Rhetorical structure of biochemistry research articles

This paper reports on the results of a move analysis [Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] of 60 biochemistry research articles. First, a corpus was systematically compiled to ensure that it represents core journals in the focused discipline. Then, coding reliability analysis was conducted to demonstrate that, given a set of coding protocols and systematic training and practice, two individuals could agree upon move boundaries. Finally, move analysis of the corpus was conducted. Based on the findings of the analysis, a two-level rhetorical structure (moves and steps) is proposed for these texts. This structure consists of 15 distinct moves: three moves for the Introduction section, four for the Methods section, four for the Results section, and four for the Discussion section. This study captures a basic yet complete and representative template of rhetorical organization for structuring biochemistry research articles. The template is useful particularly to native and non-native scientists not only allowing them to better understand published research articles but also facilitating the process of writing research articles for publication. (c) 2004 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.