How to write impactful research articles (Part 1)

On 25 October 2024, AuthorAID Steward Dr. Haseeb Md. Irfanullah delivered an interactive session titled ‘Crafting Impactful Research Articles and Presentations’ to engineering students of Bangladesh. This Part 1 of a two-part blog post is based on that lecture.

We all love to see that our research articles are creating impact. But, before discussing some ways to write impactful research articles, let us explore what we really mean by the ‘impact’ of a piece of research.

The first thing that comes to mind when we think of impactful research articles is probably ‘Journal Impact’. We are quite familiar with Impact Factor and CiteScore. These essentially show how frequently published articles of a journal are being cited over two or three years after being published. We need to remember, this is a metric for a journal, not for individual articles or their authors.

There are other ways to see the impact of our research. Our research can directly impact us, the researchers. A researcher’s academic and professional lives are shaped by scholarships, jobs, promotions, rewards, and awards, which are very much linked with publishing research articles. Some of these impacts could be seen immediately (e.g., getting a scholarship or a research grant). But some are quite long-term and can extend beyond researchers’ lives. It can even become part of our legacy. I am sure many of you can name numerous legendary scientists in your respective disciplines — from your country and beyond. 

Then we have the third type of impact: the ‘Academic Impact’. A piece of research’s academic impact means how that research is able to take its discipline forward. An unfortunate reality is, many published research has zero impact on its discipline as nobody uses the findings or refers to it in another article, even are not aware of its existence. In positive scenarios, some articles get immediately recognition for being impactful. Some have to wait for a long time for wider recognition, as we often see in case of the Nobel Prize. For others, impact and recognition are spread over many decades. What is the impact of the 2-page article that James Watson and Francis Crick wrote in 1953 in Nature describing DNA double-helix structure?

The final impact we don’t talk about much in academia is the ‘Research Impact’ or impact of research on the ground. It is often difficult to show such impact in case of classical, theoretical or basic works in different disciplines since their application is not readily seen or realised. In the case of new medicines or new treatments, the research impact is obviously immense. For example, the mRNA technology that resulted in COVID-19 Vaccines changed the world within a few months, and there are many new vaccines being developed using this technology. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), like my country Bangladesh, we have seen how agricultural research has ensured food security of hundreds of millions of people.

We may see changes in policies and practices brought about by the political parties and their governments to create social, economic, and sectoral impacts. But how much of this is guided by research and evidence? What role we researchers actually play there? Recently, I analysed the references cited in six national development plans of Bangladesh. I categorised all cited documents into three groups: i) research documents (e.g., peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, academic books, and research reports); ii) government documents (prepared/published by government agencies); and iii) non-government documents (e.g., published by NGOs, think tanks, international organisations, donors, multilateral banks, and UN). In summary, the research documents group showed the lowest proportion (30%). The non-government category was the highest (38%), followed by the government documents (32%). I believe this low emphasis on research to make policies and plans might be true in many other countries. 

Failing to translate useful research into policy actions is indeed a missed opportunity. But, who should initiate to build that bridge between research and policy-making — researchers or policy-makers? I strongly believe both of them. Researchers need to approach policy-makers with a simpler version of their research, clearly showing the policy implications of certain actions or inactions. At the same time, policy-makers need to understand that in the dynamic, uncertain contexts we run our economy and development, we need scientific evidence to make our decisions effective, cost-effective, and sustainable. Collaboration among policy-makers and researchers can help us to see research impact for the real people.

From the above discussion, we can see that the ‘impact’ of a piece of research is not only linked to the Impact Factor/CiteScore of the journal where it is published. A piece of research has much wider impacts to offer and as researchers we should be aware of this.

In the Part 2 of this blog post, I discuss what issues we should remember while writing a good, impactful research article. In the meantime, feel free to write your thoughts on impact of research in the comment section below.