The final chapter of the paper contains a summary of the main statements of the work and possible conclusions derived from them. For a conclusion, you revisit the research question, answer it succinctly, and provide a final assessment. You can also comment on the hypotheses you formulated at the beginning of your paper.

What belongs in a conclusion?

• Recommendations for practice
• Placing the problem in a wider context
• Personal conclusions, if they are meaningful for your type of paper
• If applicable, an outlook on research gaps arising from your own scientific work
• Summarized answers to the questions posed in the introduction

The title of the final chapter corresponds to the points you address and is therefore, for example, “Summary and Conclusion,” “Recommendations for Practice,” or “Outlook.”

A good conclusion is brief and written in a neutral tone, despite its evaluative nature.

What does not belong in a conclusion?

• You do not address new content in the final chapter.
• In the final chapter, you do not present your personal opinion (based on gut feeling) but your justified evaluation, which is based on the preceding discussion and your conclusions. If applicable, you may also provide recommendations for action.

The conclusion is a mandatory part of the structure of a scientific paper.

Frequently asked questions

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Your actual independent contribution

It is essential that an academic paper includes your well-founded, logically comprehensible conclusions based on what you have worked out, read, researched, investigated, thought about, and presented in the paper.

This creates something new even in a student paper – something that makes it worth reading. You ask questions, compare, evaluate, make critical remarks, discover contradictions, notice that something has not been addressed, that the entire literature supports one position or several different ones, that certain positions are mutually exclusive, that models, theories, and concepts seem applicable – or not, and so on.

Even processing a topic, creating a coherent structure, and answering a research question are independent achievements.

Taking a well-founded position

Expressing your own well-founded position does not belong only at the end of a paper, but wherever it fits. These can be small remarks, e.g. as a footnote, or more significant conclusions – for example, when you conclude that the method examined appears only partially applicable to the chosen field. Or when your survey has limited representativeness, but still provides impulses for further research.

Frequently asked questions

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