8.2 An example template for Discussion sections

There’s no hard rule about what information types (d1 to d6) to include in each paragraph of the Discussion section. The only ‘rule’ is that the Discussion section of published papers contains all of the six information types (Cargill M and O’Connor P 2013 Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps), and your Discussion section probably should, too.

On Pages 5 to 6 of the following document is a template that I (Amanda) use to help me get started in writing the Discussion section of papers in my own field of research (obesity). The finished Discussion section is often different from the template below, so the template is more of a ‘kick-starter’ template than a bossy template.

You may like to use this template as an example from which to create a kick-starter template for writing the Discussion section of your own papers, based on your observations from dissection of Discussion sections you like from published papers in your field.

It’s possible that you already have a copy of the following document, as it was also included for download in Steps 2 and 8.

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