What is MAAS Research Paper Outlining?
Research Paper Outlining builds the section-by-section skeleton of a journal manuscript from a research question and a dataset you already have. The expert works from your question, your data and your target journal's requirements, and returns a structured outline you write the full manuscript from.
This service sets no target grade and carries no results-based refund, because MAAS is not the author of the eventual paper. The expert who builds the outline is credited by name in your Acknowledgments, and their input is quoted by scope, not sold as a fixed package.
What MAAS commits to is the expert match and one revision round. If the expert is not the right fit, you can request a change of expert. If your supervisor or a co-author comments on the outline within 30 days of handover, the expert revises it once at no extra charge.
Who is this for?
It suits people with a research question and data in hand, and a target journal in mind, who have not yet started writing.
- Master's students preparing their first paper for a Q3 or Q4 journal
- Early-career researchers moving from a thesis chapter to a standalone paper
- Authors targeting a Q1 or Q2 journal who want the section structure checked against that journal's norms before drafting begins
- Co-authors who need a shared outline to divide the writing between them
This is not for you if you want the paper written for you, or a completed draft returned without your own writing in it. Outlining stops at the structure. The paper is written by you.
What does an outline actually contain?
A workable outline is more than a list of headings. For each section it states the claim the section makes, the evidence that supports it, and roughly how much space it needs relative to the others.
- Introduction. The gap in the literature your paper addresses and the specific research question, stated as a claim you will defend.
- Methods. The design, sample or data source, and analysis approach, written at the level of detail your target journal's Methods sections typically use.
- Results. Which findings go in which order, and which ones carry the paper's main claim versus supporting detail.
- Discussion. How the results answer the research question, where they agree or disagree with prior work, and what the paper's contribution is.
Mapping the claim before the evidence catches problems reviewers otherwise flag after a full draft exists.
For many study designs the Methods and Results outline can follow a published reporting guideline. The EQUATOR Network (n.d.) indexes these guidelines by study type: CONSORT 2025 for randomised trials, which replaced the 2010 version (Hopewell et al., 2025), STROBE for observational studies (von Elm et al., 2007), and PRISMA 2020 for systematic reviews (Page et al., 2021). The Introduction carries its own weight: Bordage (2001) found that the importance and timeliness of a study's problem were among the strongest predictors of a positive editorial response, which is why the outline states that problem before anything else.
What makes a paper's Discussion section defensible?
Reviewers read a Discussion section for three things: whether it answers the exact question raised in the Introduction, whether it places the finding against existing literature, and whether it calibrates how much weight the finding can bear (Ghasemi et al., 2019). Annesley (2010) compares Discussion to a closing argument, where Results present the evidence and Discussion argues what it proves. Hopkins and Dudley-Evans (1988), analysing discussion sections across journal articles and dissertations, found the same recurring moves rather than a single linear pass, and Holmes (1997) found those moves differ across the social sciences, so a section built for one discipline's conventions does not automatically transfer to another. Docherty and Smith (1999) argue that a Discussion which never names its own limitations undermines trust in the whole paper, and Clarke and Chalmers (1998) describe weak discussion sections in medical journals as islands in search of continents, disconnected from the literature they should be engaging. Hyland (1996) documented how hedging language in science articles signals the difference between a claim the data supports and one it does not, and Boutron et al. (2010) found that trials with statistically nonsignificant primary outcomes are often reported in ways that overstate the result, a pattern Chiu et al. (2017) traced under the label spin across the biomedical literature more broadly. Cals and Kotz (2013) recommend structuring the Discussion around one finding per paragraph, a fix for a section that otherwise drifts into restating Results. Boutron and Ravaud (2018) trace how a study's findings can be misrepresented or distorted between what the data show and how they are later described, and an outline that fixes each section's claim before drafting starts is one guard against that drift. Horton (1995) argues that a paper's structure is itself part of the argument for why its conclusions should be believed, not a neutral container that holds the results.
Does the outline need to match your target journal's citation style?
Your target journal often prescribes the citation style an outline should already assume: APA 7, IEEE, Vancouver, MLA and Chicago each dominate in different fields, and chemistry papers can use ACS style, built by the American Chemical Society (Williams College Libraries, n.d.). None of these styles has a single governing authority, so your target journal's own author guidelines, not a general style guide, settle how citations in your outline's Methods and Discussion sections should be formatted.
Why does a research question outline before drafting matter?
A paper planned before it is written tends to hold together; a paper written section by section without a plan often reads as a set of loosely connected parts. Reviewers notice when the Discussion does not actually answer the question raised in the Introduction, and that mismatch is a structural problem, not a language problem, so it needs to be caught before drafting rather than fixed with edits afterward.
Who will actually work with you?
Your outline is built by someone who has published or reviewed in your field, because a workable Methods outline for a randomised trial looks nothing like one for a corpus linguistics study, and the section proportions differ by discipline and by journal. MAAS EdTech's policy keeps expert profiles anonymous while your paper is in progress: you see the level, the field and publication background, and the expert is credited by name, not MAAS, when your paper is published.
If you already have a full draft and need the language checked rather than the structure, see Journal Manuscript Proofreading & Editing. For broader guidance on choosing a target journal and understanding the publication process, see Publishing Advisory.
See the anonymised expert roster on our experts page.
Have a research question and data ready for an outline? support@maasedtech.com or +84 979 422 393 (WhatsApp).
Not ready to book a call? Send your research question and a summary of your data on WhatsApp or Messenger for an outlining quote. Your data and research ideas stay confidential and are never shared with third parties.
References
Annesley, T. M. (2010). The discussion section: Your closing argument. Clinical Chemistry, 56(11), 1671–1674. https://doi.org/10.1373/clinchem.2010.155358
Bordage, G. (2001). Reasons reviewers reject and accept manuscripts: The strengths and weaknesses in medical education reports. Academic Medicine, 76(9), 889–896. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-200109000-00010
Boutron, I., & Ravaud, P. (2018). Misrepresentation and distortion of research in biomedical literature. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(11), 2613–2619.
Boutron, I., Dutton, S., Ravaud, P., & Altman, D. G. (2010). Reporting and interpretation of randomized controlled trials with statistically nonsignificant results for primary outcomes. JAMA, 303(20), 2058–2064. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2010.651
Cals, J. W. L., & Kotz, D. (2013). Effective writing and publishing scientific papers, part VI: Discussion. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 66(10), 1064.
Chiu, K., Grundy, Q., & Bero, L. (2017). "Spin" in published biomedical literature: A methodological systematic review. PLoS Biology, 15(9), e2002173. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2002173
Clarke, M., & Chalmers, I. (1998). Discussion sections in reports of controlled trials published in general medical journals: Islands in search of continents? JAMA, 280(3), 280–282.
Docherty, M., & Smith, R. (1999). The case for structuring the discussion of scientific papers. BMJ, 318(7193), 1224–1225. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.318.7193.1224
EQUATOR Network. (n.d.). What is a reporting guideline? https://www.equator-network.org/
Ghasemi, A., Bahadoran, Z., Mirmiran, P., Hosseinpanah, F., Shiva, N., & Zadeh-Vakili, A. (2019). The principles of biomedical scientific writing: Discussion. International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, 17(3), e95415. https://doi.org/10.5812/ijem.95415
Holmes, R. (1997). Genre analysis, and the social sciences: An investigation of the structure of research article discussion sections in three disciplines. English for Specific Purposes, 16(4), 321–337.
Hopewell, S., Chan, A.-W., Collins, G. S., Hróbjartsson, A., Moher, D., Schulz, K. F., Tunn, R., Aggarwal, R., Berkwits, M., Berlin, J. A., Bhandari, N., Butcher, N. J., Campbell, M. K., Chidebe, R. C. W., Elbourne, D., Farmer, A., Fergusson, D. A., Golub, R. M., Goodman, S. N., . . . Boutron, I. (2025). CONSORT 2025 statement: Updated guideline for reporting randomised trials. BMJ, 389, Article e081123. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2024-081123
Hopkins, A., & Dudley-Evans, T. (1988). A genre-based investigation of the discussion sections in articles and dissertations. English for Specific Purposes, 7(2), 113–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/0889-4906(88)90029-4
Horton, R. (1995). The rhetoric of research. BMJ, 310(6985), 985–987.
Hyland, K. (1996). Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied Linguistics, 17(4), 433–454. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/17.4.433
Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., … Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71
von Elm, E., Altman, D. G., Egger, M., Pocock, S. J., Gøtzsche, P. C., & Vandenbroucke, J. P. (2007). The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement: Guidelines for reporting observational studies. PLoS Medicine, 4(10), Article e296. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040296
Williams College Libraries. (n.d.). ACS citation guide. https://libguides.williams.edu/citing/acs
