Writing Scientific Research Articles for Submission

<p>I'm in the process of writing my first article for submission, however I feel as though it's taking me forever to complete! I've been working on it for nearly 3 weeks now and I have yet to complete the research and discussion. </p>

<p>Can any seasoned published writers share their experiences with writing their first solo scientific research article? Possibly share some tips for writing as well???</p>

<p>I write the results section first. Put together your figures and let that guide the flow of the paper. I write the intro last as that is less specific to the particular data. The discussion should place your results in the context of current ideas in the literature, perhaps you should have pieced the discussion together while working on the results. Anyway, if you want more specific input pm me.</p>

<p>I remember one of my professors told us that papers should be written in the series of experiments/results -> discussion -> introduction -> conclusion -> abstract. We wrote up all of our labs up that way (they all had to be done in the style of academic papers), and it definitely helped with the flow of ideas and recognizing what the most important parts of the paper were.</p>