This may seem like a stupid question but I think a good one for people starting from basics. I am charged with writing a paper, yet I never have. How do you write one, are there some good websites that can describe the format and appropriate style?

Thanks

This may seem like a stupid question but I think a good one for people starting from basics. I am charged with writing a paper, yet I never have. How do you write one, are there some good websites that can describe the format and appropriate style?

Thanks

Definitely not a stupid question!
Many people find themselves in the same position. Professors all too often assume that all students have "paper-writing" experience, when the modern reality is that med students come from any number of varied undergrad majors, and some (although few) even come directly from high school.

Now, before we attempt to answer the question of how to write a paper, we should probably establish what type of paper it is that you are writing.

Is it a review? A commentary? A critical analysis? A case report? etc...

Perhaps, if there's demand, this could spread into a number of different replies and/or threads for different types of papers/articles.

Its a paper where we ran an experiment and are reporting the results, I dont know the fancy name for it. I am sooo useless.



Definitely not a stupid question!
Many people find themselves in the same position. Professors all too often assume that all students have "paper-writing" experience, when the modern reality is that med students come from any number of varied undergrad majors, and some (although few) even come directly from high school.

Now, before we attempt to answer the question of how to write a paper, we should probably establish what type of paper it is that you are writing.

Is it a review? A commentary? A critical analysis? A case report? etc...

Perhaps, if there's demand, this could spread into a number of different replies and/or threads for different types of papers/articles.

To help with figuring out the type of study you ran, I found a few resources. I think this site (http://galton.uchicago.edu/~thisted/courses/315/lectures/0297.pdf) gives a nice overview. For more information on study designs, you can consult this Emedicine article (http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic731.htm) or this section from the Center for Center for Evidence-Based Medicine (http://www.cebm.net/study_designs.asp).

From what you've said so far, it seems like what you did falls under the experiement category. If you give us more info we can (hopefully) point you in the right direction.

What format does your mentor/professor/adviser/whoever want the paper in? I took an immunology course where our specifications was the manuscript guidelines in the journal Immunology). Even if your adviser didn't specify, he/she probably has an idea in mind. You can always find the journal that most closely matches up with what you're doing and seeing if you can track down it's instructions for authors. For example, here is JAMA's (http://jama.ama-assn.org/ifora_current.dtl) current instructions for authors.