three your winning idea or study where you're going

to take the readers to plug this Gap in your paper listen if you get this formula right you'll be able to do it in

your sleep and it's going to take that guesswork out of writing this incredibly different section that so many students

agonize over and get stuck and lost and sometimes even just get to the point where they just want to give up and

start to doubt themselves that they can even do this but if you have the right tools and the right instruments we can

take complicated research and break it down into these small chunks to make it smooth and easy for you so we've got

more videos coming up that are going to share elements of our publishing system and if you just want to shortcut that

and learn faster head straight to our Facebook group where we can be in direct contact we have live workshops a lot of

valuable master classes where we roll up our sleeves and actually work on Research together and get you feedback

so look forward to seeing you there and you're not going to want to wish miss this next video on academic writing if

you haven't seen it yet