Technical Report writing

Writing an idea and thoughts can be done in any style and format any writer wanted. He can present his point in whatever attack he may use. There may be rules that don’t matter whether those were followed or neglected. What matters is the writer is able to present the message he wanted to convey. Technical report writing is different.

I was fortunate enough to attend the training with Dr. Ofelia K. Bautista and Mr. Roberto K. Bautista as speakers. Some of the learning I’ve learned and I wanted to share and wanted to keep are:

Ø Any research should be published to make it complete. According to Dr. Bautista, a research work is incomplete if not published. It will never contribute to the body of knowledge and never added to the advancement of science. Personally and for the institution where the researcher is connected also have a benefit of having their work been published.

Ø Before anyone can start to write, one must consider first that he has done a good research. Good research means that it follows a proper procedure, must have statistical analysis, has sufficient data presented to justify conclusion, must be done in the last five years, consider the journal style, and decide whether it is a short note or a full length paper.

Ø There are several types of journals:

o Unedited journals - scientifically not edited. What is submitted is what will come out in the journal.

o Edited non-refereed journal with or without ISSN- edited but not by individuals from the same field as that of the author.

o Local refereed journal – edited by individuals of the same field of the author.

o International journal - generally are refereed journal.

Ø Technical paper is written for fellow scientist and not for popular writing. This is the reason why it is difficult to understand the entries in the journal if not your field.

Ø Lastly, consider the cost of publishing your work. Most journals charge fees per page, colored pictures have another rate for fee.

In details, with the parts of the paper, what to consider are:

1. Introduction - She presented ‘PILOT’ as acronym for what to write in the introduction.

Problem – what is the research all about

Importance – what is the essence of solving this problem, is it really a pressing problem?

Literature - what has been done about it before starting the work, what findings

support your statements about the problem and its importance?

Objectives – what are the expected answers or hypotheses, what are you going to

accomplish?

Time and Place - will be placed here unless more appropriate in Materials and Methods

2. The review of literature – it is important to know where to start. Thus it is important to know what has been done relative to the problem. The presentation of related literatures should have a smooth flow of thought where findings are interrelated, compare or contrast findings where appropriate, and provide smooth transitions.

If there are several papers on the same topic of one author, its latest paper should be cited. Only factual information must be cited, not an opinion. This does not mean though, that you copy everything in the paper but use your words. If a sentence or paragraph is copied, use a quotation mark.

If information is taken from secondary source, cite also the first paper or check the original. The original work must be cited. Unknown authors should not be cited, only authors from reliable sources. Works from journals are the most reliable, especially the refereed journals. Internet citations are not reliable should not be included, unless journal article. In case that you use MS or PhD thesis and dissertations, which is only available in your library, place it in footnote and not in literature cited. But if these can be found in easily accessible library, it can be placed in literature cited.

Use new publications since science is dynamic. Your information gathered may already be obsolete.

3. Materials and Methods

Listen to you teacher in Research, follow it. In addition, explain methods used that could have been done in several ways. Flow diagram can also be used where appropriate. Dr. Bautista gave another acronym what should be stated in biological experiments.

S- statistical design

M- manufacturer of special equipment

A- analysis used and arc sin or square root transformation R- replications

T- time of year when research was conducted if necessary

P- plot (basic experimental plot)

I- Indices

C – cultivar used

S- samples used

What you need not to include under this section are the equation in getting percentage (it is so obvious), equipment for taking common measurement like weight, height, etc., treatments given In the tables of result and discussion, information given in footnotes to make the table understandable, and explanation of phenomenon.

4. Result and discussion

You can choose whether to present result first then discussion or present result and discussion together with the conclusion. One chooses to present first results and followed with discussion when there is a need to interrelate data in interpreting or explaining result, need to discuss 2 or more studies together or there is repetition of explanation or same references cited.

In presenting data, do not present them in both table and graph. Data that are entirely insignificant, ANOVA, crowd tables, or 2x2 tables should no longer be presented. Fold tables must be divided and be presented separately. One more thing, a common mistake we commit is the use of “effects of”, “influence of”, “mean of”, etc. in making the title. The title must be short and specific.

When our set of data lacks value, use “-“ or put “0” if the data are zero. Use tr or trace for small amounts that cannot be measured. For numbers, stick to actually observed numbers, decimals can be used in number of days but whole in number of flowers. Avoid also large number, present in the heading (x1000) for thousands and ug instead of 0.00001

5. Summary, Conclusions and Recommendation

What is important is you follow the format of the journal you wish to publish your work. Start with one to two sentences

If you wanted more, attend on one of Dr. O.K. Bautista’s series of trainings. She is conducting trainings on graduate students at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños. She is also willing to mentor budding researchers, as she is to us, to be able to publish research works. She assured us that it is her joy to know her students, whether at the university or on her trainings telling her that their papers were accept for publication especially in a refereed journal.