IMRAD

In scientific writing, IMRAD or IMRaD () (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) is a common organizational structure for the format of a document. IMRaD is the most prominent norm for the structure of a scientific journal article of the original research type.

==Overview== thumb|Fig.1: Wineglass model for IMRaD structure. The above scheme shows how to line up the information in IMRaD writing. It has two characteristics: the first is its top-bottom symmetric shape; the second is its change of width, meaning the top is wide, and it narrows towards the middle, and then widens again as it goes down toward the bottom. The first characteristic, the top-bottom symmetric shape, represents the symmetry of the story development. The second one, the change of width, represents the change in generality of the viewpoint. Original research articles are typically structured in this basic order Introduction – Why was the study undertaken? What was the research question, the tested hypothesis or the purpose of the research? Methods – Who, When, where, and how was the study done? What materials were used or who was included in the study groups (patients, etc.)? Results – What answer was found to the research question; what did the study find? Was the tested hypothesis true? Discussion – What might the answer imply and why does it matter? How does it fit in with what other researchers have found? What are the perspectives for future research?