how to write your name in research paper

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13.1 Formatting a Research Paper

Learning objectives.

Identify the major components of a research paper written using American Psychological Association (APA) style.
Apply general APA style and formatting conventions in a research paper.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use APA style , the documentation and formatting style followed by the American Psychological Association, as well as MLA style , from the Modern Language Association. There are a few major formatting styles used in academic texts, including AMA, Chicago, and Turabian:

AMA (American Medical Association) for medicine, health, and biological sciences
APA (American Psychological Association) for education, psychology, and the social sciences
Chicago—a common style used in everyday publications like magazines, newspapers, and books
MLA (Modern Language Association) for English, literature, arts, and humanities
Turabian—another common style designed for its universal application across all subjects and disciplines

While all the formatting and citation styles have their own use and applications, in this chapter we focus our attention on the two styles you are most likely to use in your academic studies: APA and MLA.

If you find that the rules of proper source documentation are difficult to keep straight, you are not alone. Writing a good research paper is, in and of itself, a major intellectual challenge. Having to follow detailed citation and formatting guidelines as well may seem like just one more task to add to an already-too-long list of requirements.

Following these guidelines, however, serves several important purposes. First, it signals to your readers that your paper should be taken seriously as a student’s contribution to a given academic or professional field; it is the literary equivalent of wearing a tailored suit to a job interview. Second, it shows that you respect other people’s work enough to give them proper credit for it. Finally, it helps your reader find additional materials if he or she wishes to learn more about your topic.

Furthermore, producing a letter-perfect APA-style paper need not be burdensome. Yes, it requires careful attention to detail. However, you can simplify the process if you keep these broad guidelines in mind:

Work ahead whenever you can. Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” includes tips for keeping track of your sources early in the research process, which will save time later on.
Get it right the first time. Apply APA guidelines as you write, so you will not have much to correct during the editing stage. Again, putting in a little extra time early on can save time later.
Use the resources available to you. In addition to the guidelines provided in this chapter, you may wish to consult the APA website at http://www.apa.org or the Purdue University Online Writing lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu , which regularly updates its online style guidelines.

General Formatting Guidelines

This chapter provides detailed guidelines for using the citation and formatting conventions developed by the American Psychological Association, or APA. Writers in disciplines as diverse as astrophysics, biology, psychology, and education follow APA style. The major components of a paper written in APA style are listed in the following box.

These are the major components of an APA-style paper:

Body, which includes the following:

Headings and, if necessary, subheadings to organize the content
In-text citations of research sources
References page

All these components must be saved in one document, not as separate documents.

The title page of your paper includes the following information:

Title of the paper
Author’s name
Name of the institution with which the author is affiliated
Header at the top of the page with the paper title (in capital letters) and the page number (If the title is lengthy, you may use a shortened form of it in the header.)

List the first three elements in the order given in the previous list, centered about one third of the way down from the top of the page. Use the headers and footers tool of your word-processing program to add the header, with the title text at the left and the page number in the upper-right corner. Your title page should look like the following example.

Beyond the Hype: Evaluating Low-Carb Diets cover page

The next page of your paper provides an abstract , or brief summary of your findings. An abstract does not need to be provided in every paper, but an abstract should be used in papers that include a hypothesis. A good abstract is concise—about one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty words—and is written in an objective, impersonal style. Your writing voice will not be as apparent here as in the body of your paper. When writing the abstract, take a just-the-facts approach, and summarize your research question and your findings in a few sentences.

In Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” , you read a paper written by a student named Jorge, who researched the effectiveness of low-carbohydrate diets. Read Jorge’s abstract. Note how it sums up the major ideas in his paper without going into excessive detail.

Write an abstract summarizing your paper. Briefly introduce the topic, state your findings, and sum up what conclusions you can draw from your research. Use the word count feature of your word-processing program to make sure your abstract does not exceed one hundred fifty words.

Depending on your field of study, you may sometimes write research papers that present extensive primary research, such as your own experiment or survey. In your abstract, summarize your research question and your findings, and briefly indicate how your study relates to prior research in the field.

Margins, Pagination, and Headings

APA style requirements also address specific formatting concerns, such as margins, pagination, and heading styles, within the body of the paper. Review the following APA guidelines.

Use these general guidelines to format the paper:

Set the top, bottom, and side margins of your paper at 1 inch.
Use double-spaced text throughout your paper.
Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman or Arial, in a legible size (10- to 12-point).
Use continuous pagination throughout the paper, including the title page and the references section. Page numbers appear flush right within your header.
Section headings and subsection headings within the body of your paper use different types of formatting depending on the level of information you are presenting. Additional details from Jorge’s paper are provided.

Begin formatting the final draft of your paper according to APA guidelines. You may work with an existing document or set up a new document if you choose. Include the following:

Your title page
The abstract you created in Note 13.8 “Exercise 1”
Correct headers and page numbers for your title page and abstract

APA style uses section headings to organize information, making it easy for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought and to know immediately what major topics are covered. Depending on the length and complexity of the paper, its major sections may also be divided into subsections, sub-subsections, and so on. These smaller sections, in turn, use different heading styles to indicate different levels of information. In essence, you are using headings to create a hierarchy of information.

The following heading styles used in APA formatting are listed in order of greatest to least importance:

Section headings use centered, boldface type. Headings use title case, with important words in the heading capitalized.
Subsection headings use left-aligned, boldface type. Headings use title case.
The third level uses left-aligned, indented, boldface type. Headings use a capital letter only for the first word, and they end in a period.
The fourth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are boldfaced and italicized.
The fifth level follows the same style used for the previous level, but the headings are italicized and not boldfaced.

Visually, the hierarchy of information is organized as indicated in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” .

Table 13.1 Section Headings

A college research paper may not use all the heading levels shown in Table 13.1 “Section Headings” , but you are likely to encounter them in academic journal articles that use APA style. For a brief paper, you may find that level 1 headings suffice. Longer or more complex papers may need level 2 headings or other lower-level headings to organize information clearly. Use your outline to craft your major section headings and determine whether any subtopics are substantial enough to require additional levels of headings.

Working with the document you developed in Note 13.11 “Exercise 2” , begin setting up the heading structure of the final draft of your research paper according to APA guidelines. Include your title and at least two to three major section headings, and follow the formatting guidelines provided above. If your major sections should be broken into subsections, add those headings as well. Use your outline to help you.

Because Jorge used only level 1 headings, his Exercise 3 would look like the following:

Citation Guidelines

In-text citations.

Throughout the body of your paper, include a citation whenever you quote or paraphrase material from your research sources. As you learned in Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , the purpose of citations is twofold: to give credit to others for their ideas and to allow your reader to follow up and learn more about the topic if desired. Your in-text citations provide basic information about your source; each source you cite will have a longer entry in the references section that provides more detailed information.

In-text citations must provide the name of the author or authors and the year the source was published. (When a given source does not list an individual author, you may provide the source title or the name of the organization that published the material instead.) When directly quoting a source, it is also required that you include the page number where the quote appears in your citation.

This information may be included within the sentence or in a parenthetical reference at the end of the sentence, as in these examples.

Epstein (2010) points out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Here, the writer names the source author when introducing the quote and provides the publication date in parentheses after the author’s name. The page number appears in parentheses after the closing quotation marks and before the period that ends the sentence.

Addiction researchers caution that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (Epstein, 2010, p. 137).

Here, the writer provides a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence that includes the author’s name, the year of publication, and the page number separated by commas. Again, the parenthetical citation is placed after the closing quotation marks and before the period at the end of the sentence.

As noted in the book Junk Food, Junk Science (Epstein, 2010, p. 137), “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive.”

Here, the writer chose to mention the source title in the sentence (an optional piece of information to include) and followed the title with a parenthetical citation. Note that the parenthetical citation is placed before the comma that signals the end of the introductory phrase.

David Epstein’s book Junk Food, Junk Science (2010) pointed out that “junk food cannot be considered addictive in the same way that we think of psychoactive drugs as addictive” (p. 137).

Another variation is to introduce the author and the source title in your sentence and include the publication date and page number in parentheses within the sentence or at the end of the sentence. As long as you have included the essential information, you can choose the option that works best for that particular sentence and source.

Citing a book with a single author is usually a straightforward task. Of course, your research may require that you cite many other types of sources, such as books or articles with more than one author or sources with no individual author listed. You may also need to cite sources available in both print and online and nonprint sources, such as websites and personal interviews. Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.2 “Citing and Referencing Techniques” and Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provide extensive guidelines for citing a variety of source types.

Writing at Work

APA is just one of several different styles with its own guidelines for documentation, formatting, and language usage. Depending on your field of interest, you may be exposed to additional styles, such as the following:

MLA style. Determined by the Modern Languages Association and used for papers in literature, languages, and other disciplines in the humanities.
Chicago style. Outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style and sometimes used for papers in the humanities and the sciences; many professional organizations use this style for publications as well.
Associated Press (AP) style. Used by professional journalists.

References List

The brief citations included in the body of your paper correspond to the more detailed citations provided at the end of the paper in the references section. In-text citations provide basic information—the author’s name, the publication date, and the page number if necessary—while the references section provides more extensive bibliographical information. Again, this information allows your reader to follow up on the sources you cited and do additional reading about the topic if desired.

The specific format of entries in the list of references varies slightly for different source types, but the entries generally include the following information:

The name(s) of the author(s) or institution that wrote the source
The year of publication and, where applicable, the exact date of publication
The full title of the source
For books, the city of publication
For articles or essays, the name of the periodical or book in which the article or essay appears
For magazine and journal articles, the volume number, issue number, and pages where the article appears
For sources on the web, the URL where the source is located

The references page is double spaced and lists entries in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. If an entry continues for more than one line, the second line and each subsequent line are indented five spaces. Review the following example. ( Chapter 13 “APA and MLA Documentation and Formatting” , Section 13.3 “Creating a References Section” provides extensive guidelines for formatting reference entries for different types of sources.)

In APA style, book and article titles are formatted in sentence case, not title case. Sentence case means that only the first word is capitalized, along with any proper nouns.

Key Takeaways

Following proper citation and formatting guidelines helps writers ensure that their work will be taken seriously, give proper credit to other authors for their work, and provide valuable information to readers.
Working ahead and taking care to cite sources correctly the first time are ways writers can save time during the editing stage of writing a research paper.
APA papers usually include an abstract that concisely summarizes the paper.
APA papers use a specific headings structure to provide a clear hierarchy of information.
In APA papers, in-text citations usually include the name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication.
In-text citations correspond to entries in the references section, which provide detailed bibliographical information about a source.

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Research Impact : Establishing Your Author Name and Presence

Outputs and Activities
Establishing Your Author Name and Presence
Enhancing Your Impact
Tracking Your Work
Telling Your Story
Impact Frameworks

Why is Establishing Your Author Profile Important?

Your name as an author is key to establishing a unique public profile for enhancing your research and for attribution purposes. Authors should use the same version of their name consistently throughout their academic and research careers.

Establishing Your Author Profiles

How can authors find out if other authors have similar names? One tip is to do an author search in several databases such as PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus or Web of Science .

How many name variants are there for your name?
How many authors share your name?
How many authors with a similar name have publications in the same subject area?
Is it possible to distinguish publications from authors with similar names?

If you find similarities in author names, consider adding your full middle name or using your middle initial to distinguish it from other authors.

There are several resources to help authors manage unique and consistent author names to ensure that their publications are associated with the correct author.

We highly recommend that authors create an ORCID ID, and check their profiles in Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. An ORCID ID can be created using publication data from Scopus or Web of Science/Researcher ID. Authors may also want to consider creating a LinkedIn or Doximity profile. WUSM physicians are highly encouraged to claim their Doximity profiles.

LinkedIn is a social/professional networking website for people in professional occupations, with privacy settings available. It is highly recommended that investigators or clinicians create a LinkedIn profile. Features of LinkedIn include:

Helpful resource for recruiting or job-seeking purposes.
Option to create a custom URL containing your name to your LinkedIn profile.

how to write your name in research paper

Doximity is a professional networking site for U.S. physicians, medical students and clinically licensed healthcare professionals. As of 2022, at around 80% of physicians and 50% of NPs and PAs are verified members. Features of Doximity include:

Profiles are viewable and searchable to allow you to connect with colleagues and classmates.
Upload your CV to allow for opportunities for networking or job-seeking purposes (or you can send your CV to Doximity, [email protected], to upload for you).
Add clinical specialties and interests, and information about other profiles.
Research and compare residency programs.

WUSM physicians are strongly encouraged to claim their Doximity profiles. Why?

Vote in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals survey .
Complete the Doximity Residency Navigator.
Listed in the U.S. News & World Report Doctor Finder tool.

NCBI My Bibliography

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. Among the resources included are PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, genomic tools, registries, databases, among others. My NCBI is a dashboard that retains user information and database preferences to provide customized services for NCBI databases/resources. My Bibliography is one of the many tools offered via the My NCBI dashboard page. As of 2010, investigators/authors (funded by NIH or planning to seek funding) are required to use a My Bibliography account to manage their citations to publications and other research products. Citations to journal articles indexed by PubMed can be pulled into a My Bibliography collection and templates are available for all other publication types and research products.

Examples of citations to publications and other work products that can be included in My Bibliography are:

Journal articles from PubMed
Non-PubMed journal articles
Books/chapters
Meeting abstracts and posters
Dataset or database
Presentations
Interim Research Products

One of the features of My Bibliography is a URL link that allows for linking to the list of publications and research products noted in a My Bibliography collection. The link to the list of publications in a My Bibliography collection mirrors a list of results in PubMed and if users are affiliated with an institution that has a subscription to the journal or if the work is in PubMed Central, users can read the full text of the work. The collection is dynamically updated when investigators/authors (or their delegates) add new citations to their publications and other research products.

Google Scholar

Authors are highly recommended to establish a Google Scholar profile.

Google Scholar allows authors to:

Create a public profile that appears in Google Scholar results when someone searches for your name. Privacy settings for the Google Scholar profile are controlled by the individual.

Track citations to check who is citing your publications, especially gray literature materials which are not usually indexed by databases.

Citation metric tools to use for reporting purposes.

Set up your profile in Google Scholar

How to keep your Google Scholar Profile clean?

The NIH, AHRQ, and CDC requires individuals supported by research training, fellowship, research education, and career development awards to have ORCID iDs as of 2020. Read the full notice here .

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes authors from other authors and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between authors and their professional activities ensuring that their work is recognized.

ORCID is linked among other identifier systems such as the Scopus Author ID, ResearcherID and LinkedIn; publishers such as Nature and APS; and funding agencies such as NIH and the Wellcome Trust (see the SciENCV tab for more information about ORCID integration with NIH). This means that ORCID is not limited to a specific platform and is a non-proprietary means of establishing your author name.

Your name is key to establishing a unique public profile throughout your research and academic career for publications and research activities. But if your name is a common name or if you have changed your name, or if you are affiliated with several organizations over your career, there may be multiple name variants associated with your publications and research activities.

Registering for an ORCID identifier helps to promote discoverability among multiple information platforms and workflows as well as establishing a unique presence for researchers and scholars, regardless of name variants or affiliation history.

Registration for the ORCID iD is free and privacy settings are controlled by the individual. To register, complete a short registration form and select Register.

See the ORCID materials for more information:

My NCBI – ORCID Author Data Integration with SciENcv

The Delegate Feature

ORCID has a delegate feature available to help with managing ORCID accounts. "Trusted Individuals" can be added as delegates to an ORCID account to allow for editing and updating of an ORCID account and profile. Note that Trusted Individuals must register for an ORCID account.

More information:

Delegating Control to a Trusted Individual

F or more information, contact Brittney Sandler or see the ORCID Guide .

Scopus Author Identifier

The Author Identifier Tool in Scopus allows users to locate a particular author by entering the author’s last name, full first name and a middle initial, as well as the current affiliation of the author. Results will return a main author name along with variants of the author's name that have been grouped into an author profile and associated publications for that author. The Scopus database addresses the issue of author ambiguation and reconciles authors who use different variations of their names throughout their careers. Authors are highly recommended to review their profile in Scopus to confirm the profile is correct, and set up alerts for their works. Scopus is ORCID compliant allowing users to associate publications from their Scopus Author Profiles to ORCID profiles.

Importing Your Works from Scopus to ORCID Users can use Scopus to populate the publication section of the ORCID profile. The Scopus to ORCID wizard helps you find the correct Scopus profile and confirm which publications are yours. You can then send the identifier and list of publications to the ORCID website. Any changes you make in the wizard will also be submitted to the Scopus Feedback team to correct your profile on Scopus.

Create an ORCID iD
Click on “Import Research Activities"
Choose the Scopus to ORCID wizard to start importing publications

For users that do not have access to the Scopus database, the Author Identifer Tool can be used by non-subscribers. Use the free Author Identifier Tool to search for an author name to reconcile name variants and/or affiliations and publications.

ResearcherID and Publons

ResearcherID provides a solution to the author ambiguity problem within the scholarly research community. Each member is assigned a unique identifier to enable researchers to manage their publication lists, track their times cited counts and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author variant issues. Privacy settings for the ResearcherID profile are controlled by the individual and authors are highly recommended to make their ResearcherID profile publicly available.

ResearcherID information is integrated with the Web of Science database and is ORCID compliant, allowing users to associate publications from Web of Science to ORCID profiles. ResearcherID is also integrated with Publons which is used to track your journal peer review and editing activities along with publications and citation metrics.

Registration for ResearcherID is free.

ResearcherID members are able to register and link to ORCID and Publons from their ResearcherID Profile.

Another means of establishing your name and "presence" is to make your NIH Biosketch publicly available for others to view. NCBI offers a tool, SciENcv , that allows for creation of a NIH Biosketch that can be made publicly available. See the SciENcv tab for more information.

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Last Updated: Sep 24, 2024 1:25 PM
URL: https://beckerguides.wustl.edu/impact