A paper that discusses an experiment or investigation will generally use the following structure:

• Introduction – What was the problem or question?
• Materials and methods – How did we study it?
• Results – What did we find?
• Discussion – What do the results mean?

This structure helps the author organise the information; it also helps the reader to obtain information efficiently. The 4 main parts of a paper link as 2 pairs:

• ‘Introduction’ links with ‘Discussion’.
• ‘Materials and methods’ links with ‘Results’.

These links mean that the questions, challenges or problems posed in ‘Introduction’ should be considered and answered in ‘Discussion’, and the structure of activities in ‘Materials and methods’ should link to the structure of outputs in ‘Results’. Having similar structures in the pairs of parts helps your reader to understand the information you are presenting.

Other components of the paper may include:

• abstract
• author names and affiliations
• keywords
• abbreviations
• acknowledgments
• conflict-of-interest statement
• references
• additional online material.

Papers that review, critique or interpret other works (which could be technical, literary, philosophical, etc) use other structures. For example:

• Introduction and background
• Scope of study
• Methodology
• Literature review
• Main body of paper
• Conclusion

or

• Introduction
• Body topic 1
• Body topic 2
• Body topic 3
• Conclusion.