1.     Abstract and Introduction

Giving background information

• Since 2012 there has been a rapid in the use of…
• Recent developments regarding the future of … have led to…
• More recent evidence shows/ suggests/ investigates/ highlights/ reveals/ proposes that…
• Quite recently, considerable attention has been paid to…
• … have/ has been gaining importance in recent years…
• … have/ has been utilized in many applications such as …
• The question of whether… has caused much debate in…
• (Much of) the current debate revolves around…

Indicating research gaps

• Few researchers have addressed the issue of…
• However, there has been little discussion on…
• However, to author’s best knowledge, very few publications can be found /available in the literature that discuss/ address the issue of…
• Most studies have only focused on …
• There is little agreement on…
• However, most of the previous studies do not take into account…

Demonstrating values of the current research

• It can be stated that (these experiments) have provided undeniable evidence/ compelling evidence of…
• The latter finding is particular important in that (it cannot readily be explained socioculturally, thus) it presents a …

Purpose/ main objectives of the paper

• The aim of this study is to further/ extend/ widen/ broaden current knowledge of…
• The purpose of this thesis is to…
• The objective/ aim of this paper/ study is to …
• This work addresses the problems…
• We undertook this study to…
• Within the framework of... , we propose to...
• This essay critically examines….
• This paper is an overview of/ a review of/ a report on how…
• This paper takes a new look at/re-examine/ revisits how…
• Based on the approach presented in (Bailey (2014)), the purpose of this paper is to…
• In this paper, while we refer to our earlier work (A), (B) and (C), the focus is different.
• Even though (the efficiency of…) has been improved in recent years, most improvement have been achieved by (minimizing …). However, it is possible to further improve… .
• With this goal, this work (explores)…
• (A theory of…) has been recently presented in… . However, several practical questions arise when dealing with… : 1)… and 2)…  . To answer these questions, we present an original approach…

Framework of the paper (Usually at the end of introduction)

• Section II describes/ outlines… , Section III discusses/ analyzes … . (Experimental results) are presented in Section IV; Section V concludes the paper.
• In Section II, … will be discussed. Section III is devoted to…. Section IV presents (the experimental results). The conclusion is reported in Section V.
• The proposed (design) is discussed in Section II. (The implementation of the proposed design) is presented in Section III. Section IV shows (experimental results of…). Finally, Section V concludes with a summary.

2.     Review of literature

Referring to source in general

• A recent review of the literature on this topic found that…
• Much research on … has been done.
• There is a rapidly growing literature on …, which indicates that…
• In the last few years more research has been given to the …
• Previous studies indicate that…
• ... has/ have been widely researched/ investigated.
• This has led authors such as… to investigate…
• In the last decade, … has attracted much attention from (research team)…
• Several publications have appeared in recent years documenting…

Referring to individual authors

• (Dee) developed a new method and concluded that…
• (Doyle 2015) was among the first to…
• As pointed out by (Wallwork), this will only occur if…
• This led to following conclusion … and this would support the hypothesis that …
• Recently, several authos (A), (B) and (C), have proposed (a new theory)…
• (A) and (B) indicate that…
• He claims/ argues/ criticizes/ maintains/ suggests/ points out/ underlines that…
• (A) and (B) have demonstrated that…
• Many experts contend, however, that this evidence is not conclusive.
• In this work and in related references it was observed that…
• As reported by (A),  …
• In a recent paper by (A), …
• (A)’s argument in favor of/ against (B) runs as follows:
• Along similar lines, A argues that…
• (A)’s findings lend support to the claims that…
• Taking a middle-ground position, (A) claims that…

Highlight drawbacks of literature

• He claimed that… but he failed to provide adequate proof to this finding.
• A key limitation of this research is that…
• This approach may not be practical/ orthodox/ conventional in all situations.
• A weakness with this argument however is that…
• Such a misleading assumption can lead to serious consequences with regard to…

3.     Materials and methods

• In order to verify the validity of… , we carried out several experiments.
• The… analysis was performed in order to…
• We started by investigating…
• The criteria for selecting the subjects to participate in the survey were:
• One of the big advantages of (this approach/ method) … is that…
• To overcome the problem/ difficulty of…, it is necessary to adopt a …

Describing numerical methods

• The equation can be written as … , where…
• The equation that describes… is as follows:
• … can be computed by the following equation:
• Equation (1) and (2) demonstrate that…
• The function f is defined/ given by…
• Let f be given/ defined by…
• Equality holds in (1) if only …
• Substitution/ insertion of (1) in(to) (2)yields…
• (1) holds under the condition that…

4.     Results

Referring to figures and tables

• Figure 2 shows/ presents/ depicts/ outlines/ illustrates/ represents/compares/summarizes/ highlights…
• As can be seen/shown in (Figure 1)… / like can be seen in (Table 1)… / as it is clear from (Figure 1)…
• It is clear/ apparent from Figure 1 that…
• Figure 2 gives an example of…
• Such cases are depicted in the following figures.
• Consider Figure 2, which plots… versus/ against…
• From this figure it can be seen that…
• Table 2 summarizes …

Describing results

• The previous sections have shown that…
• It has been found that…
• A closer look at the data indicates that…
• The graph/ diagram suggests/ indicates…
• The increase/ decrease in… can be contributed to…
• … are in good agreement/ correspond with…
• There is no evident relationship between … and …
• There is a good match between … and …
• The prime cause of the discrepancy is the result of…
• This apparent lack of correlation can be attributed to…

5.     Discussion

Stating research objectives

• In this paper we propose/ examine/study…
• The main concern of the paper was to…
• In our paper, the focus of attention was/ is on…
• This study shows/ has shown that…
• Particular attention is paid to…
• We have also considered the consequences of…
• Our results describe for the first time that…
• This paper presents a pilot study to find the answer of…

Interpreting results (phrases of generalization are commonly used)

• The overall results indicate...
• In general, the experimental samples indicate...
• With one exception, the (experiment) sample indicates...

Giving justifications to unexpected results

• This may have happened because we had not examined the data in enough depth.
• Despite the limitation of this method, and consequently the poor results in Table 2, our findings do nevertheless suggest that…
• Our observations that… are not new, but…
• Since this was only a preliminary attempt to …, it is hardly surprising that…

Making claims

• It is unjustifiable to say that…
• As a rebuttal to this point, it might be argued that…
• For the sake of discussion, I would like to argue that…
• On the basis of the evidence currently available, it seems fair to suggest that…

Referring to the previous research

• The data obtained are broadly consistent with the major trends of…
• The results agree/ are consistent with other studies which have shown that…
• Current research appears/ seems to validate the view that…
• In contrast to some reports in the literature, there were…

Suggesting possible applications

• The technique/ approach/ results are applicable to…
• This research was concerned with…; however, the results should be applicable also to…
• The/ our… has great potential for other applications such as…

6.    Conclusion

Drawing conclusions

• Based on the results, it can be concluded that the research into… has been…
• Summing up the results, it can be concluded that…
• This paper has clearly shown that…
• It has been demonstrated/ shown…
• In conclusion, it is evident that this study has shown…
• From the research that has been carried out/ done/ performed/undertaken, it is possible to conclude that…

Stating limitations

• The main limitations of the experimental results…
• One question still unanswered is whether…
• The analysis does not enable us to determine…

Suggesting future research

• In our future research we intend to concentrate on…
• Future work will involve…
• More research into… is still necessary before obtaining a definitive answer to…
• Continuing/ continued research on/ into … appears fully justified because…
• More tests will be needed to verify whether…
• Clearly, further research will be needed/ required to prove/ validate…
• Several other questions remain to be addressed/ resolved.

7.     Giving examples

• for example, … / for instance, … / to exemplify, …
• Specifically, …/in particular, …
• To be more specific, …
• A case in point is that…
• A classic example of… is that…
• To give a brief/simple example…
• This fact can be illustrated briefly by looking at…
• Another example of what we mean is…

8.     Abstract

• The paper/ article discusses/ deals with/ considers/ analyses/ considers/ explains/ describes/ establishes/ introduces/covers/ ...
• The paper/ article develops/ presents/ provides/ studies/ represents/ features/ contains/ concentrates on...
• The paper/ article demonstrates the feasibility of...
• The paper/ article open up a new field/ issue of...
• The paper/ article gives/ aims to give a comprehensive account of...
• The paper/ article offers a solution to...
• The paper/ article serves as an ibtroduction of...
• The main objective/ goal/ purpose of the paper/ article is ...

9.     Acknowledgements

• The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which have improved the quality of this paper.
• The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance and support of…
• The author would like to extend his/her thanks to (Dr. A) for his support and help in completing the paper.
• Financial support from the (A Foundation), Grand No. … (Project topic), is gratefully acknowledged.