MACROSTRUCTURE OF ENGLISH RESEARCH ARTICLES IN LIFE SCIENCES WRITTEN BY UKRAINIAN AUTHORS

Abstract

The study addresses macrostructure patterns of research articles in the life sciences published by Ukrainian journals by analyzing section and subsection heading designation and ordering. The study corpus comprised 60 original research articles (RAs) written in English and published in fi ve scientifi c journals in the fi eld of biology and environmental sciences in Ukraine in 2023–2024. The headings recorded were classifi ed according to their type. Functional headings were processed quantitatively; content headings were subjected to a key word analysis. Based on section labelling, composition and ordering, their structural patterns were constructed and compared. The study revealed that the examined articles followed the conventional structuring standards based on the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) pattern. Most section headings were of the standard functional type, while subsection headings were mostly of content type. The dominant macrostructure patterns were I_Mat & M_R & D_C and I_Mat & M_R_D_C with subheadings included in the Mat & M or R&D sections. No major deviations from the international standards of research article structuring were found.

Keywords

• research article
• macrostructure pattern
• section heading
• sub-heading
• imrd structure