I notice that some commenters are presenting the sections “Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion” as the general structure of an academic paper. This is indeed the structure I have encountered most often, and it is a very good structure for academic writing, but whenever I find a paper with this exact structure I wonder “Where is the conclusion?”. As Stuart mentions most academics read the title, abstract and then quit, but in papers with no Conclusion section I can’t help but sympathise with the readers for this behaviour! After reading the abstract the reader might want a bit more clarity and information about the exact claims made by the authors of the paper, and if it turns out that you have to work your way through the whole Discussion section or the raw data of the Results section just to get more clarity than that one line in the abstract then I consider that to be a good moment to stop reading the paper. As far as I know it’s not common practice to have a separate section summarising the interpreted results, but I personally enjoy reading papers with a Conclusions section far more than those without. Why not make life easy for the mildly-interested reader?
Most academics write for other academics in their own fields, so the conventions of the field matter. For instance, in my mathematics, I almost never saw a conclusion or a discussion. Math papers tend to peter out, with the minor lemmas coming at the end, or maybe some “suggestions for further research”. The important bits in the main text were always introduction and main result (generally to be found in section 3, following the format: intro-definitions-main result-supporting lemma).
Yes, as I mentioned most fields (as far as I know) do not have a separate section for the conclusions, and in a mathematical paper (with proper layout and proper section numbering/naming) such a section would indeed not be all that useful. But in the experimental and theoretical physics papers, as well as the biology papers and some papers in medicine, the Results section is full of (raw) experimental data and/or calculations, and the Discussions section contains several pages about possible improvements to the presented model/setup and sometimes the strengths of the used method over previous attempts. The important conclusions are hidden somewhere amongst this multi-page defense of the authors’ approach to the problem, which isn’t optimal. My teacher used to say: “If your audience didn’t remember your main point, then your presentation has failed.”. In most experimental fields a short summary of the most remarkable conclusions would be helpful to remind readers of the implications of your research, and often I have found this section to be missing (not just absent but also desired).
But I stress that this is just my personal experience, and even if changing the layout improves readability it might be better (career-wise) to stick to the conventions of your field.
I notice that some commenters are presenting the sections “Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion” as the general structure of an academic paper. This is indeed the structure I have encountered most often, and it is a very good structure for academic writing, but whenever I find a paper with this exact structure I wonder “Where is the conclusion?”. As Stuart mentions most academics read the title, abstract and then quit, but in papers with no Conclusion section I can’t help but sympathise with the readers for this behaviour! After reading the abstract the reader might want a bit more clarity and information about the exact claims made by the authors of the paper, and if it turns out that you have to work your way through the whole Discussion section or the raw data of the Results section just to get more clarity than that one line in the abstract then I consider that to be a good moment to stop reading the paper. As far as I know it’s not common practice to have a separate section summarising the interpreted results, but I personally enjoy reading papers with a Conclusions section far more than those without. Why not make life easy for the mildly-interested reader?
Most academics write for other academics in their own fields, so the conventions of the field matter. For instance, in my mathematics, I almost never saw a conclusion or a discussion. Math papers tend to peter out, with the minor lemmas coming at the end, or maybe some “suggestions for further research”. The important bits in the main text were always introduction and main result (generally to be found in section 3, following the format: intro-definitions-main result-supporting lemma).
Yes, as I mentioned most fields (as far as I know) do not have a separate section for the conclusions, and in a mathematical paper (with proper layout and proper section numbering/naming) such a section would indeed not be all that useful. But in the experimental and theoretical physics papers, as well as the biology papers and some papers in medicine, the Results section is full of (raw) experimental data and/or calculations, and the Discussions section contains several pages about possible improvements to the presented model/setup and sometimes the strengths of the used method over previous attempts. The important conclusions are hidden somewhere amongst this multi-page defense of the authors’ approach to the problem, which isn’t optimal. My teacher used to say: “If your audience didn’t remember your main point, then your presentation has failed.”. In most experimental fields a short summary of the most remarkable conclusions would be helpful to remind readers of the implications of your research, and often I have found this section to be missing (not just absent but also desired).
But I stress that this is just my personal experience, and even if changing the layout improves readability it might be better (career-wise) to stick to the conventions of your field.