Similarities and differences between two research articles

Writing research articles involves respecting some academic requirements. According to Pintos and Crimi (2010a), “research articles are composed of several parts: title, abstract, acknowledgements, introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussions, recommendations, references, and appendixes” (p. 27). These steps make the papers organized and tidy, and they guide the readers throughout the article.

However, these requirements are not always fulfilled similarly. Educational articles could be written following the American Psychological Association (APA, 2008) conventions. In contrast, medicine papers could be made respecting the Vancouver System, which presents the academic standards for the field of medicine.

Throughout this paper, two research articles will be compared and contrasted in order to find similarities and differences among them. Both articles will be analyzed taking into account their distinguishing features. Therefore, the purpose of this current study is to compare and contrast these two research papers.

The educational article deals with online distance education (Zhang & Kenny, 2010), and it presents an informative and unstructured abstract (Pintos & Crimi, 2010c). This summary describes what the authors did, and it provides readers with the most important findings. Besides, it consists of one long, unbroken paragraph.

This research article does not contain acknowledgements, but it does have an introduction named background to the study. Within this section, Zhang and Kenny (2010) state essential information to understand the purpose of the study and their need to run research. These authors also provide a literature review which is divided among several headings with the purpose of supporting their point of view.

The methods section introduces five subsections: purpose, research questions, participants, data collection and data analysis (Zhang & Kenny, 2010). As Pintos and Crimi (2010a) have summarized, the word methods is centered at the start of the section, and the subsections are typed at the left margin. This part deals with the aim of research articles, its two research questions as well as how data was collected and analyzed.

This educational paper names the results section with the title findings (Zhang & Kenny, 2010). This part is also divided into several subheadings: previous educational experiences, English language proficiency, life experiences together with socializing in the online environment. Many non native English speakers are cited in this section in order to present the main results (Pintos & Crimi, 2010b).

The discussions section aims at interpreting the research outcomes. For instance, Zhang and Kenny (2010) have claimed that “Mitra had confidence in her command of English but stated that she had difficulties communicating with peers or the discussion board about certain topics” (Discussion, ¶ 3). Though the conclusion could be written together with the discussions, it is placed in isolation in order to summarize the key results.

This research article does not contain recommendations, but it does have references as well as appendixes. The reference section is written respecting the APA (2008) standards. The appendixes section includes three appendixes intended to show how information was gathered (Zhang and Kenny, 2010). The first appendix is an online survey (Appendix A); the second, an email interview questions (Appendix B); and the third, sample telephone/ face-to-face interviews questions (Appendix C).

On the other hand, the medicine article deals with the maternal and paternal age at delivery, birth order, and the risk of childhood onset type 1 diabetes (Stene, Magnus, Lie, Søvik1 & Jones, 2001). This paper contains an informative and structured abstract (Pintos & Crimi, 2010c). It is informative since it presents the results of the research, and it is structured because it consists of bolded headings that represent the main sections of the whole paper.

This academic article does not state acknowledgements above the abstract, though it contains an introduction which is composed of three moves (Pintos & Crimi, 2010a). The first paragraph creates a research space, the second indicates which the gap of the research is and the third occupies the gap by outlining the main purpose of the research. Though this paper does not present a literature review as a separate heading, it does have it implicitly within the introduction section.

The methods section of this research article is not divided into subsections, and its main title is named subjects and methods, which is typed at the left margin. Stene et al. (2001) concentrate on how they have carried out the research. These authors outlined all the steps they follow to run their current investigation.

The results section also presents its main findings, but it does so including two tables which “allow authors to present a large proportion of information in a small amount of space” (Pintos & Crimi, 2010b, p.22). These tables are properly numbered, have individual titles, horizontal lines and specific notes which explain a particular item in the table (Stene et al., 2001).

This research article states the discussions together with the conclusions. Though serious academic writing avoids concluding paragraphs with the phrase in conclusion (Pintos & Crimi, 2010b), this paper does so in order to introduce the conclusion. According to Stene et al. (2001), the research problem has not been solved. They cited that “… the relation between maternal age, birth order, and risk of type 1 diabetes is more complex than previously thought” (Possible explanations for the effect, ¶ 5).

Although this medicine article does not present the acknowledgements below the abstract, it does include them after the discussions section. Acknowledgements are incorporated to thank all the staff and contributors for their help. The references section is not written respecting the APA (2008) conventions, but following the Vancouver referencing system, which establishes the standards required for the field of medicine.

Though both papers seem to have covered nearly all the parts of research articles, they differ in their layouts. Their types of abstracts are different. While the medicine paper includes the discussions section isolated from the conclusion; the educational article incorporates the conclusion together with the discussions. On top of that, the educational research article follows the APA rules, and the medicine fulfills the Vancouver referencing System standards.


References

American Psychological Association (2008). Publication Manual (5th ed). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010a). Unit 2: The Research Article: introduction, literature review and methods sections. Universidad CAECE: Buenos Aires, Argentina. Retrieved July 20, 2010, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=4691

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010b). Unit 1: Unit 3: The Research Article: results, discussions, and conclusions. Universidad CAECE: Buenos Aires. Retrieved July 20, 2010, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=4692

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010c). Unit 1: Unit 4: Research Articles: abstracts. Universidad CAECE: Buenos Aires. Retrieved July 20, 2010, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=4693

Stene, L. C., Magnus, P., Lie, R. T., Søvik, O., & Joner, G. (2001). Maternal and paternal age at delivery, birth order, and risk of childhood onset type 1 diabetes: population based cohort study. BMJ, 323 (7309), 369. doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7309.369

Zhang, Z., & Kenny, R. F. (2010). Learning in an Online Education Course: Experiences of Three International Students. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 11 (1). Retrieved July 20, 2010, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/775/1481