An Investigation into the Structure of Research Articles and Writing Guidelines in the Iranian Knowledge and Information Science Journals

Background and Aim: The purpose of this research is investigating the structure of research articles in the Iranian knowledge and information science journals (peer reviewed journals). In the next step, the writing guidelines in the scientific journals websites that designed to introduce desired structure of a scientific paper are studied.

Methods: The research was survey with analytical approach. The population of the research were articles published in the Persian scientific journals of knowledge and information science field in 2013-2015 and their writing guidelines. Stratified random sampling was used and, accordingly, 245 scientific articles were examined using a research checklist.

Results: Research findings showed that the structure of the research articles reviewed are in a good condition and only in three sub-structural components i.e "theoretical foundations", "research application" and "research limitations", consistent with the desired structure is weak. About the writing guidelines, the findings showed that they are in the unfavorable condition. Some structural components i.e "brief review of the scientific literature," "rationale to the study," "aim and motivation of the research", "advantages and importance of the research", "the research time", "space of the research", "credibility (reliability) of the research tools", "reliability of the study" did not appear in any writing guidelines. The first hypothesis showed a significant difference between research journals about their matching with the desired structure of the research article. However, the overall average ratings of the articles structure in this journals are in the good condition. Also in the second hypothesis was found a significant difference between the compliance rate of writing guides and articles published in the scientific journals with the desired research article structure.

Conclusion: Due to structural weakness in the writing guidelines of Persian peer-reviewed journals studied, can be such a conclude that authors of these articles shape the article structure based on what they have been trained and not attend to the writing guidelines of the journals. From the other side, one of the reasons of the structural weakness in the structure of the articles is disregarding editors and the other practitioners of journals to offering needed help contents.