Scientists frequently communicate the results of their work in research reports. They tell others what study they performed, why they did it, what they discovered, and what it means. Regardless of the specific discipline involved, most research reports follow a general format: Title Page, Abstract, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Discussion. The separate sections are described below. Your Lab Report should follow this format, and each section of the paper should be clearly labeled with a section title. The Lab Report should contain between 4 & 5 pages of text, double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12pt font, with 1 margins (let us know if you have any problems with this formatting). Figures or tables may add additional pages.

Title Page
Title page should include Research Paper Title, Author, School, and Date. Make the title of your study concise, descriptive, and informative. Your title should indicate the nature of your research. “Studies on slug slime” is not as descriptive as “Chemical constituents of slug slime.”

Abstract
It is best to write your abstract AFTER completing a draft of your scientific paper. The abstract is a very brief overview of your ENTIRE study. It tells the reader WHAT you did, WHY you did it, HOW you did it, WHAT you found, and WHAT it means. The abstract should briefly state the purpose of the research (introduction), how the problem was studied (methods), the principal findings (results), and what the findings mean (discussion and conclusion). It is important to be descriptive but concise–say only what is essential, using no more words than necessary to convey meaning. Most scientific journals have a word limit for Abstracts, which keeps them short. Try to make your Abstract no longer than this paragraph (or at least close)!

Introduction
What problem did you investigate? Why did you choose this subject, and why is it important? What hypotheses did you test? Based upon your knowledge from scientific talks and reading other publications in your field of study, what results did you anticipate and why? The introduction should address these and similar questions.

Materials and Methods
How did you conduct your study? What chemicals or other reagents did you use? What equipment did you use? What procedures did you follow? Relate your procedures in sufficient detail so that someone else (or you!) could repeat the experiment. Since your procedures have been completed, report them using past tense. You may use first person, active voice (“We added 2 ml of water…”) or passive voice (“Two ml of water were added…”). This section should be written in narrative, paragraph format, not as a list of numbered steps, and should not include any results. Materials should not be listed separately, but should be included in the description of the methods. Often, each type of experiment carried out is described in its own paragraph (with its own heading). You do not need to write out the entire Protocol from your lab handouts, but summarize what you did!

Results
What did you find out? Present the results of your research in a logical order. Use tables and/or figures (such as graphs) to visually aid your reader to see and understand your results, rather than forcing them to rely on description alone. Tables and figures need to be numbered and titled separately. This will enable you to refer to them in text quite easily (“Data in Table 3 suggest that plants are…”). Each table or figure also needs a descriptive caption to aid the reader in deciphering what is supposed to be seen in that particular table or figure. Even though you may present your results in a table or figure, be certain to explain in the body of your paper the important features of each figure or table. The function of a Results section in a scientific paper is to objectively present key data, along with an interpretation of the results (but no wild speculation or elaboration), in an orderly and logical sequence.

Discussion
In this section, you should interpret the results of your paper in light of what is already known about the subject of the investigation, and to explain how the results of the paper provide new understanding or open up new questions in the field. Are data consistent with your initial hypothesis? Do data support or reject your hypothesis? Do you need to revise the hypothesis? How do your results compare with the results of other scientists performing similar experiments? What could your results mean to someone studying this process in a different organism? Does your research have implications for scientists studying other questions? If there are ambiguities in your results, what further experiments need to be performed? What are possible directions for future research? What are the theoretical implications or practical applications of your work?

References
In this section you should list the sources that you used to collect background information for writing your paper (your knowledge has to come from somewhere!!). You can look at your textbook and cite your Biology 61 Labs, but we also want you to cite at least 3 outside sources (websites from a reliable .org/.edu/.com/.gov site are acceptable for your report, but generally not found in a scientific paper). Please use the citation format in your assigned paper, where each reference is listed alphabetically and then assigned a number. This number is placed in the body of the paper wherever appropriate, usually at the end of the sentence where you cite data or information form that source. Here is an example from an article, a book and a website, respectively: