While scholars in the field of writing studies have examined scientific writing from multiple perspectives, interest in its thematic structure has been modest. Recent studies suggest that the themes in scientific writing tend to be anchored on one or a few points of departure. There has also been an attempt at quantification using the thematic-density index (TDI), although this has only been tested on abstracts. In this study, we investigated the thematic structure and TDIs of 30 research articles in biology. The results revealed a progressive thematic pattern in the introduction section, followed by an anchored development in the subsequent sections. The anchoring was realized by the pervasive use of the first-person pronoun “we.” The mean TDI was lowest in the introduction section (2.593) and highest in the results section (7.095). The results were consistent across the articles in the corpus, underscoring the uniform way in which the articles were thematically structured, and in turn suggesting a core thematic pattern for scientific research writing in general. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that future studies compare the thematic structure of the introduction section vis-à-vis the other sections, and investigate the possible factors resulting in such a structure.

中文翻译：

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科研论文的审查结构：主题进展和主题密度研究

尽管写作研究领域的学者们从多种角度审视了科学写作，但对其主题结构的兴趣却很少。最近的研究表明，科学写作中的主题往往基于一个或几个出发点。尽管仅在摘要上进行了测试，但也尝试使用主题密度指数（TDI）进行量化。在这项研究中，我们调查了30篇生物学研究文章的主题结构和TDI。结果表明，在引言部分中逐渐形成了主题模式，随后在随后的部分中进行了锚定式开发。通过普遍使用第一人称代词“我们”来实现锚定。平均TDI在介绍部分最低（2.593），而在结果部分最高（7.095）。结果在语料库中的所有文章中都是一致的，强调了主题进行结构化的统一方式，从而为总体上科学研究的写作提出了核心主题模式。基于这些发现，作者建议未来的研究将引言部分的主题结构与其他部分进行比较，并研究导致这种结构的可能因素。