Writing a Biomedical Research Paper: A Guide to Structure and Style

All of us in biomedicine understand the urgency of getting experimental results into print as quickly as possible. Yet this critical step in the cascade from research conception to publication receives almost no attention in our formal training. It is as if we have been put to sea without a compass. Our collective failure to achieve widespread literacy in our own language – Biomedical Language – seriously impedes the important process of d- seminating new biomedical knowledge and thereby improving the human condition. It is also a significant personal concern for researchers and clinicians in the highly competitive, publish-or-perish environment of c- temporary academia. Of course, if we are clever or lucky enough to come up with that Nobel Prize-winning discovery, great science will carry the day and we are likely to get published even if our writing is fairly horrid. But most of us who publish are “bread-and-butter” scientists. We compete for space in journals which may only accept 10% or 20% of the submissions that they receive each year. For us, convincing, engaging writing will make the difference between being published or rejected, or at least it will make the difference between being published on ? rst submission or having to go through a number of revisions (or journals). None of this is to propose that good writing can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Scienti? c content is the sine qua non of biomedical writing.

Dr. Budgell is a career neuroscientist with more than 30 journal publications and a half-dozen book chapters to his credit. He has also edited textbooks, and a recent encyclopedia on neuroscience. His interest in biomedical and health linguistics developed from experiences assisting colleagues, especially in Japan and China. To this end, he has collaborated in assembling and conducting linguistic analyses of collections of the literature of nursing, public health and midwifery. His funded research in this area has led to the creation of the web-based Centre for Biomedical and Health Linguistics to assist teachers and learners. The Centre’s open-access resources are available at http://www.bmhlinguistics.org

Recent publications and conference presentations related to his research include:

Budgell B, Miyazaki M, O’Brien M, Perkins R, Tanaka Y. Developing a corpus of the nursing literature: a pilot study. Japan Journal of Nursing Science 2007;4:21-25.

Millar N, Budgell B. The language of public health - The language of public health a corpus-based analysis. The Journal of Public Health 2008;16(5):369-374.

Perkins R, Budgell B, Miyazaki M, O’Brien M, Tanaka Y. Assessing Biomedical English Competency: A Fair, Valid, Sensitive, and Approach. In: International Medical Education Conference; 2007; Kuala Lumpur; International Medical University; 2007. p. A39.

Budgell B, Miyazaki M, O’Brien M, Perkins R, Tanaka Y. Our Shared Biomedical Language. In: International Medical Education Conference; 2007; Kuala Lumpur: International Medical University; 2007. p. A17.

Tanaka Y, Miyazaki M, Budgell B, O’Brien M, Perkins R. Developing A Corpus Of The Nursing Literature - A Pilot Study. In: International Medical Education Conference; 2007; Kuala Lumpur: International Medical University; 2007. p. A29.

Periera C, Budgell B. Assessing the Biomedical Literacy and English Language Skills of Malaysian Health Sciences Students. In: International Medical Education Conference; 2007; Kuala Lumpur: International Medical University; 2007. p. A41.