How to Write a Research Paper Introduction Step-by-Step Guide

one key element of a research paper is the introduction why is it so important well it's one of the first things that

the reviewers or your future readers are going to read so if the introduction isn't well written if you haven't

highlighted the research Gap if the contribution and the novelty of your paper aren't clear in the introduction

it's very likely that your paper will get rejected so that's why in this video I want to show you step by step how to

write the introduction for a research paper so let's dive in and see how this is done if you're new here my name

iskovic and I run academic English now where I help PhD students and researchers regularly write research

papers for scopus index journals and in this video we're going to be specifically focusing on the first

element of a research paper which is the introduction and I know a lot of people really struggle writing the

introductions we get stuck they don't know what to right you know that there is this idea as well that every

introduction is completely different and it's just you know depends a lot on the discipline and so on I mean granted you

know there are differences between different researchers disciplines and so on but they are really superficial it's

kind of like the iceberg so those differences are the small that small tip of the iceberg above the water and

everything else 80 of the introduction is the same but because the differences are above water this is what people

focus on but we want to be focusing on the similarities because you know 80 90 of introductions across the fields and

really across research papers whether this is a systematic review experimental paper more theoretical paper is almost

exactly the same so what are these elements of a research paper I'm gonna explain them one by one to you and show

you as well on examples from real research papers from different disciplines how these elements are

applied so what is the first one typically there are two ways of starting a research

paper number one you present the importance of the topic so you basically tell the reader why on Earth should they

care about your study at all I know your study is important to you your topic is important to you I mean my topic is the

most important topic in the world for me but why should other people care you want to state that right at the very

beginning you know using phrases like a considerable amount of research has been devoted to so the importance can be for

your research field the importance of the topic can be for the society in general as well right it can be an

important problem that needs solving but this needs to be stated right away and the second way of starting the paper

that often goes together is the definition of the key concept so very often you know if the importance of the

topic is connected to the key concept the researcher introduces the importance and and defines the key concept so for

example if we think about medicine and a disease like Alzheimer you know we could State the importance of for the society

you know that you know millions of people every day well you would have to give a specific number are suffering

from Alzheimer's disease and this disease is characterized by and then you provide a definition right or you can

separate these two elements have the importance of the topic and then a definition right this is the usual way

of starting a paper number two the second really important element is a brief literature review and I stress the

word brief how brief it is can differ from field to field in some Fields it can be very short like one paragraph or

maybe two paragraphs in other fields it can be slightly longer like maybe three or five paragraphs but it's brief right

what you need to do here is identify between two and maybe four any topics that need to be introduced to the reader

before we can identify the research Gap and stay at the end and you want to organize these topics from General to

specific think about that as sort of the inverted pyramid you know you have General and then you go more and more

specific with these topics and basically each paragraph in your literature review will be devoted to one of these topics

right so you want to have between two and maybe four paragraphs for this brief literature review element number three

is the research Gap and if there's like one element that is the most important it is this one it's the research Gap I

can't tell you you know the number of examples that I have where this was the element that made the paper be rejected

you know even very recently on my program when I was helping um two different researchers from two

different disciplines both of them one of their papers got rejected and the other one came back with major

Corrections and you know when we read the reviewers comments it seemed like you know the paper was a total mess and

it they needed to start from scratch but really the main problem was that the contribution the novelty of the paper

just wasn't that like that the research Gap wasn't there either so this is a crucial element stating the research

graph this can be done in numerous different ways right and I have another video when I talk about the different

types of a research Camp but you know you can point out the lack of research limitations of previous studies you know

a specific problem that needs solving a practical problem that needs solving right and you want to do it in one nice

paragraph typically you start with something like you know numerous studies on XY and that have been conducted

however there is a lack of research on X Y and Z in addition the previous studies are limited because X Y and Z right and

then you explain what the problem is once you've pointed out the research Gap and it is clear why you're doing your

study well now you can tell us what your study is about and state the aim of your study please don't you know State the

AIM research questions objectives and stuff like this you know just in one maximum two sentences say what the aim

of your study is simply and and that's it right now very often this is where introductions end however there are two

optional elements that can sometimes be useful and are sometimes used in different fields and in different

journals the first one right after the research Gap is you know kind of a quick recap like a summary of the results in

like one or two sentences you know what this paper shows you know and then also connected to that what is the main

contribution of your paper most of the time you know this is just said in the conclusion section but in some journals

and some researchers like to say it right in the introduction so it's clear to the reviewers as well what novelty

your paper brings right so feel free to do that right after the introduction in one paragraph and say what the main

contribution is now the second optional element which would end the introduction is to present the structure of your

paper and this is common in some Fields I wouldn't say it's very common across different fields but you can do it if

you want to especially if you notice that other people in your field are doing it very simply you know in one

paragraph States how the paper is organized that this paper is organized into six sections and then in each

following sentence you can tell us what each section is about so now let me show you exactly how this

is actually done on an example of a research paper and we'll look at each of the sections that I've just mentioned to

you and we'll see how the writers presented so let me show you two examples in here from two different

fields so you have an idea how you know the introduction is structured written in slightly different fields so the

first example is actually from a paper that I published a couple of years ago so it's kind of social sciences teaching

English and the introduction is much shorter the other paper is going to be from psychology medicine that sort of

thing so much more sort of exact sciences and the introduction is going to be much longer so you're going to see

two very different ways of approaching it which nevertheless follow a very similar pattern

so this one starts with you know establishing the importance of the topic and defining the topic in here it's one

of and the same thing so we Define the thing that we're going to talk about because this thing is very important

right so you kind of kill two birds with one stone and therefore make your introduction shorter right so that's the

first element right importance of the topic and defining any key Concepts and number two we've got literature review

right and in here it's rather short it's just one paragraph really right but it's enough to kind of

present us what we need and the reason why it's so short in here as well just so you know is because in this

particular Journal they like having a separate literature review section right so that's why there is a um the one in

the introduction is very short and then after that what we've got is the research Gap basically right so

we've got nevertheless despite all this literature we've got a lack of studies right and we've got limitations of these

studies in terms of whether we're conducted right and then this ends with presenting the aim of the study right so

a very short introduction just three paragraphs but notice that it follows the same pattern that we've discussed

now moving to the other introduction this one is slightly longer but well actually much longer probably twice the

length but it still follows the same pattern so we've got the importance of the topic right and the definition of

the topic as well and then we continue discussing that importance of the topic right the growing complexity so we

basically talk about the importance of the topic for the discipline right and this is further explored here again why

is this topic so crucial for this discipline right now right and then we've got a literature review in here

you'll see that the literature review is much longer right so we basically reviewing and reviewing the the

literature leading to the problem and first we've got a more practical problem in here right despite all this progress

and all these that is there is this problem in practice in medical education right and then afterwards we also have

the research Gap right so we've got a lack of understanding that there's uncertainty about something right and

there is a lack of research so there are different research gaps combined here which makes it much stronger right and

then we've got the aim of the study and specifically what was done and they also present that hypothesis right in here

um as well notice that none of the two papers that I showed here present the kind of the main contributions and the

structure of the paper which as I mentioned are optional and they're not really that common across disciplines so

as you can see an introduction to the research paper follows a very predictable structure that is almost

exactly the same regardless of the field that you're in and regardless of the type of the paper that you're actually

writing so start with the importance of the top topic and maybe the definition of a key concept then briefly review the

literature present the research Gap and this is crucial super important don't forget to present the research Gap State

the aim and then optionally State the main contributions of your paper and present the organization of the paper

now if you want to work with me more personally to help you to publish papers in top journals in your field then

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