To learn how to organize your articles, study articles in high-impact English-language journals

In the fields that I'm familiar with—biology, biotechnology, and medicine—there is often a huge difference in the quality of writing between what is published in high-impact journals, and what is published in little journals. It seems to me that it's probably a positive feedback cycle: Because high-impact journals are more prestigious, more people want to publish there, so the editors can afford to demand clearer, better-organized writing. Because the writing is better, more researchers read the articles and find useful information and ideas in them. This leads to more citations, maintaining these journals' high impact factor. I think that it's not only the quality of the science that makes journals like Nature, Science, and British Medical Journal so popular and prestigious; it's also how clearly the ideas are presented in the pages of those journals.

The articles in these kinds of journals are worth using as models, even if you don't think that your study will be published in such a prestigious journal. First, you can be almost certain that the English in these journals is correct. Second, the way that the ideas are organized and presented in these journals will help you make your ideas clearer and more interesting to a wider range of readers, which will help your research get the attention it deserves.

I suggest that you find some articles that you find interesting in high-impact journals, and then make an outline of the main ideas in the article, to see how the authors organize their ideas. This will teach you how to outline and organize your own articles. To show you how to do it, I've made an outline of the main ideas in the introduction to an article entitled Oxytocin bolus versus oxytocin bolus and infusion for control of blood loss at elective caesarean section: double blind, placebo controlled, randomised trial (Sheehan et al. 2011) from BMJ (British Medical Journal).

First, here is my outline at the paragraph level:

• caesarean section – frequency and morbidity
• haemorrhage usually leading cause of mortality
• little attention paid to value of administering oxytocics to reduce haemorrhage after caesarean section
• UK guidelines and practice
•  North American guidelines and practice
• study aim and hypothesis

When I write, I usually only make an outline at the paragraph level. However, other people prefer to make more detailed outlines before they begin. In addition, outlining ideas at the sentence level is a good way to learn how good writers organize English-language paragraphs. So let's take a look at a sentence level outline of the first paragraph from this article:

Caesarean section

• 1 of most commonly performed operations
• frequency increasing
• morbidity includes...
• haemorrhage usually leading cause of mortality 

Now find some articles that are interesting to you in high-impact English-language journals. Use them to learn how to improve your writing.

BONUS EXERCISE:
Have you noticed how the introduction to Sheehan et al. (2011) clearly answers the readers main questions? See if you can use the information from the introduction to their article to complete the following sentence from a previous post:

1. I/we studied…
2. because I/we wanted to find out whether/what/when/why/where/who/how...
3. in order to help my/our readers better understand…

Keep reading to find the answer...

1. We studied the use of infusions of oxytocin after caesarean section
2. because we wanted to find out whether the addition of an oxytocin infusion to the standard oxytocin bolus would improve prevention of haemorrhage
3. in order to help our readers better understand how to treat women who undergo a caesarean section.

SOURCE:
Sheehan SR, AA Montgomery, M Carey, FM McAuliffe, M Eogan, R Gleason, M Geary, DJ Murphy, The ECSSIT Study Group "Oxytocin bolus versus oxytocin bolus and infusion for control of blood loss at elective caesarean section: double blind, placebo controlled, randomised trial," BMJ 2011;343:d4661.