How to Write a Biology Research Paper

How to Write a Good Biology Research Paper?

If you’re a medical student or attend a college or university to become a veterinarian, you’re sure to face some biology assignments in the course of your studies. Students of various courses study biology, as it’s the natural science of living organisms of all kinds – people, animals, plants, and microorganisms. Chemists also need to know biology well, as it lays the foundation for organic chemical analysis and gives a better understanding of chemical compounds.

This way, biology is an umbrella term for many academic disciplines without which one can never capture the essence of a living organism’s functioning, lifecycle, and interactions with the external environment. Therefore, mastering the art of writing a biology research paper is every beginner student’s challenge that has to be addressed early in their studies. Here is a comprehensive guide to correct preparation, writing, and structuring of this assignment type that will help you hone your composition skills and fetch only top grades in the biology course.

What Is a Biology Research Paper?

As we’ve already pointed out, biology is a natural science dealing with all living things and the essential processes occurring in and with these organisms at all stages of their lifecycles. Biologists study the physiological and chemical processes related to living beings’ emergence, evolution, and death. That’s why biological research is wide and all-encompassing, sometimes intersecting with related disciplines – chemistry, medicine, physics, biophysics, etc.

There are also many branches in biology, categorized by the objects it studies – botany deals with plant life, zoology studies animals, physiology relates to living organisms’ functioning, and molecular biology studies life at the level of molecules and atoms. That’s why you may face any topic related to any living organism and its aspects of functioning or composition when you’re assigned a biology research paper.

Regardless of the topic, you should understand what it takes to compose a research paper. First, a research paper is different from an essay in terms of length and depth of inquiry. You will need to adopt a certain methodology for approaching your subject and conduct a preliminary literature review to compose a good paper. That’s why it’s vital to reserve enough time for your project and dedicate enough time and effort to going through every step of the academic inquiry it requires.

How to Start a Biology Research Paper?

Writing a biology research paper is a task that requires a systematic approach. It’s an extensive academic project, so you may find it hard to compose it in one go. Thus, we recommend planning the study process accordingly and organizing all processes in advance to reserve sufficient time for every step. Here are the phases of research paper creation.

Topic Selection

The topic of your study will determine the ease of writing and the final grade you will get. That’s why we don’t recommend taking chances with the topic; you should approach this step seriously and diligently. Don’t grab the first-best topic prompt you find online; go through the library to find some interesting, original, and under-researched aspects of the biology subject you’re studying. This way, you will earn some extra points for an interesting assignment that goes beyond the limits of the obvious.

Preliminary Research

Now that you have a topic suggestion, it’s time to see what studies have already covered it and from what angles. This step presupposes preliminary academic research through databases and libraries you have at your disposal. The sources you’ll find can serve as the basis for your arguments and content structure.

Thesis Statement

After collecting the essential supporting materials for your assignment, you may condense your research idea into a workable thesis statement. It will lay the basis for further content structuring and outlining.

Outlining

Next, compose a detailed outline that will break down your thesis statement into separate content sections and allocate sources to these parts. It’s also important to figure out which subject you will study and in which way – whether your research will follow some scientific method of inquiry or will be purely theoretical research based on biology literature.

Methodology Formulation

The next step is drafting the methods of your study. You should know what tools you have at your disposal and select objects or human subjects for research. Lay out the full details of the methodology in the relevant section to guide the audience and allow the study’s replication.

Drafting a Paper

Next comes the assignment’s text. You should compose the introduction, literature review, and results obtained as a result of conducting your investigation. Discuss what the findings mean for biology and make broader conclusions for the academic subject you’re studying.

Revising the Final Draft

Don’t skip the revision stage, as it’s your final effort to spot and correct tiny mistakes, typos, and inconsistencies. Always review the file before submission, as these minor issues can cost you a good grade.

How to Structure a Biology Research Paper?

Since a research paper is larger and more segmented than an essay, you will need to give your readers appropriate signposts throughout the content so that they navigate the text conveniently. Though your structure may differ in some details, the universal structure prompt is as follows:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• List of references

How to End a Biology Research Paper?

Some professors ask students to write a conclusion as the final section of their research papers, while others require only a discussion section as a summative part for all inferences, findings, and implications from the study. Whatever the title of your section is, you should always summarize the main findings, revisit the thesis statement and study goal you voiced in the introduction, and make a clear evaluation of your findings against the background literature on this topic.

Look at how your findings fit into what other researchers have found out before you – do your results comply with their conclusions or contradict them? Where do your findings stand in terms of the method you used and the population you included in the sample? It’s also important to make a reasonable account of the study’s limitations that could have potentially affected the quality of the study and your findings. Don’t overemphasize your faults or issues; it’s enough to mention these flaws, which will show your professor that you understand the limitations of certain methodological choices.

Finally, the biology research paper’s ending should be properly focused on the broader significance and implications of your findings. It’s not enough to study an event, object, or relationship and leave the findings as they are. Your task as a researcher is to describe how your findings apply to a broader topic or contribute to some biology subdiscipline.

Biology Research Paper Outline

A standard research paper’s outline looks as follows, which also applies to your biology assignment in most cases:

• Introduction (broad introduction of the research subject, more detailed explanation of the problem, thesis statement with study objectives).
• Literature review (it can be added to the introductory section for smaller assignments or be a standalone section in larger works).
• Methods (a section presents how you conducted research, what scientific method you used, what materials were applied, and what subjects and participants the study involved).
• Results (a presentation of what you’ve found out using your method).
• Discussion (evaluation of your study’s original findings against previously published research).

The biology assignment’s structure may also include tables and figures that visualize your data and present additional calculations and findings that don’t fit the body of the paper. The assignment may also end with an optional Appendix section, where all visuals and extensive, additional materials go.

Biology Research Paper Introduction

The first part of your research paper is the introduction. Its structure will depend on the assignment’s length, as some papers include only several paragraphs of an introduction, and others dedicate several pages to an extensive overview of the studied subject and related literature. The rule of thumb is to dedicate around 10% of the total word count to your introduction, so plan the content according to the word count you have for it.

Typically, an introductory part should cover the following elements:

• Broad introduction of the context. Biology encompasses many things, so your first task is to narrow down the focus and specify the area in which you will hold your study. For instance, if your topic is genetics, you should stipulate whether you will be dealing with genetic inheritance, some aspect of DNA, gene expression, regulation, or evolution, among others.
• More detailed overview of the problem/object. Now that you’ve formulated a specific topic in broad terms, it’s time to proceed to the actual problem you’ll investigate. Returning to our example of genetics, you may choose the sub-topic of genetic inheritance and boil it down to the study of Down’s syndrome genetic inheritance among African-American females.
• Thesis statement. A thesis statement is your paper’s main idea; it should be formulated in 1-2 sentences that condense the full assignment’s meaning. In other words, your readers should understand what the paper is about by reading only this part.
• Objectives (optional). While an essay’s introduction usually ends with a thesis statement, research papers are larger and more structured works that may follow a precisely defined set of objectives. Instead of squeezing all of your study goals into a thesis statement, you can dedicate a full paragraph to these elements and formulate a thesis first, breaking it down into smaller research questions or objectives afterward.

Biology Research Paper Body

After the introductory section goes the gist of your study, which is covered in the body. This is the largest part of your study, which takes roughly 80% of all word count. Thus, it should be divided into sections to allow for easy navigation of the content. As a rule, the body of your research paper will include:

• A literature review.
• A methodology.
• Discussion of results.

Whatever the part you’re dealing with, you should keep in mind the need to structure every paragraph consistently. Every section should start with a topic sentence that communicates the main idea of the whole paragraph, then support it with external evidence from reliable, scholarly sources, and end the paragraph with your own interpretation and transition to the next paragraph.

Biology Research Paper Conclusion

As soon as you finish with the body of your paper and finalize the discussion of results, it’s time for a high-quality wrap-up. The concluding section should summarize your findings and revisit the initial thesis statement and objectives formulated at the beginning of the research. Those who formulated a set of research questions or objectives at the beginning should give a clear answer to each of them and then link all findings into a single, overarching conclusion of value for academic discipline.

Formatting Guidelines

Now that you know everything about the process of composing an assignment on biology, it’s time to take a closer look at the biology research paper guidelines for proper formatting. It’s natural for beginner students to overlook this vital aspect of the research process, as they over-emphasize the research and writing steps and forget about formatting that comes last. Nevertheless, your professor is sure to pay attention to the correctness of formatting, and you need to align all paper parts, such as a title page, in-text citations, and the list of references, with the formatting style you are assigned to. If your university’s style is APA, you may be asking yourself, “How to write a biology research paper in APA format?” Here is a list of the main guiding criteria for you to follow:

• Create a standalone title page in line with APA conventions.
• Generate a title for 10-12 words.
• Cover the main points of your research in an abstract.
• Use Times New Roman 11pt.
• Use the left alignment of the text in the paper.
• Make the text double-spaced, with 1-inch margins on all sides.
• Use the author-date citation method for in-text citations.
• List all used sources in alphabetical order on the Reference page, which follows the text.

With these guidelines and recommendations, you’re sure to excel in writing biology research papers much faster than your classmates. Use these tips to hone your writing skills and cope with your assignments without problems.