The End is Near! The Basic Outline of a Scientific Paper, Part 5: Conclusion

Not every journal supports a separate Conclusion section, so this might be the last paragraph of the Discussion. What it does, however, is the same thing: it delivers your big take-home message from the research you just presented. It should be no more than 3 sentences with no citations (yes, I mean three!). This MUST summarize the whole of what went before. It is really an art form to be able to distill a research project, illustrated by multiple figures loaded with reams of data, down to something akin to an elevator talk. However, if you have organized the previous sections with care and are able to list point by point what you found, then it becomes very easy. Indeed, if you cannot list, as bullets, the points you made, then you really do not have a firm grasp of your own project. This goes back to my very first blog on the Results section. You should be able to list or outline the logical points of the research and their corresponding figures, and better yet, you should have done it before actually writing the text! If you can list all the points you made from your data, then the overall conclusion should be obvious. Thus, the Conclusion section need only contain the following: one sentence reminding the reader of the reason behind doing the research, usually rephrased or copied from the Introduction; one sentence giving the take-home message or how the reason behind the research was resolved, usually rephrased or copied from the Discussion; and finally, one sentence giving future implications of the research. There should be a tone of finality to this section; it should give the reader a feeling of having been given a completed or wrapped-up project with no loose ends. If the rest of the paper is logically cohesive, then this feeling is inevitable. But...if you do not know how you got from where you started to where you ended—your journey—then you will not be able to explain it to anyone else; and it will show throughout the text, making your overall conclusion underwhelming or meaningless. You did not do all that work in the laboratory to have this happen, so take care in organizing your writing.