organizingandwritingascientificpaperorathesis（organizingandwritingascientificpaperorathesis）.docVIP

Guidelines to Scientific Writing By Dr. ir. Mony Jaspers Mss. Griet Neukermans June 2007 With input by Paul Nieuwenhuysen 2007-07 This document aims to guide you in the writing up of your graduate thesis and might serve as a basis for publishing your thesis research in a scientific journal. Dr. ir. Edmonde Jaspers used to teach a course on Scientific Reporting in the 2nd year of the Master program in Ecological Marine Management (part of the course Scientific Reporting and Didactics, P. Nieuwenhuysen), but she retired and stopped teaching in 2006. She was so kind to provide her course notes and reference books, and so this document is a combination of both. I hope these guidelines are helpful to write up your EcoMaMa-thesis. Griet Neukermans Project coordinator ICP Master of Ecological Marine Management (EcoMaMa) PhD student at the laboratory of Plant Biology and Nature Management (APNA) VUB-APNA-WE Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels Belgium Dr. ir. Edmonde Jaspers Former director of IZWO (Instituut voor Zeewetenschappelijk Onderzoek, institute for Marine Research) Table of contents Table of contents 2 List of Figures 3 List of Tables 3 1 Basic principles in scientific writing 4 2 Format of scientific writing 4 2.1 Graduate thesis 4 2.2 Scientific article 5 3 Structure of your thesis 5 3.1 Title and abstract 5 3.1.1 Title 5 3.1.2 Abstract 6 3.1.3 Keywords 6 3.2 Introduction 6 3.3 Literature review 7 3.4 Materials and methods 7 3.5 Results 8 3.6 Discussion 8 3.7 Conclusions 9 3.8 Acknowledgements 9 3.9 References 9 3.9.1 Referring in the text 9 3.9.2 List of references cited 10 3.10 Appendix/Appendices 11 4 Accessories to the text 11 4.1 Tables 11 4.2 Figures 14 4.2.1 Graphs 14 4.2.2 Flowcharts 16 4.2.3 Photographs 17 4.2.4 Maps 17 Appendices 19 Appendix 1: Verbosity 19 Appendix 2: Example of a thesis cover 21 Appendix 3: Choosing a good title 23 List of Figures Fig