The IMRaD format (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) is commonplace in academic writing in the social sciences. Øyunn Syrstad Høydal argues that while it may make research writing more efficient the format ultimately constrains creativity and may even shape the very kinds of studies researchers choose to undertake.

Guidance in academic writing was not something students expected, nor was it offered, 50 years ago. Today, many social scientists are taught to write articles that are almost indistinguishable to those in medicine or chemistry, without a second thought being given to the fundamental differences between these disciplines, or why research papers should look like this. In this way, writing standards are efficiently reproduced and become taken for granted.

Playing a central role in this development is the IMRaD format: Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion. A format originally used in the natural sciences to structure experimental reports and later adopted by medicine during the post-war expansion of academic publishing. Believed to both facilitate the peer-review process and to benefit readers across cultures and academic traditions, IMRaD structures much of the way academic research is currently communicated.

Believed to both facilitate the peer-review process and to benefit readers across cultures and academic traditions, IMRaD structures much of the way academic research is currently communicated.

In the social sciences IMRaD has been in part responsible for a transformation in academic writing from a more essayistic and free form, to what this author considers predictable and boring reports. While writing in the natural sciences, or quantitative social sciences, generally could be seen as a product reporting research, academic writing in the qualitative tradition of the social sciences is research.

During the writing process, the logic and consistency of ideas and arguments get challenged and tested. By muddling through the text, new perspectives, categories, and patterns can occur. Consequently, findings can be lifted to a more interesting analytical level, which, again, could potentially change the whole paper and its contribution to knowledge. Hence, while current standards of academic writing can enable consistency and efficiencies, they can also be disturbing and counterproductive, hindering the creativity and testing central to the process of writing/thinking in qualitative fields of research.

the lure of simpler more efficient academic writing also plays into the current culture of academic capitalism

For example, the standardisation of contemporary sociological papers has been claimed to limit the influence of these texts beyond the field, due to their heightened technical and objective tone. This standardisation, perceived as enhancing clarity and promoting effective reading among academics, can conversely be a complicating or alienating factor for non-academic readers, or even those outside of certain subdisciplines.

Still, IMRaD is not without its proponents. Graff and Birkenstein highlight aspects of standardisation as a form of democratisation in academia. By setting clear standards and being transparent about expectations, all students can receive the academic socialisation the most privileged take for granted. While MacKenzie claims a more standardised presentation form could decrease the use of snobbish social science jargon in academic papers and thus make them more accessible. Similarly, IMRaD does not require scientists to also be capable essayists, and the standardised form and clear headings have made scientific papers much easier to skim.

However, the lure of simpler more efficient academic writing also plays into the current culture of academic capitalism. In this system numeric indicators, such as the number of publications and citations, become prime indicators of personal and institutional quality and success. At an individual level, significant weight is in turn given to these metrics, which remain the most valued factors in review, promotion, and tenure decisions. 

In a system governed by numbers, academic coping strategies to meet numeric requirements vie for space with personal academic projects. The results are well known: writing several papers based on a single idea, writing quantitative reports as opposed to (supposedly) time-consuming theoretical papers, publishing chapters in tri-authored books, but perhaps more subtly, accelerating the writing process itself through IMRaD or similar recipes.

The IMRaD medium may also structure the kinds of research being done. The way IMRaD is structured for reporting experiments, could explain the growth in experimental papers at the expense of essays, theoretical foundations, or critical analyses. When studying the implementation of the IMRaD structure in sociology, Pontille finds significant differences between the more empirical and quantitative-oriented American sociology (which has adopted the IMRaD) and the more qualitative- or philosophically oriented French or continental sociology.

these pressures to produce efficient and risk averse research compliment a standardised and unsurprising style of writing fostered by IMRaD.

According to Enders et al, this drive towards efficiency can lead to more risk-averse research. Work that follows the dominant trends in academic fields and the agendas of external funders. Risky research is considered to include moving into novel fields and investing into projects with little short-term output. Taken together, these pressures to produce efficient and risk averse research compliment a standardised and unsurprising style of writing fostered by IMRaD.

However, does it have to be this way? Advocates like Helen Sword claim that there is room for a broader variety in academic writing than academics tend to believe. The need to engage wider audiences can lead editors to be surprisingly open minded, so perhaps the problem lies with academics who lack the guts to initiate this shift? Sword calls for academics who ‘… dare to write differently, replacing impersonal research reports with real‐life stories …’. Still, Yoo describes the tension between her desire to write more creatively and the pressure to conform to academic discourse, or what she describes as ‘writing for production’. Ultimately, she feels she must adopt the standard format in order to be published. 

As social scientists, researchers, authors, lecturers, reviewers and editors, we should take the time to reflect over how we write, why we do so and if we maybe could do it differently. When the championing of efficiency not only influences how we write, but also what we choose to write about, we would do well to see the writing on the wall. The formalism of IMRaD rocks the fundamental ambition of the social sciences, seeking to understand the complexity of society and human life. A project which, in its very nature, calls for a myriad of methods, theories, framing, and an open mind.

This post draws on the author’s article, Could I Write Like Carol Weiss?, published in Minerva.

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