Research Writing Toolkit

A powerful shift when thinking about publishing your work has nothing to do with writing, it has to do with how you think about journals. While we often think that journals exist to publish scholarly manuscripts, journals are really promoting scholarly conversations. When you publish an article you’re entering a scholarly conversation where you’re taking your turn in the conversation.

When you enter a conversation there are certain conventions you need to be aware of. First, you eavesdrop to get an idea about what’s being said, this is the conversational equivalent of the literature review. When you join the conversation you enter with a contribution that shows your shared interest in the topic and your knowledge about what’s already been said. You also express your intention to add something new that will matter to those already participating in the conversation. When you violate those expectations it’s usually a turn-off to those in the room and they turn their back on the conversation. (Lingard, 2015)

Lingard writes that in order to position your work as a compelling turn in the conversation the introduction must identify a problem that people are talking about, establish a gap in the current knowledge or thinking about the problem and articulate a hook that convinces people that the gap is of consequence. These elements should ideally be in the first paragraph or two.

Entering the scholarly conversation involves establishing the need for your research. This means the purpose of the literature review section of a manuscript is not to report what is known about your topic. The purpose is to identify what remains unknown (Lingard, 2015). Of course, to do that you will need to identify some of what is known about your topic, but the focus needs to always drive toward what is not yet known. What is the problem, and the gap in what is known?  (Lingard, 2015)

The introduction must build a logical case and provide a context for the problem statement. The problem statement must be clear and well-articulated. It is important to remember that the topic and the problem statement aren’t the same things. For example here are examples of two topic sentences from the paper Integrating Simulation and Interpretive Description to Explore Operating Room Leadership: Critical Event Continuing Education (Broski, Tarver, Krase et. al. 2023).

Team training is a crucial component in addressing preventable medical errors.

Crisis resource management training addresses nontechnical skills such as situational awareness, decision-making, teamwork, and leadership.

This is an example of a problem statement:

The need for the leader to remain ‘hands-free’ creates a leadership dilemma that crisis resource management training has not yet addressed. Because the surgeon is the only person in the room with the technical skills to perform specific actions, such as conducting an emergency c-section or maintaining hemostasis, situational awareness is compromised for the surgeon. (Broski et al., 2023)

It is important to remember that the problem/gap/hook isn’t the same as your research question and purpose statement. While it’s critical that your introduction clearly articulates the purpose of your study and your research problem, they don’t provide a powerful means to enter the scholarly conversation.

While the following is an example of a well-written purpose statement, it would not be the best way to enter the scholarly conversation.

The purpose of this study is to use post-event simulation debriefing to explore participants’ responses to distributing leadership during crisis resource management training. The findings from this study may be used to inform how healthcare organizations conduct important aspects of continuing education that utilize principles of CRM. (Broski et al., 2023)

Broski, J., Tarver, S., Krase, K., Petersen, S., Wolverton, A., Winchester, M.,  Berbel, G., Zabel, T., Warren, H., Lineberry, M. (2023) Advances in Health Science Education (Accepted)

Lingard L. (2015) Joining a conversation: the problem/gap/hook heuristic. Perspect Med Educ. 4(5):252-3. doi: 10.1007/s40037-015-0211-y. PMID: 26346497; PMCID: PMC4602011.