Scientific Journal Report: Spiny-Footed Lizards

825 Words4 Pages

A scientific journal report is an academic paper that has been published within the scholarly community. The report is peer reviewed by other experts in the field to ensure credibility. Functions of a scientific journal is to distribute knowledge and inform others of developed research and its outcomes.

On such article found in the Animal Behaviour science journal which was released by Elsevier. The journal report looks into the colouration of juvenile spiny-footed lizards and determines whether the colouring is important for reduction of adult aggression towards the juvenile lizards. The communication of the journal is demonstrated through the use of language and various conventions as it aims to capture the attention of specific audiences …show more content…

Often, keywords discussed within the journal are specific to the scientific field which it is written for. Within the article cited above, a list of keywords was included, they are not only specific to a scientific field; but the words like juvenile colouration and between-age class communication are specific to the journal piece. The article also demonstrates the use of scientific language, when discussing the spiny-footed lizards the article refers to them as acanthodactylus erythrurus which is the lizards scientific classification name. The overall person of the texts are often determined to how much research was previously done. Often when there is more information available the author of the paper will use first person when discussing their own work and third person when discussing the other research that has been done. ‘We classified lizards as juveniles or adults...’ this extract from the article demonstrates the use first person when discussing the differences between the method that the researchers used and the method that had been tested previously. The language and words used impact when determining who the audience is for the information …show more content…

They do well to inform people of any significant scientific advancements. The audience plays a key role in the journal article as it often guides the author to how long the article peice may be and what language must be used. Language within science articles can range from the simple and direct language, to the logical, detailed and syntactically correct.The use of language coincides with the audience that the article aims to attract. Finally the conventions of the article to prove further information. Larger, more detailed, articles will often have many conventions, from table and graphs that discuss results with one look to the abstracts and acknowledgments that give an overview of the article in one paragraph and thank those who were involved. These key things is what makes a good scientific journal