Hi.
This is Karen McKee, retired scientist and author.
As most of you know, a typical scientific paper follows a formal structure with five
main sections, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions plus abstract
and references.
Each section presents different aspects of the research being reported.
But some sections are more difficult to write than others.
In previous videos, I’ve provided some guidelines to writing the introduction and the discussion,
which are two sections some people have trouble writing.
In this video, I’m going to focus on the conclusions section, which can also pose some
challenges to the scientific writer.
First, let’s talk about what is expected in the conclusions section.
Some people make the mistake of simply summarizing the points made in the discussion.
Now there is nothing wrong with a summary, but if your target journal requires a conclusions
section, then you need to take your main research finding and put it into a broader perspective.
What do I mean by this?
Instead of just summarizing your results, explain to the reader why your results are
important and how they contribute to the field.
Here I’ve made a list of points you might address in a conclusions section.
First, always put your study’s topic into a broader context to show the reader why they
should care about your results.
You also want to remind your reader of your main finding by briefly summarizing it.
And then interpret that finding in relation to the broader issue.
You can also point out the limitations of your study or alternative interpretations
in the conclusions, which will help the reader put your study into perspective.
You can also describe implications of your findings for other types of systems.
Describe any practical applications of your results, if any.
Finally, you may wish to suggest areas for future research.
You don’t need to address all of these in every paper or in this exact order.
They are just suggestions to aid in writing your conclusions.
Let’s now look at an example.
In this recent paper, still in press, I started the conclusions section by saying that
Sea-level rise, driven by global warming, threatens coastal wetlands worldwide with
submergence.
Understanding how hurricanes may interact with processes controlling coastal elevations
will aid in management of these ecosystems and the services they provide.
These two sentences frame the broader issues that the study relates to and lead the reader
into our study’s topic: hurricanes and sediment accretion in a subtropical wetland.
In the following sentences, I continued to put the work into a larger perspective by
pointing out how mangroves have been expanding globally and what this might mean for vulnerability
of coastal wetlands to rising sea level.
I then summarized our main finding that mangrove and salt marsh vegetation captured similar
amounts of hurricane sediment.
The interpretation is next, that climate-induced shifts in dominant vegetation in this particular
setting may not alter hurricane sediment capture.
The next several sentences point out the limitations of our study.
For example, we don’t know how long the hurricane sediment might persist or if differences
might occur later because of differences between mangrove and salt marsh habitats.
The conclusions section ended with suggestions for future research.
Well, that was a fairly long conclusions section.
Here’s another example that’s shorter and uses fewer points in a slightly different
order.
In this study, which was part of my dissertation research, I tested the hypothesis that crab
predation on mangrove propagules determined spatial variation in tree dominance across
a forest.
Here is the conclusions section, which you can see is quite brief.
But it still includes some of the key points I’ve already covered.
Let’s break it down.
I started by summarizing the main finding that although predation affected propagule
viability, the patterns of consumption were only partially consistent with tree dominance.
I then spelled out what this meant, which was that predation could not by itself explain
how mangrove species were distributed in the forest and that other factors were likely
involved.
Such a take-home message is what you want to include in your conclusions.
The second paragraph puts the work into a global perspective by summarizing findings
from different geographic regions.
The section ends with a recommendation that other factors need to be considered in future
studies of mangrove zonation.
Those are just a couple of examples to illustrate how to write a conclusions section using this
list of possible points to cover.
If you are still uncertain about what to include in your conclusions, your target journal is
a good place to begin.
Analyze a few recent papers in that journal and see what points the authors cover in their
conclusions.
Then use that information to outline your conclusions section.
Once you see how it’s done, you’ll be able to develop your own formula for writing
a compelling and informative conclusions section.
Thanks for watching and please like my video if you found it helpful.