HANDLING THE DISCUSSION SECTION
75% of academic writing-related anxieties are about the discussion section. The discussion section of a manuscript is the heart of the creative endeavor: it’s where you have to be MOST original. Even if you don’t have a section in your thesis called ‘discussion’ (specific to a journal), there will still be places in your manuscript where you must explicitly make new knowledge in relation to the data you have collected and your analysis. Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of papers where this section is a repeat of ‘results’ which calls for rejection of papers at worst or major revision at best. So, what should the discussion section look like? Each discipline is different. It’s important to base your moves on what is socially acceptable for your community, but here is a simple list of basic moves that every discussion section needs to have: · Restate Results (don’t repeat them) · Comm...