Structure of articles in “Scientific Journal

“Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches””

What points should be paid attention to when writing the article?

Articles being prepared to Higher Certifying Commission journals should consist of the following elements consistently arranged:

• universal decimal classification index (UDC);

• title (name) of article;

• initials and surname of authors;

• address data on the place of work of authors, first of all names of the organizations (data on affiliation of authors);

• e-mail address of at least one of authors with whom to correspond;

• abstracts (author’s summary);

• keywords;

• text of the article;

• information about the authors;

TITLES OF ARTICLES

For all journals, without exception, there are requirements imposed on the article title by databases. The title is an especially important element of the article as some databases didn’t include abstracts.

• The title of the scientific article should be informative, i.e. clearly reflect its contents in a few words. In editorial offices this requirement is considered as one of the main one as the title is properly formulated – a guarantee of the fact that the work will attract reader’s interest.

• It should be remembered that the title of the paper will be read by much more people than its main part. The authors of the other articles, who will cite the research presented in it, will give just the work title in their bibliographic list.

• It is necessary to formulate the article title not as a complete statement but as a heading (as it is done in newspaper).

• Formulating the title it is better to stick to a simple word order and simple phrases.

• One should not use verbs, as well as the words like research, study, supervision, important, significant, etc.

• The title should include practically all the keywords.

• In the title of the article there should not be excess words. The most important words should be at the beginning of the title.

• The golden rule: only one idea should be reflected in the article title, even if the work is of a complex character.

• Do not use untranslatable slang known only to the Russian-speaking specialists. This also applies to author’s abstract (annotations) and keywords.

• The article title should not contain mathematical and chemical formulas, letters of alphabets different from Latin and Russian, Roman numerals, and abbreviations, except for the commonly used ones.

• After writing the article, make sure that it fully corresponds to its content.

ABSTRACTS (SUMMARIES) OF ARTICLES

Abstract permits to evaluate the article and to define their interest to the scientist’s work. They may use it in their own papers and refer to it, open a discussion with its author, etc. So special attention should be paid to this element of the article.

Abstract must be:

• informative (it should not contain common generalities);
• actual;
• comprehensive (it should highlight the major points of the article covered and the results obtained);
• structured (it should follow the logic of the description of the results in the article);
• concise (it should contain from 100 to 250 words).

The reality is that the abstracts written by authors contain similar mistakes. More often they abound with general words which do not mean anything, but make the abstract longer not contributing to the comprehension of the contents and the essence of the article. Moreover, the abstract is often limited to very few lines (3–5). Such a presentation of the contents of the article is absolutely unacceptable.

The experience shows that while preparing the abstract the most difficult thing for the author is to concisely present the result of the research. That is why one of the tested ways to writing the abstract is to succinctly repeat the contents of the article, comprising the introduction, goals and objectives, methods, results, and conclusions in it. This approach to writing abstracts has also become common in foreign scientific journals.

The two variants for writing the abstract can be recommended. The first one is Russian State Standard 7.9-95 “Summary and Abstract. General Requirements” developed by VINITI specialists. The second one is the guidelines for writing the abstracts for English-language authors presented to the academic journals of Emerald Group Publishing (UK). When considering the first variant, it should be taken into account that it has been mainly for the reviewers writing the abstracts for information publications as the guidance. The second variant contains the requirements for preparing the abstracts of English-language articles. That is why the required amount of 100 words will probably be insufficient. The extracts from the abovementioned approaches are given below. The fact that there are many overlaps between them emphasizes the importance of the points given in them.

Concise guidelines

(based on State Standard 7.9-95)

Abstracts fulfill the following functions:

• give an opportunity to comprehend the main content of the article, to determine its relevance and to decide whether the full paper is worth reading or not;
• provide the information about the article and eliminate the need to read the full paper if readers do not have a particular interest in it;
• are used in information systems, including automated ones, for retrieving documents and information.

The author’s abstract bears resemblance to a summary. It has a similar content, structure, goals and objectives. It is a brief, precise description of the contents of the article, comprising the main factual data and results of the work under consideration.

The text of the author’s abstract (summary) should be concise and must not contain unnecessary information which is not important.

The order of the description of the contents of the article can be changed starting with its results and conclusion.

The object, topic and purpose of the article are given only if they are impossible to comprehend while reading its title.

If methods or methodology are new or interesting, it will be reasonable to describe them. Furthermore, the summaries of documents which describe experiments must include the sources of data and their processing.

The results of the article should be described precisely and informatively. The main theoretical and experimental results, factual data, and revealed interconnections and regularities must be presented in the abstract, preference being given to the new results and data being of long-term significance to important discoveries and conclusions refuting the existing theories and data which, in the author’s opinion, are of practical importance.

• Conclusions can be accompanied by the recommendations, evaluations, suggestions, hypotheses described in the article.
• Information contained in the title of the article must not be repeated in the abstract. Such superfluous phrases as “the author of the article considers…” should be avoided. The historical background (if it does not present the main contents of an article), the description of the papers published earlier and the well-known facts are not given in the abstract.
• Syntactical structures characteristic of the language of scientific and technical documents should be used in the abstract. However, complex grammatical structures should be avoided.
• It is necessary to use the same terminology within the abstract.
• Significant words from the article should be repeated in the abstract.
• Abbreviations and conventional signs, except for those which are familiar to everyone, are used in exceptional cases. Otherwise their definitions are given if they are used for the first time.
• The items of physical quantities should be given in terms of International System (IS). The meaning of the quantities in the systems of items used in the source document can be given in parenthesis next to the quantity given in terms of International System (IS).
• Tables, formulae, drawings, pictures, schemes, diagrams can be included only in case of necessity, if they reveal the main idea of the document and make the reported information concise.
• Often used formulae can have numeration, the numeration of formulae in the report and in the original source document may not match.

Below we consider the example of «classical» abstract, giving the general idea about an article or project, the examples of each component are given. The structure is relevant for the papers being prepared for foreign scientific funds and journals.

MAINCOMPONENTS OF AUTHOR’SABSTRACT

Relevance. At first,it is necessary toshow the importance ofthe problem being studiedor the project proposed.The reader must have a clearidea of careful studying the given problem.

Example. The blogis one of thesocialservices usedin teaching a foreignlanguage and culture.

Statement of the problem. After substantiating the relevance it is necessary to specify the current problem to be solved by the research project (paper). When reading this part of the abstract, the reader must have an impression that without your project “future life is simply impossible.”

Example. However, scientific literature lacks any investigations proving the effectiveness of using the blog in the formation of students’ social competence.

The ways of solving the problem. This part of the abstract should list some definite steps directed to solving the given problem. In researches having qualitative data (in which there is no description of the experiment or the analysis of its results) the enumeration of the theoretical problems studied can be presented. In the investigations having quantitative data (if the papers contain the statistical data of the experiment) the methods of carrying out the experimental work, as well as the variables studied, are enumerated.

Example. In this investigation, first, the component structure of social competence was defined. Second, the methods of forming social competenceby meansof the blog were developed. Third,the preparation and realization of the experimental teachingaimed at forming social competenceby means ofthe blog were described, and the analysis of itsquantitative and qualitative results was presented as well.

Results. In this part the quantitative or qualitative results of the research are presented. It is advisable to use words with the general meaning like “proved the effectiveness”, “appeared to be ineffective” without mentioning specific numbers that can be misinterpreted.

Example.The study showed that during the 10-week cycle the majority of the students were able to form the sociocultural competence by means of the blog, which confirms the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Conclusions. In conclusion it is essential to define the scope of implementing the results of the research, to show how the work done expanded the existing idea of the problem studied, or to suggest a new solution to the problem.

Example. The results of the study broaden the knowledge about the methodical potential of the blogs in teaching a foreign language and culture.

Key Words.

There should not be many keywords (no more than 10), and they shouldclearly indicate themain contents ofthe article.It is advisable to avoid using the general concepts like “system” as key wordssince a keyword search(which is often available on the journal`s  website) will not leadthe readerto finding the information he/she is interested in.

In some cases a key word may be a collocation, but not a shortsentence.

Informationabout the references tothe materials used:

The references toRussian sources are included by Russian-speakingauthors in the papers which are publishedin Russian journals or in the ones in translation.Ifour authorsare published in leading foreign journals, they try to refer, as a rule, to foreign sources.

The correct representation of the sources used in the references is a guarantee that the publication quoted will be taken into account when assessing the scientific activities of its authors and hence (in line) – the organization, region, country. By such a citation the scientific level of the journal, its authority, the efficiency of its editorial board’s work, etc., are determined. From this it follows that the most important components in the references are the names of the authors and the titles of the journals. In order to take into account all the authors of the publication it is necessary to include all of them in the contents of the paper, not limiting to three, four, etc.

Inthe list of the references the ordinal number of the reference is indicatedin the corresponding lineof the text of the paper in square brackets, and the sourcesare arranged in the order of their mentioningin the paper.Thereferences shouldincludethefollowinginformation:

• for books – the surnames and initials of all the authors; the full title of the book; the name of the publishing house and the city in which it is located; the year of the publication; the number of the pages in the book;

• for papers – the surnames and initials of all the authors; the full name of the paper; the name of the journal, newspaper or scientific newsletter where the paper has been published; the year of the publication, the publication time identifier (for newspapers – the number/date of the issue, for the journal – the year, the volume, or the number of the issue, the series), the numbers of the pages containing the article (the initial and final ones);

• for standards- the nameof the standard; the number of the standard; the placeand year of the publication; the pages;

•for patent documents– the name of the invention; the number of the patent; the country; the number and date of the application for the invention; the date of publishingthe patent; the number of the bulletins; pages;

• for deposed scientific works – the name and initials of all the authors; the full name of the paper; the name of the deposing information center; the number and date of depositing; the number of the pages in the work.

The names of books, articles and other papers, published in foreign language, as well as their author`s surnames must be given in their original transcription. The by-article bibliographic list mustn`t include unpublished materials or materials with no open access.

The special attention should be paid that the by-article bibliographic lists mustn`t include references to the textbooks and tutorials, since their contents are well known to the specialists whom the article is addressed.

The monographs included in the by-article bibliographic lists shouldn`t be published later than 10 years of the article which refers to them apart from the «classical» works, the reference to which is absolutely necessary for the article contents.

The reference to scientific articles and to the articles of foreign authors in the by-article bibliographic lists indicates not only the high competence of article authors, but also the urgency of the scientific researches being conducted and represented in the article.

The source of the given above information: http://www.exclusivediplom.ru/disertation/statya/kak_napisat_horoshuyu_vak_statyu/