How to write a scientific thesis for publication?

The field of science adopts its own methods of written communication, one of which is the scientific thesis. It is important to be able to write theses for scientific articles, reports, and to publish them in collections (journals) not only for scientists, but also for any specialist from different spheres of activity.

In the business and science-oriented community abstracts as a genre of written and verbal communication have always been and will be in demand. Therefore, everyone needs to learn how to formulate them competently.

What is a scientific thesis?

The dictionary definition of a thesis is "a statement that the proving party finds it necessary to instill in the audience" or "a statement to be proved.

"To impress an audience" in this context means to present a strong argument based on the evidence obtained.

In turn, scientific theses are statements, assertions, and conclusions written in concise scientific language, logically linked to each other, and proven with arguments.

Scientific abstracts are different from a scientific article:

• a limited number of structural parts;
• a short, succinct statements;
• lack of detailed analysis, extended justification of something, quotes from other authors;
• small volume, about 1-2 printed pages.

Scientific theses allow:

• take part in various scientific conferences, seminars, thereby allowing you to make yourself known in the scientific community;
• to draw attention to their views, achievements, their other work (for example, when writing theses to a scientific article) in order to interest a potential reader in the study of the original text, to contribute to the practical implementation of the results obtained in production, science and other areas;
• "replenish the piggy bank" of their professional achievements, which will be an advantage in employment or career advancement.

Scientific theses can be classified on various grounds:

Depending on the purpose of writing, scientific abstracts can be:

• or for participation in a scientific event;
• or for their subsequent publication;
• or both (when, for example, conference proceedings are subsequently published).

By the nature of scientific theses can be:

• are timed to a specific event or the theme of the collection;
• written on a scientific paper (scientific article, report, master's thesis, etc.).

According to the content, scientific theses are divided into:

• theses to other scientific works of the author (to the scientific article, the report) - reflect the essence and the main results of other already ready research;
• theses of the idea - set out the idea, hypothesis of the future research, that is still unwritten work.

The second type (abstract-concept) is the most demanded for abstracts of scientific conferences. It is like a starting point for the creation of a full-fledged scientific article in the future.

Theses to a scientific article, report or other scientific work are published in all kinds of specialized collections, for example:

collections on the materials of various conferences, where theses of conference papers and abstracts of scientific articles are published;

in specialized collections, timed to any relevant topic (e.g., Collection of scientific theses and articles "Health and Education in the XXI century").

Rules for writing scientific theses

Scientific theses are an independent scientific work, even if they are written on some ready-made research (for example, on a scientific article). It is a peculiar "squeeze" of the existing knowledge of the author of theses on the most relevant issues of a certain topic or from his scientific research, delivered to the reader in the most concise form.

Requirements for the structure of scientific theses are quite disparate, since they are established independently by the publishers of collections, where they are published, or by the organizers of the events at which they are to be presented. However, most often scientific abstracts include the following elements:

• introduction
• the main part
• conclusion

Let us describe the content of each of these structural elements.

Introduction

This structural part of the scientific thesis is most often limited to relevance: briefly, literally in 1-3 sentences, describes the essence of the current situation, justifies the need to solve the problem under study.

But sometimes require the inclusion of additional elements in various combinations, including:

• the degree of development of the topic in the scientific literature: lists the authors who have previously researched the declared topic, describes what has already been done on this problem, and what has not been done;
• purpose: it is formulated, why the research was conducted (logically follows from the previous sections);
• objectives: it is listed what exactly was done to achieve the goal;
• object: it is stated what was researched;
• subject: specifies the object (which part of the object was investigated);
• methodology: it is specified, by means of what methods the research was carried out.

All of these elements should be formulated as briefly as possible, they should not be particularly descriptive.

Main part

The requirements for the main part of the scientific thesis are also very different. But the most common are the following:

• or a sequential narrative, reflecting the main stages of the study and the results obtained;
• or only a reflection of the main substantiated conclusions and results, which are given in a numbered list.

What to pay attention to when drafting abstracts for scientific papers:

• we do not try to reveal the entire course of the study itself and go into details, even if they seem significant and essential;
• We "squeeze out" only the main aspects of the text and briefly describe them;
• if necessary, include the data of the sample and the form of the study;
• If necessary, characterize the path of the entire study, formulate the order of receipt of the intermediate and main results;
• focus attention on the final conclusions, which should relate to the formulated goal and objectives.

How to write an abstract for a scientific article, report and other scientific work:

• the thesis should be short, but fully convey the main point;
• the thesis should be substantiated and proved by research;
• the text should be clear, coherent, and as meaningful as possible;
• the text is not written in the form of a report, abstract, etc.
• the text is designed for a particular audience;
• we keep the style of the text, peculiar to this scientific genre;
• do not use abbreviations and acronyms;
• we replace direct quotation with indirect one;
• exclude ambiguous interpretations.

This section is the largest, about 70-80% of the text.

The main points of the study are set out in simple and accessible language, we use specialized terminology in exceptional cases and minimize complex language and turns of phrase.

Conclusion

Here in brief:

• show the usefulness of this work, the role of the results for the field in which they can be used;
• orienting to future promising developments on this topic.

Requirements for the design of scientific abstracts

If you plan to publish scientific theses, they need to be properly formatted.

Each collection has its own design requirements. All of them are publicly available usually on the Internet page of the publishing house or directly in the publishing house of the collection.

The author should find out the design requirements at the stage of starting to write scientific theses, so that later he will not have to "adjust" them to the necessary parameters.

For example, some require page format A5, which significantly reduces the already small volume. Somewhere require a list of references, and somewhere such requirements are absent. Somewhere theses must be written as a continuous text, and somewhere to give a list.

Even more varied are the requirements for margins, font size, subheadings, automatic hyphenation, etc.

In summarizing all of the above in this article, we note two conceptual factors when writing a scientific thesis:

• selective approach to the abstracts presented to the public and their structured presentation;
• following all the requirements that are dictated by the collection, where these theses will be published, or by the organizer of the event, where these theses will be read.