Research Reports by Students OLIVER GRUMMITT, N ORDER to teach graduate students to write acItageous ceptable research reports it has been found advanto furnish new students with a copy of the following notes. After several progress reports on the thesis research problem have been written and these have been criticized by the instructor, most graduate students will have acquired some facility in report writing. Without this directed practice it is possible that the only occasion for a graduate student to exercise his writing talent is'in the preparation of the thesis. Under such circumstances it is not remarkable that some chemists are unable to write reports.
Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
Although opinions on the composition of a research report may differ widely, it was thought that these notes might be of use to other students and instructors, too. RESEARCHREPORTS
According to many published statements ,of research directors the most kommon and serious deficiency of their chemists is the inability to present the results of an investigation either in written or oral form. This is especially unfortunate in large research laboratories where most of the supervisory personnel has contact
with the research chemist almost entirely through reports of one kind and another. Mediocre reports mean that the research heads can form an unfavorable opinion of a chemist in their employ despite the fact that his work may be satisfactory. Therertain way of avoiding classification among the frequently criticized chemists who cannot write is to learn the fundamentals of report writing as a student. The purpose of these notes is to describe briefly the style, orgn~~imtion. :ind con\.entions which constitute R uood rrwrt. Much of what is included herc also aoolies to the writing of theses and journal articles.
hundred grams of solid. . ." is correct, as is "The solid consisted of 200 g." ORGANIZATION
The 6rst step in report writing is to outline all the material in order to get a logical presentation. The four major headings in this outline should correspond to the four main sections or chapters of the report: Introduction, Results and Discussion, Exfierimentdd, and Summary. Introduction. This section includes a summary of the pertinent literature to serve as a background for the problem under investigation. Careful reading of the STYLE literature is required for this summary in order that the A good report is one that presents the material with methods and results of the earlier work can be interthe maximum clarity. Because the author of the report preted and evaluated. The material should be arranged is so thoroughly familiar with his work that he is not in an orderly fashion so that its significance is readily likely to appreciate the reader's viewpoint without mak- grasped. If there are many references a preliminary ing a conscious effort to do so, clarity is actually very outline will be helpful. It may be necessary to copy difficultto attain. It can be attained, however, by keep- tables and graphs from the literature or even to coning in mind the reader and by logical organization, care- struct tables and graphs if they will clarify the material ful selection of words, and the skillful use of diagrams, being discussed. The importance of this part of the retables, and graphs. It should go without saying that port must not be underrated, because it must show the writer of the report must understand his work in both the background for the problem and its relation to order to present it clearly. the general field. The well-written report must be both complete and At the end of the introduction, a brief statement of concise. When there are considerable literature and ex- the purpose or objective of the investigation should be perimental material to be reported, it is good practice to made. Usually one or two sentences will suffice. check a t the top of the notebook pages those whose conIf the report is one of a series on the same research tents have been included in the report; otherwise, work problem, i. e., a "progress report," the literature survey done some time in the past may be overlooked. Com- and purpose need not be repeated after the first report. pleteness can be gained without going to great lengths Contemporary publications, however, which are perif the material is properly organized and consolidated. tinent to the problem should be included in the report Conciseness permits the reader to go over the report immediately following the publication, in order to keep quickly and efficiently. the literature survey up to date. It is therefore necesThe expectation that good English be used in a re- sary to read through the current issues of the Journal port is entirely reasonable, although it is one that is not of the American Chemical Society, Industrial and Engialways realized. Grammatical errors and misspelling neering Chemistry, and the Analytical Edition of Induscreate a bad impression that is by no means off-set by trial and Engineering Chemistry each month, as well as the good features of the report. Acceptable English in- the relevant sections of Chemical Abstracts every two cludes careful construction of sentences and paragraphs, weeks. The rapid development of chemistry and the the consistent use of a verb tense, and a discriminating need, therefore, for constant study require the chemist choice of words. Words which are frequently over- to devote considerable time to the chemical journals. worked are data, yield, phenomenon, increase, and de- Although the demands on the time of a graduate stncrease. If these words are used with a due regard to dent are already large, the reading of journals should be their meaning and if synonyms are occasionally substi- done as a part of the research work. tuted, they will not become repetitious. Certain words Results and Discussion. The results of the experiare often confused, such as adsorb and absorb, and af- mental work, exclusive of the details of the actual profect and effect. Also to be avoided in the report are cedure, are set forth and discussed in this section. "slang" technical expressions such as "aromatics" for Charts, tables, and graphs should be used whenever aromatic hydrocarbons, "strip" fot distill, and "goo" possible because they present a large amount of inforfor resinous residue. mation with maximum clarity and in minimum space. Good English also means that only accepted abbre- This section must be carefully organized, which means viations are used. Permissible abbreviations include that in all probability the order of presentation of the cm., cc., ml., g., OC., %, m. p., b. p., cal., and kcal. results will be quite different from the chronological orIn the text the names of compounds rather than formu- der in which the work was done. las are used. In general more abbreviations and symWhen the results have been set forth and evaluated, bols are allowed in tables and graphs than in the text they should be discussed in the light of previous work in because of the need of conserving space. Sentences this field. It should be made clear in what way this reshould not start with numerals; for example, "Two search has extended and modified present knowledge.
-
A.
a.,
If the new results are contradictory with those of other workers, an effort to explain this situation ought to be made. A certain amount of intelligent speculation on the results of applying these findings to other work may properly be included here. In general all experimental details concerning chemicals, apparatus, and technic are excluded from Results and Discmsion, unless they have a direct bearing upon the nature of the results. For example, if one had used refractive index-per cent composition data for analysis i t might be necessary to point out: "Since the refractive indices were determined with the Abbe refractometer, the accuracy is only *0.0002 . . . ." Except for a case such as this no mention need be made of the particular instrument used until the Experimental section. Very often the effectsof changes in experimental conditions are discussed and usually this may be done without giving exact quantities except in the tables and graphs; for example, "an excess of reactant A instead of B caused.. ."; or "longer reaction times favored the formation of product C . . . " Occasionally certain experimental measurements which have been used to calculate results need not be included in the discussion of results but can be placed in an appendix a t the end of the report. This is true only of measurements which in themselves are not required for the discussion; for example, in measuring therateof oxygen absorption of oil films numerous weighings are made a t time intervals and graphs of time versus weight increase are prepared. The graphs belong in Results, but the actual times and weights might best be placed in an appendix in the form of tables, if for purposes of discussion a comparison of the time-weight curves suffices. A further example might arise where very careful measurements have required calibration of certain instruments. The writer wishes to show his calibration figures in his report in order to substantiate his claims to accuracy but, since these figures are not in themselves discussed or possibly only mentioned briefly, it would be more convenient to relegate such tables to the appendix. In this way the discussion of results is simpler and more readable. Experimental. This section includes, in the order shown, a description of the apparatus employed (with drawings if a written description is insufficient), the preparation and purification of chemicals, and then the experimental procedure. It is usually convenient to use subheadings which may be placed a t the beginning of the paragraph; such as, Purification of Acetic Acid. The order in which the material of this section is presented should parallel as nearly as possible the order used in the previous section. If a series of experiments has been run in which the procedure is the same in each case, then a single description of that procedure is sufficient. The experiments should be numbered with Arabic numerals and arranged in a logical sequence. This sequence may or may not be the same as theorder in which the experiments were done. If the procedures used in the various experiments differ, then, of course,
each experiment must be described individually. In the description of the synthesis of a compound both the weights and the number of moles of reactants should be stated; for example, ". . . is added to 33.5 g. (0.31 mole) of phenylhydrazine." When analytical results are given, both calculated and observed percentages are stated. The accepted form for these results is as follows: An*, talc*. for Go
aN1:C, 65,42; H, 6,2$. N, 5.09. Found: C,65.31; H,6.18; N,5.39.
Unless the analytical method used was specially developed in the course of the work or was a hewn method which required modification, no description of the method need be given. It is sufficient to say "nitrogen was determined by the Kjeldahl procedure" because the method is well known. For less familiar procedures a reference to the journal article consulted should be given. Summery. This fourth and last section is a brief compilation of the results obtained in the research. In effect the summary is a condensation of Results and Discussion. It should be so organized and worded that, if one were to read only this part of the report, i t would be possible to grasp the nature of the problem and the results of the work. It is sometimes convenient to list the results in numbered paragraphs each containing a sentence or two. The good research report is not only one that is written in the correct style and with logical organization but it is also one in which the references, tables, and graphs are set forth properly. References. In a brief report which includes only a few references, such as a progress report, the references may be inserted in the text parenthetically. In all other reports, however, the references are each indicated by a number in parentheses; e. g., "Smith and Jones (4) reported . . . ." This same number is used in the bibliography for the corresponding journal reference, the bibliography being a separate part of the report following the summary and preceding the appendix. The reference numbers increase numerically throughout the report, except when a reference is used more than once the same number is employed. Where a bibliography contains a large number of references, as in the case of a scientific monograph or long review article, the ieferences are arranged so that the authors' names are alphabetical. This is usually unnecessary in a report. The accepted practice in writing out a journal reference is to give the author's surname, the abbreviated title of the journal, the volume number underlined, the page number, and finally the year. The following example is properly punctuated: Prey, Ber., 74B, 1219 (1941).
There is no need to invent abbreviations for journal titles because accepted ones are already established; "List of Periodicals Abstracted" in Chemical Abstracts, 1936, gives abbreviations for about 2800 journals.
Sometimes it is convenient to glance through a number of Chemical Abstracts or the Journal of the American Chemical Society to find the journal title in question. If the journal is one which is not likely to be available in most chemical libraries, both the journal reference and the abstract reference in Chemical Abstracts should be given in the bibliography to facilitate the reader's consultation of the literature. For example:
may be given in the heading for a column or with the first figure in the column and therefore need not be repeated for the rest of the figures. The order in which the columns are arranged, either from left to right across the top of the page or from top to bottom a t the lefthand side, should be carefully chosen. The following sample table illustrates these points: I TABLE
Day and Sankaron. Proc. Natl. Inst. Sci. India. 6, 173 (1940); C. A,, 36,4824(1942).
EPPECT O P EXPERIMENTAL C O N D ~ I O N S ON YIELDSqP X Reactant A Reactant B Eap. No. Grams % Yield -Moles -Grams -Moles -Time -Temp. --
If the reference is a patent, give the name of the inventor, country, patent number, and date of issue. For example : Carothers, U. S. Patent 2,071,250, Feh. 16. 1937.
In case the reference is a book, the author's name, title of the book, publisher, location of the publisher, date of publication, and page are all given; for example : Branch and Calvin, "Theory of Organic Chemistry," PrenticeHall, New York, 1941, p. 250.
If a thesis is referred to, give the author's name, degree for which thesis was written, university, and date. For example : A. Smith, M.A. Thesis, Western Reserve University, 1939.
Occasionally reference is made to a paper presented a t a meeting which h m t yet been published in a journal. The follow& example shows the proper form of such a referenc4:
Graphs. It is beyond the scope of these notes to discuss graphical methods, but these are already treated by Rhodes ( I ) , Daniels (Z),and others. Graphs are numbered consecutively with Roman numerals, given brief descriptive titles, and located on separate pages in the report as close as possible to the point where they are first discussed. The elementary rules of analytical geometry requiring that the scales should be selected so as to use most of the paper and that the independent variable be plotted as the abscissa are still valid here. The points for a single curve on the graph are shown as small circles. If there is more than one curve in the same graph, i t is necessary to distinguish the curves by using circles as points for one, boxes, crosses, and the like for each of the others. A suitable legend on the graph explains the meaning of the various "points"; for example: GMPK I EFPECT OF CONCENTRATION ON ACID NUMBER
"-
Andrews and Youn paper presented before the Division of Organic Chemistry. A rican Chemical Sadety meeting. Memphis, Tenn., April 2&24. \-
O a t 200T m a t 225 + a t 250
Although conventional abbreviations and punctuations for references mav seem trivial.. thev . are important for the sake of consistency and good form. Tables. Tables are numbered consecutively with Roman numerals followed by brief descriptive titles. They are placed in the report as close as possible to the point where they are first discussed. Unless the table is large, it need not be placed on a separate page. If the table includes a list of experiments, the experiments should be numbered with Arabic numerals for convenience in referring to them. The units for tabulated quantities
Interpolated and extrapolated portions of a curve are usually made with dotted lines. BIBLIOGRAPHY
(1)
(2)
"Technical Report Writing," McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1941. This monograph by Professor Fred H. Rhodes presents an excellent treatment of report writing, particularly from the standpoint of the chemical engineer. It includes on p. 120 a bibliography of some of the standard references on technical reports and mathematical methods employed in statistics and graphical methods. Preparation for Physical Chemistry." McGraw-Hill Book Co.. New York. 1928.
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