The rhetorical structure of science? A multidisciplinary analysis of article headings

TL;DR

This study analyzes the variation in article headings across disciplines, revealing significant differences and highlighting the importance of understanding diverse structural norms in scientific communication.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary analysis of article heading patterns across over 1 million research papers, uncovering widespread variability and discipline-specific practices.

Findings

No headings are universally used across all disciplines.

Significant differences exist in heading usage among fields.

Humanities often avoid headings altogether.

Abstract

An effective structure helps an article to convey its core message. The optimal structure depends on the information to be conveyed and the expectations of the audience. In the current increasingly interdisciplinary era, structural norms can be confusing to the authors, reviewers and audiences of scientific articles. Despite this, no prior study has attempted to assess variations in the structure of academic papers across all disciplines. This article reports on the headings commonly used by over 1 million research articles from the PubMed Central Open Access collection, spanning 22 broad categories covering all academia and 172 out of 176 narrow categories. The results suggest that no headings are close to ubiquitous in any broad field and that there are substantial differences in the extent to which most headings are used. In the humanities, headings may be avoided altogether. Researchers should therefore be aware of unfamiliar structures that are nevertheless legitimate when reading, writing and reviewing articles.