Academic reports and papers

How to write academic documents

You will always face an issue of divergence between academics. I can submit a paper to one conference and be refused, and win a best paper award, with the same unedited content, at a different conference. The key starting point is to identify the requirements of the referees or you supervisor/grader.

In designing the assessment strategy for some modules, I use practical exercises and reports to introduce academic writing.

When you are doing laboratory work you will be required to keep records of you work in a formal manner. There are several reasons for this.

• This is normal practice in Science and Engineering academic disciplines.

• It is a normal process carried out by working consultants, administrators and systems engineers and it is a practice which needs to become second nature to you.

• This is a record of the work you have done and as such provides the basis for your CA marking, to both your lecturer and the external examiner.

• We need to begin developing your skills in academic writing. The style you use here should be compatible with conference and journal papers.

• Some of the laboratory work you are doing will be of use to you in employment.

• Many of us keep our own work logs/method sections in cloud storage, as invaluable reference information. You may find your own lab books of use to you in your career. These documents are intended to provide some guidelines as to how to write a lab report, the fields of data required and the sort of content which should exist in each field.

• In commercial scientific work, if I am submitting a tender, I may have to include a methods section.

In every case, the report should be written in academic language, with the body of text in the third person, past tense. Your writing should be concise, never use more words than you need to express what you want to say. You may use screenshots, but only where they communicate more meaning than you could do economically in words.

All work must be entirely your own. Where you work collaboratively with another student or any third party (other than your lecturer) you must acknowledge the contribution in your conclusion. You should not at any stage, copy and paste from any source, even one you have referenced. Your list of references (if any) will normally appear at the end of the lab report. If you use a Large Language Model (LLM) for research, the same rules apply. You must include the output from the LLM in an appendix.

See section 5.7 of the Institutes’ Quality Manual (available through the main web site) for clarification as to what constitutes plagiarism.

To begin a laboratory report, use the template provided in the course materials.

When describing physical properties, only use SI units. In a real world project based in the US or UK, there may be exceptions to this. For all work on my modules, use SI units only.