8 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality scholarly paper encompasses all other aspects of a paper and also allows the author to share thoughts as original and engaging as the research and results from which the argument has grown. Although the argument of any given paper can only be finally determined after the research has been done and the evidence collected, it generally begins as the seed of that research, develops slowly as the work progresses and tends to influence the questions that are asked as well as the ways in which they are answered. What your study and its results mean and why that meaning is important should be considered as central as methodology and results when planning a successful paper. If you think your research worth writing about, then presumably you have a number of thoughts about it that are also worth sharing, and wherever these thoughts began or however they’ve grown, for the purposes of an academic or scientific article they need to be developed into a sustained, logical argument that both focuses closely on the particular research and provides a larger intellectual or scientific context in which to consider it. Most scholars will have encountered the basics of academic and scientific argumentation very early on in their education, and most journals will require sections that highlight the argument of a paper, so it may seem redundant to repeat those basics here. However, it can at times be notoriously tricky to incorporate these basics when reporting the complexities of academic or scientific research, so recalling them and their purposes can be helpful. In brief, a basic scholarly argument involves introducing the problem or topic by providing background, context, current situation, previous literature and experiments, and so on. You need not review every publication on the topic or consider every current concern – that would be appropriate for a book or thesis; an article is more focussed – but you should say enough to allow your reader to PARt I: wHAt to PUBlIsH And wHeRe to PUBlIsH It