Should an academic paper contain all text at the same structuring depth?
I'm not sure whether or not this is standard practice, but I've been taught that between two different-level headings, there shouldn't be any text. For example, the following would not be permitted (or is at least considered bad practice):
1. Chapter
blah ← no text here
1.1. Subchapter
Following this convention, should all text be at the same structuring depth?
I.e. all text would be for example at X.Y.Z. level, and no text at A.B. level.
Visualization:
1. Chapter
blah ← no text here (depth=1), because chapter 2 has text at depth=2
2. Chapter
2.1 Subchapter
blah
Note: I'm aware that chapters aren't supposed to stand alone (i.e. if there's chapter 1.1, there has to be at least a 1.2), but I omitted those for the sake of readability.
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1 answer
I have published several peer-reviewed scientific papers, also Master's Theses in two different disciplines and a long doctoral dissertation. Your proposed rule is not one I have ever followed, and not one any editor or reviewer ever complained about.
I take a pragmatic approach: In some sections like "Future Work", 100% of the text follows the main section heading; 7 Future Work. There are no subsections; to save space I don't subhead different kinds of future work. I might enumerate them, or might just start new paragraphs, since the description is generally short.
In other sections, I have introductory text following the main section then sub-sections and sub-sub-sections. I say "pragmatic" because if no text is necessary then I don't write any!
The point is to communicate the science in an orderly fashion, beyond that, anything there as filler to follow a form is extraneous and should be omitted. Also on the pragmatic side, unlike theses and dissertations, most journals have a page limit, and I compress away as much of the headings as I can to fit more prose or charts into the writing, because I am usually up against the page limit.
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