The introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD)

structure: a fifty-year survey

Luciana B. Sollaci, MS, Library Director1 and Mauricio G. Pereira, MD, DrPH, Professor of
Epidemiology2,3

Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer

This article has been corrected. See J Med Libr Assoc. 2004 October; 92(4): 506.
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

ABSTRACT
Since its origin in 1665, the scientific paper has been through many changes. Although
during the first two centuries its form and style were not standardized, the letter form and the
experimental report coexisted. The letter was usually single authored, written in a polite
style, and addressed several subjects at the same time [1]. The experimental report was
purely descriptive, and events were often presented in chronological order. It evolved to a
more structured form in which methods and results were incipiently described and
interpreted, while the letter form disappeared [2]. Method description increasingly developed
during the second half of the nineteenth century [3], and an overall organization known as
“theory—experiment—discussion” appeared [4, 5]. In the early twentieth century,
contemporary norms began to be standardized with a decreasing use of the literary style.
Gradually, in the course of the twentieth century, the formal established introduction,
methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) structure was adopted [6].
However, neither the rate at which the use of this format increased nor the point at which it
became the standard for today's medical scientific writing is well established. The main
objective of this investigation is to discover when this format was definitively adopted. Also,
to have a global idea of the articles published during the studied period, articles written
without the IMRAD structure will be briefly described.
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METHODS
In a cross-sectional study, the frequency of articles using the IMRAD structure was measured
at 5-year intervals, during the 50-year period from 1935 to 1985. Data collection began at
1960, moving forward and backward from that year until the frequency of IMRAD articles
reached 100% and none respectively. A sample of 1 in every 10 issues of 4 leading medical
journals in internal medicine was systematically selected to evaluate the articles published in
these years. A total of 1,297 original articles—all those from each selected issue—were
examined: 341 from the British Medical Journal, 328 from Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), 401 from The Lancet, and 227 from the New England Journal of
Medicine. These journals were chosen based on their similarities in target audience,
frequency, and lifespan. The journals had to be currently published at the beginning of the
20th century and show no interruptions during the studied period.
The criteria used by the journal for an original article were accepted. Therefore, if an article
was labeled original by the journal, it was regarded as such, even though nowadays it might
not be considered so. An article was considered to be written using the IMRAD structure
only when the headings “methods, results, and discussion,” or synonyms for these headings,
were all included and clearly printed. The introduction section had to be present but not
necessarily accompanied by a heading. Articles that did not follow this structure were
considered non-IMRAD. They could be generally grouped as: (1) continuous text, (2) articles
that used headings other than the IMRAD, (3) case reports, and (4) articles that partially
adopted the IMRAD structure.
One of the authors (Sollaci) collected the data. In a randomly selected subsample of forty-
eight articles, the data collection was independently repeated after six months. A high
agreement was found (Kappa = 0.95; CI 95%:0.88; 1.0).
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RESULTS
The frequency of articles written using the IMRAD structure increased over time. In 1935,
no IMRAD article could be found. In 1950, the proportion of articles presented in this
modern form surpassed 10% in all journals. Thereafter, a pronounced increase can be
observed until the 1970s, when it reached over 80%. During the first 20 years, from 1935 to
1955, the pace of IMRAD increments was slow, from none to 20%. However, during the
following 20 years, 1955 to 1975, the frequency of these articles more than quadrupled
(Figure 1).
Figure 1
Proportion of introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) adoption in articles published
in the British Medical Journal, JAMA, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine, 1935–
1985 (n = 1,297)

All four journals presented a similar trend: the New England Journal of Medicine fully
adopted the structure in 1975, followed by the British Medical Journal in 1980,
and JAMA and The Lancet in 1985.
Regarding the non-IMRAD articles, the evolution and variations of text organization for all
journals can be delineated. In the British Medical Journal and The Lancet, articles that used
non-IMRAD headings prevailed from 1935 to 1945. A shift to articles that partially adopted
the IMRAD structure occurred from 1950 to 1960. From 1965 and beyond, the full structure
tends to predominate. Until 1960, texts with different headings and partial IMRAD headings
shared the lead in JAMA. From 1965 onward, the complete format is the most used. The New
England Journal of Medicine had a slightly different pattern. Until 1955, continuous text,
non-IMRAD headings, and case reports predominated. After 1960, the IMRAD structure
takes the lead.
As an example, Figure 2 shows the text organization in the British Medical Journal from
1935 to 1985. The ascending curve represents the IMRAD articles. It is the same as shown
in Figure 1, and the descending curves represent all other forms of text organization. A
similar tendency was observed for The Lancet, JAMA, and the New England Journal of
Medicine.

Figure 2
Text organization of published articles in the British Medical Journal from 1935 to 1985 (n = 341)
One interesting finding is that during the initial period of our study, the order of the IMRAD
headings did not follow today's convention; results could be presented before methods or
discussion before results, and, although a few articles followed the IMRAD structure in the
1940s, they were not the same as articles written with the IMRAD structure in the 1980s.
Information, which today is highly standardized in one section, would be absent, repeated, or
dispersed among sections in earlier articles.
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DISCUSSION
Gradually and progressively, the IMRAD structure was adopted by the studied journals.
Until 1945, articles were organized in a manner more similar to a book chapter, mainly with
headings associated with the subject, and did not follow the IMRAD structure. From 1950 to
1960, the IMRAD structure was partially adopted, and, after 1965, it began to predominate,
attaining absolute leadership in the 1980s.
The authors did not find definite reasons explaining the leadership of the IMRAD structure in
the literature. It is possible that sciences other than medicine might have influenced the
growing use of this structure. The field of physics, for example, had already adopted it
extensively in the 1950s [7].
This structure was already considered the ideal outline for scientific writing in the first
quarter of the 20th century [8, 9]; however, it was not used by authors [10]. After World War
II, international conferences on scientific publishing recommended this format [11],
culminating with the guidelines set by the International Committee of Medical Journal
Editors, formerly known as the Vancouver Group, first published in the late 1970s [12].
According to Huth [13], the wide use of the IMRAD structure may be largely credited to
editors, who insisted on papers being clearly formatted to benefit readers and to facilitate the
process of peer review.
According to Meadows [14], development and changes in the internal organization of the
scientific article is simply an answer to the constant growth of information. The IMRAD
structure facilitates modular reading, because readers usually do not read in a linear way but
browse in each section of the article, looking for specific information, which is normally
found in preestablished areas of the paper [15].
Four major leading journals of internal medicine were examined. It might be assumed that
patterns set by these journals would be followed by others; nevertheless, caution should be
taken in extrapolating these findings to other journals.
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 How to Organize a Paper: The IMRaD Format

What is the IMRaD Format?

The IMRaD (often pronounced “im-rad”) format is a scientific writing structure that includes four or
five major sections: introduction (I); research methods (M); results (R); analysis (a); and discussion
(D). The IMRaD format is the most commonly used format in scientific article and journal writing
and is used widely across most scientific and research fields.

When Do I Use the IMRaD Format?

If you are writing a paper where you are conducting objective research in order answer a specific
question, the IMRaD format will most likely serve your purposes best. The IMRaD format is
especially useful if you are conducting primary research (such as experimentation, questionnaires,
focus groups, observations, interviews, and so forth), but it can be applied even if you only conduct
secondary research (which is research you gather from reading sources like books, magazines,
journal articles, and so forth.)

The goal of using the IMRaD format is to present facts objectively, demonstrating a genuine interest
and care in developing new understanding about a topic; when using this format, you don’t explicitly
state an argument or opinion, but rather, you rely on collected data and previously researched
information in order to make a claim.

While there are nuances and adjustments that would be made to the following document types, the
IMRaD format is the foundational structure many research-driven documents:

 Grants
 Proposals
 Recommendation reports
 Plans (such as an integrated marketing plan or project management plan)
How Does the IMRaD Format Work?
As mentioned above, the IMRaD format includes four or five major sections. The little “a” has had
multiple interpretations over the years; some would suggest it means nothing other than “and,” as in
“Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion,” but others have argued that the “a” should be
 viewed as “Analysis” in papers where the “Results” section may not be immediately clear and a
section that analyzes the results is important for reader comprehension. Either way, the “a” often
remains in lower-case to indicate that, while it’s often important, it isn’t always necessary. Below,
we’ll review the five major sections, with “a” given equal weight to the other sections.
Note that these five sections should always go in the order listed below:
1. Introduction: The introduction states the research problem or the question(s) you intend to address
through research. Your introduction would typically include some variation of the following:
1. Statement of the topic you are about to address
2. Current state of the field of understanding (often, we call this a literature review and it may even
merit having its own section)
3. Problem or gap in knowledge (what don’t we know yet or need to know? what does the field still
need to understand? what’s been left out of previous research? is this a new issue that needs some
direction?)
4. Forecast statement that explains, very briefly, what the rest of the paper will entail, including a
possible quick explanation of the type of research that needs to be conducted
2. Methods: The research methods section can go any number of different directions, depending on the
type of research you conducted. Regardless of what you did for your research, though, this section
needs to be very clear, very specific, very detailed, and only focused on research. Avoid explaining
what the research means–this is for the next sections, Analysis and Discussion.While the research
section is often considered the most boring section for someone to read, it is also considered the most
important section to build your credibility. If your research methods are sound, your paper holds a lot
more weight. A few tips to make your methods section work well:
1. Separate each type of research you conducted (interviews, focus groups, experiments, etc.) into
sub-sections and only discuss one research method in each sub-section (for clarity and organization,
it’s important to not talk about multiple methods at once)
2. Be very detailed about your process. If you interviewed people, for example, we need to know how
many people you interviewed, what you asked them, what you hoped to learn by interviewing
them, why chose to interview over other methods, why you interviewed those people specifically
(including providing they demographic information if it’s relevant), and so forth. For other types of
data collection, we need to know what your methods were–how long you observed; how frequently
you tested; how you coded qualitative data; and so forth.
3. Don’t discuss what the research means. You’ll use the next two sections–Analysis and Discussion–
to talk about what the research means. To stay organized, simply discuss your research methods.
This is the single biggest mistake when writing research papers, so don’t fall into that trap.
3. Results: The results section is critical for your audience to understand what the research showed.
Use this section to show tables, charts, graphs, quotes, etc. from your research. At this point, you are
building your reader towards drawn conclusions, but you are not yet providing a full analysis. You’re
simply showing what the data says. Follow the same order as the Methods section–if you put
interviews first, then focus groups second, do the same in this section. Be sure, when you include
graphics and images, that you label and title every table or graphic (“Table 3: Interview
Results“) and that you introduce them in the body of your text (“As you can see in Figure 1,
seventy-nine percent of respondents…”)
4. Analysis: The analysis section details what you and others may learn from the data. While some
researchers like to combine this section with the Discussion section, many writers and researchers
find it useful to analyze the data separately. In the analysis section, spend time connecting the dots
for the reader. What do the interviews say about the way employers think about their employees?
What do the observations say about how employees respond to workplace criticism? Can any
connections be made between the two research types? It’s important in the Analysis section that you
 don’t draw conclusions that the research findings don’t suggest. Always stick to what the research
says.
5. Discussion: Finally, you conclude this paper by suggesting what new knowledge this provides to the
field. You’ll often want to note the limitations of your study and what further research still needs to
be done. If something alarming or important was discovered, this is where you highlight that
information. If you use the IMRaD format to write other types of papers (like a recommendation
report or a plan), this is where you put the recommendations or the detailed plan.