Article

An Article is a substantial novel research study that often involves several techniques or approaches. The main text (excluding abstract, Methods, references and figure legends) is 2,000–3,000 words. The abstract is 150 words maximum, and is unreferenced. Articles have 4–6 display items (figures and/or tables). An introduction (of up to 500 words) is followed by sections headed Results, Discussion, and Methods. The Results and Methods should be divided by topical subheadings; the Discussion does not contain subheadings. References are limited to 50.

http://www.nature.com/nphoton/authors/article_types/index.html

Introduction

In the introduction, you are attempting to inform the reader about the rationale behind the work, justifying why your work is an essential component of research in the field.

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Methods

The methods section structure should: describe the materials used in the study, explain how the materials were prepared for the study, describe the research protocol, explain how measurements were made and what calculations were performed, and state which statistical tests were done to analyze the data.

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Results

Perhaps the best way to use the results section is to show the most relevant information in the graphs, figures and tables.

The text, conversely, is used to direct the reader to those, also clarifying any unclear points. The text should also act as a link to the discussion section, highlighting any correlations and findings and leaving plenty of open questions.

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Discussion

In this critical part of the research paper, you start the process of explaining any links and correlations apparent in your data.

If you left few interesting leads and open questions in the results section, the discussion is simply a matter of building upon those and expanding them.

In an ideal world, you could simply reject your null or alternative hypotheses according to the significance levels found by the statistics.

For this purpose, you should criticize the experiment, and be honest about whether your design was good enough. If not, suggest any modifications and improvements that could be made to the design.

https://explorable.com/writing-a-discussion-section