Academic papers: structure, critiques, templates

How a research article is ordered (IMRaD and its abstract), what the evidence says about that order, and what publisher templates enforce.

Steps: frame · protocol · sources · review · state of the art · position · against · baseline · bibliography

Claims

Claim	Grade	Where
IMRaD became the only pattern in four leading medical journals by the 1980s	measured	review.md 1
IMRaD is not the default in many fields outside biomedicine	measured	review.md 1
Journal endorsement of CONSORT raises reporting completeness, modestly	measured	review.md 2
Endorsement of other guidelines showed no significant gain on nearly every item	measured	review.md 0
Introductions follow three moves (CARS)	supported with caveat	review.md 3
Structured abstracts hold more information than unstructured ones	measured	review.md 4
Structured abstracts are easier to read and to search	supported with caveat	against.md 3
Visual abstracts raise attention on social media	measured	review.md 4
Visual abstracts or highlights improve understanding	convention, untested	position.md
Researchers read selectively, about 30 minutes per article	supported with caveat	review.md 5
Experienced readers go to figures and results first	supported with caveat	review.md 5
Readability of abstracts has fallen since 1881	measured	review.md 6
The paper misrepresents the process of discovery	supported with caveat	against.md 1
Results-blind review cuts the positive-result rate from 96% to 44%	measured	state-of-the-art.md
Few shared notebooks reproduce their results (4.03%)	measured	against.md 5
Templates fix layout, metadata and references, not the argument	supported with caveat	review.md 8
IMRaD helps a reader find a result faster than another order	convention, untested	position.md
Reviewers confirmed 71.5% of 2019 NeurIPS code claims made on the checklist	measured	review.md 9
Artifacts do not raise citations in a decade of evaluations	measured	review.md 10
A declared data-sharing statement is a weak signal of actual sharing	measured	review.md 13
An infographic and a plain summary give the same knowledge	measured	review.md 12
At least 13.5% of 2024 biomedical abstracts were processed with a language model	measured	review.md 16
ML documentation rose before the checklists were introduced	supported with caveat	review.md 9
An automated reminder raised the share of articles with RRIDs from 33% to 65% at one publisher	supported with caveat	review.md 12
Empirical evidence on criteria for plain-language summaries is scarce	supported with caveat	review.md 0
34.6% of 162 STM publishers had a public AI policy for authors in late 2023	measured, descriptive	review.md 15
No study located of STAR Methods, of release blog posts, or of authors' declared against estimated AI use	open	state-of-the-art.md