SCIENTIFIC
TEST STANDARDSBefore starting, it is needed to stress, as expressed at the beggining of the Matrix Philosophy, that this site intends to be a technical forum where methodology and objectivity applied to the world of Hi Fidelity is the main goal.
It is then needed to clarify that from now on, every test that pretends to be considered scientific (allowing certain latitude), must comply with the strict redactional rules that are the fundamental structure of any scientific article, shown herein.
Don’t ever forget that we are only a group of enthusiasts, without any kind of commercial interests and with limited access to materials and funding, so we do not pretend to brand our articles as perfectly scientific, capable of being published in a scientific publication, instead, it’ll be registered here standarized and thoroughly explained so anyone could miror the tests and verify its validity.
The UNESCO has sentenced that “the essential goal of a scientific publication is to communicate the results, the ideas and debates of a given investigation in a clear, understandable, concise and fidedign manner: the publication is an essential part of the scientific work. It is then needed to stablish well defined publication strategies and to follow a set of standarized rules wich will facilitate sharing those publications amongst scientists all over the world, while reducing to reasonable proportions the unnecessary growth of similar publications”
A classic of the medicine, Mr. Santiago Ramon y Cajal, cited whom he qualified as a sapient librarian, Mr. Billing, from the Washington National Library of Medicine, whom again counselled scientific publishers to comply with the following rules:1) To have something to say
2) Say it
3) Once said, don’t keep on saying it
4) Give proper title and order to the publicationThis would then be the basic structure accepted by the scientific community, and the one that we’ll follow from now on. Herein we are of course simplifying it, since we do not need a publishable structure given the fact that we are not pretending to reach such levels, and the intended use is amongst private HiFi enthusiasts.
The title of a scientific article must describe its contents in a clear and precise way, allowing the reader to easily identify the subject and the librarian to cathaloge and classify the material with accuracy.
Must be kept short (no more than 15 words) but without sacrifying clarity, the use of excessive propositions and reiterative foregrounds must be avoided, i.e.: “study about…, investigations about…., final analysis of the results of…., etc.etc. as well as unnecessary use of sub-titles.
We must confess that the last thing we write is the title: having clear the general idea of the article itself and the clear identification of the objective facilitates formuling the title itself.
Must appear as authors those whom have substantially contributed to the article and assume the responsability of the contents.
It is unadecuate to include as authors people whose contribution to the article is minimal o null (unjustified authory), o deny credit to a person who is responsable of a decisive part of the intellectual contents of the article (incomplete authory).
This section is the one destined to help the reader identify the basics contents of the article easily and precisely, helping him/her to determine the relevance of the contents of the article.
The contents of the resume must express clearly and in short: objectives and span of the study, basic proceedings, analitical and observational methodology, main findings and its conclussions.
In this section, the investigation must be relative to time and place, must present the numeric results precisely and indicate the limits or the span of the conclussion’s validity. Must be redacted in third person, past tense, with the exception of the conclussive phrase, must exclude abreviations and bibliographycal references, and its extension must be kept to between 150 and 200 words.
In this section it must be identified very cleary the problem or aim, transport it to real time, expose briefly the most relevant preexisting work and mention any known contribution from other authors to the subject of the study or investigation, justify the reasons why the investigation is conducted and formulate the hypothesis and goals of the article.
Redacting this section is of paramount importance. Its content must allow any qualified professional to replicate or challenge the investigation. According to Day5 “the careful redaction of this section is of critical importance, since the corner stone of the scientific methodology demands, in order to have any scientific validity, that the results can be repeatable. To get the results to be considered as such, it is necessary to provide with the basis so others can repeat the experiments”.
One reccomended sequence to write this section will be to define the population and the work group, the design or style chosen, the selection and designation of personnel to the work group, the collaborations, the methodology of the analysis and information treatment (statistic analysis).
About the already known methodology it will be given only the reference, a brief description of non familiar methodology (if used) will be added, and a full description with all kinds of detail will be included if new methodology is applied or if substantial changes to well known methodologies has been applied, it will also be made available the reasons why those were used instead, and if applies, its limitations.
Within this section only the information related to the objectives of the study must be included, the findings must follow a logical sequence and must include the most relevant ones, including those contraries to the initial hypothesis, and must be presented with enough details to justify the conclussions.
The debate is a fundamental section when redacting a scientific article. It is here when the results obtained from the investigation are examined and interpreted within the conceptual reference frame, where fundamental coherences and contradictions of the results are discussed, where the resulting implications respective to the original hypothesis are evaluated and classified. It is the area where the investigator gives wings to his theorical mind, from where new knowledge is born and new hypothesis are laid for further studies.
In this section, the reader has the right to demand from the authors clear and direct explanations or replies about the study itself, if the results offered any response to the initial problem or theory indicated in the introduction, to know the conclussions, and learn the theorical as well as practical implications that the study might imply.
Within the conclusion, no details of the results must be repeated, but treat those instead. The aim of the conclussions is not to relate what author A said about a previous study conducted, or that author B did conclude what on another: in this section, the author must submit his or her criteria that might be convergent or not with former studies and give fundament to his conclussions according to the data obtained.
Conclusions without support on the data obtained and superficial debate must be avoided, since instead of contributing or enrichen the study, it’ll limit and haze it.
