Things you need to know if you are writing a scientific paper, thesis or
report in Engineering or Science
Abstract
This paper focuses on the common mistakes made by students at the early
stages of research when writing scientific papers, thesis and reports.
It points out mistakes to be avoided and the basic rules that can be
inferred by reading a few scientific documents but are not usually
clearly written and that we, as professors, end up teaching over and
over again. The outcome of this paper will be, hopefully, that we will
not need to correct the same common mistakes again and you, as a
student, will have a faster lane to publishing. Starting with the
abstract: it is composed of a single paragraph, does not contain
acronyms or references and describes in short the work, main highlights
and points out the results or main conclusions obtained from the work
being presented. The abstract is an independent part of the paper and
commonly has a character or word limit that you need to respect. It can
be read as a “stand-alone” and the paper starts in the introduction,
meaning that the introduction is not the sequence of the abstract and it
can have some text in common if needed.