A literary-criticism article and a clinical-trial report can both be rigorous, peer-reviewed scholarship while looking almost nothing alike on the page. One is a sustained, thesis-driven argument organized around themes or chronology; the other follows Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRaD), a fixed four-part sequence built for reporting original empirical research. Neither format is a looser or stricter version of the other — they encode two different ideas of what a scholarly article is for. This guide compares the two structures section by section, explains why the divergence exists, and covers what it means in practice for authors, editors, and research-administration offices working across both kinds of scholarship.
The short answer
IMRaD reports a discrete empirical process: what question was asked, how it was investigated, what was found, and what that finding means. It assumes a “methods generate results, results get interpreted” sequence that maps cleanly onto a hypothesis-driven experiment. A humanities article typically has no separate empirical process to report — it advances and defends an interpretive argument, so it organizes itself around that argument’s parts (a claim, the evidence and reasoning that support it, engagement with other scholars’ positions) rather than around stages of a study. Most humanities scholarship — literary criticism, historical analysis, philosophy, much of qualitative cultural studies — does not use IMRaD at all, and CASRAI’s IMRaD Structure Variations by Academic Discipline guide covers this briefly as one of several disciplinary departures from the format. This guide takes the comparison further: it lays out what actually organizes a humanities article instead, and compares the two structures section by section rather than treating “humanities” as a single line item in a wider survey.
How a humanities article is actually organized
There is no single mandatory template the way IMRaD functions as a default expectation in the biomedical and physical sciences. Conventions vary by field (literary studies, history, philosophy, art history, religious studies, and others each have their own norms) and by journal. But a recognizable common shape recurs across most of them:
- Title and abstract. A title is standard; a structured or even a short free-text abstract is far less consistently required than in STEM journals — many humanities journals, especially in literary studies and philosophy, publish articles with no abstract at all, or only a brief framing paragraph rather than a summary of “findings.” Where an abstract exists, it typically previews the argument and its stakes, not a methods-results-conclusion sequence.
- Introduction that states the argument. The introduction identifies the text, period, question, or problem under discussion and states the article’s central claim (its thesis) — often explicitly, sometimes only by the end of the introduction. It also situates that claim against existing scholarship, doing the work a dedicated literature-review section does in other fields, but woven into the argument’s framing rather than isolated as its own labeled section. See CASRAI’s How to Write a Thesis Statement for a Research Paper and Structuring the Introduction of a Research Paper for how this compares to an empirical paper’s introduction.
- No standalone Methods section. The analytical approach — close reading, archival research, historiographical method, comparative textual analysis, philosophical argument — is usually described inline, where it becomes relevant, rather than isolated into its own labeled section the way a Methods section is in IMRaD. A methodological framework may get its own short subsection in more theory-driven work, but it is describing an interpretive lens, not a replicable procedure for generating data.
- Body organized thematically or chronologically, not by “Results.” The bulk of the article is typically divided into sections built around the sub-claims, themes, texts, or time periods that build the overall argument — not around a single block of findings followed by a separate interpretation of them. Evidence (textual passages, archival material, prior scholarship) and the interpretation of that evidence are usually presented together in the same section, rather than reported first as neutral “Results” and interpreted afterward in a separate “Discussion.”
- Conclusion that extends significance rather than summarizing findings. A humanities conclusion typically restates the argument and explains what it contributes — a new reading, a revised historical account, a reframed philosophical position — and often gestures toward its broader implications or unanswered questions, closer to a STEM Discussion section’s function than to a Results summary.
- Extensive footnotes or endnotes doing double duty. Many humanities citation conventions (Chicago’s notes-and-bibliography style in particular) use footnotes or endnotes for both source citation and substantive tangential commentary the author didn’t want to interrupt the main argument with — a use of notes with no real equivalent in IMRaD’s typically sparse, purely-citational reference list. See CASRAI’s Citation Styles and Referencing Formats guide for how Chicago, MLA, APA, and Vancouver-style referencing differ in this respect.
The result is a structure organized around an argument’s logic, not around a study’s chronology. CASRAI’s Critical Literature Review and Scholarly Monograph dictionary entries cover two related building blocks of this model — the monograph in particular, since it remains the primary unit of career evaluation in most humanities fields and shapes article-level conventions upstream of it.
Section-by-section comparison
| Element | Humanities article | IMRaD (STEM) paper |
|---|---|---|
| Abstract | Often absent or brief/unstructured; previews the argument, not findings | Standard, often structured (Background/Methods/Results/Conclusions); see CASRAI’s Structured Abstract Format guide |
| Introduction | States the interpretive claim; folds prior-scholarship engagement into the framing | Funnels from broad context to a specific research gap and stated objective |
| Methods | No standalone section; analytical approach described inline where relevant | Dedicated section describing a replicable procedure for generating data |
| Middle/body | Thematic or chronological sections building the argument; evidence and interpretation presented together | Results (data, kept largely free of interpretation) reported separately from Discussion |
| Conclusion | Restates and extends the argument’s significance and implications | Distinct Discussion (and often a short Conclusion) interpreting Results against the literature, noting limitations |
| Citation apparatus | Often extensive footnotes/endnotes carrying both citation and substantive commentary (especially Chicago notes-bibliography style) | Sparse, purely citational reference list (typically numbered or author-date) |
| Typical authorship | Overwhelmingly single-authored by convention — see CASRAI’s Single-Author Norms in Humanities vs. Multi-Author Teams in STEM | Frequently multi-author, reflecting divided labor across data collection, analysis, and writing |
| Reporting-guideline overlay | None comparable — no CONSORT/PRISMA/CARE-style checklist governs section content | Often layered with a reporting guideline (CONSORT for trials, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports) |
Why the two structures diverge
The divergence is a structural fit to two different research processes, not a stricter or looser version of a shared “correct” template. The ICMJE’s own rationale for IMRaD describes it as “not an arbitrary publication format but a reflection of the process of scientific discovery” — each section corresponds to a stage of empirical research: why the study was undertaken, what was done, what was found, and what it means. That rationale assumes a discrete methods-generates-results-generates-interpretation sequence.
A humanities article doesn’t have that sequence to report. Its “unit of output” is a sustained interpretive argument produced by one scholar reasoning through evidence and prior scholarship — there is usually no separable data-generation step distinct from the interpretation itself, so there is no natural place for a Methods section to describe or a Results section to report ahead of discussing it. CASRAI’s IMRaD Structure Variations by Academic Discipline guide covers the parallel question from the STEM side in more depth: how the same four-stage logic bends, gets renamed, or gets split as it moves across clinical medicine, engineering and computer science, the social sciences, and evidence-synthesis research, without abandoning the underlying empirical-reporting logic the way humanities scholarship does.
Where the line blurs
Two situations complicate a clean humanities/IMRaD split:
- Empirical humanities and digital humanities work. A digital-humanities article built around a quantitative text-mining study, a corpus-linguistics paper, or a book-history study using library circulation data can include an IMRaD-like empirical component (a described method, a reported result) nested inside an otherwise humanities-style framing and argument — without necessarily adopting IMRaD’s section labels wholesale.
- Interpretive social sciences. Qualitative work in sociology, anthropology, and education sits between the two models: it often uses IMRaD-adjacent section labels (an explicit Methods section describing fieldwork or interviews) while replacing Results with a thematically organized “Findings” section closer in spirit to a humanities body section than to quantitative Results. CASRAI’s guide to writing a literature review and its coverage of qualitative methodology sections address this middle ground in more depth.
Neither case erases the underlying distinction; both are reminders that “humanities” and “STEM” are broad labels for a spectrum of actual research processes, and the structure should follow what a given piece of scholarship is actually doing, not a disciplinary label alone.
What this means in practice
- For authors moving between fields — a scholar co-authoring across a humanities-social science boundary, or writing a public-facing piece drawing on both kinds of source material — the reliable guide is the target journal’s own author instructions and recent published examples in that venue, not an assumption that one format transfers to the other.
- For research-administration offices supporting interdisciplinary programs, area-studies centers, or joint humanities/STEM departments, the practical implication is not to impose IMRaD conventions, page-count expectations, or authorship-count assumptions built for empirical science onto humanities output being evaluated in the same review cycle — the two are legitimately organized differently because they report different kinds of scholarly work.
- For journal editors and reviewers handling submissions in a hybrid or interdisciplinary venue, being explicit in author guidelines about which model (or which blend) a submission is expected to follow avoids ambiguity that otherwise gets discovered only after a manuscript is already drafted.
Frequently asked questions
Do humanities articles have an abstract?
Sometimes, but far less consistently than in STEM. Many humanities journals, particularly in literary studies and philosophy, publish articles without a formal abstract, or with only a brief framing paragraph. Where an abstract is required, it typically previews the argument rather than following a structured findings format.
Why don’t humanities papers have a Methods section?
Because a Methods section describes a replicable procedure for generating data, and most humanities scholarship isn’t generating data in that sense — it’s constructing and defending an interpretation from existing texts, archival material, or philosophical argument. The analytical approach is usually described inline, where it’s relevant to the argument, rather than isolated into its own section.
Is a “Findings” section the same as a humanities body section?
Not quite. A qualitative “Findings” section (common in interpretive social science) still typically follows an explicit Methods section describing how data was collected, and is organized around themes that emerged from that data. A humanities body section is organized around the sub-claims of an argument built from textual or archival evidence, with no separate data-collection step being reported first.
Can a single article mix both structures?
Yes, most often in digital humanities or corpus-based literary and historical work, where a described empirical method and reported result can sit inside an otherwise argument-driven, humanities-style article. This is a genuine hybrid, not a sign either structure was applied incorrectly.
Does IMRaD apply to humanities dissertations too?
No — a humanities thesis or dissertation follows the same argument-driven logic as a humanities journal article, typically organized into chapters built around the dissertation’s argument rather than an Introduction/Methods/Results/Discussion sequence. See CASRAI’s Thesis and Dissertation Structure guide for how chapter structure varies by field.
Related CASRAI resources
- IMRaD Structure — operational definition of the four core sections
- IMRaD Structure: A Complete Worked Example
- IMRaD Structure Variations by Academic Discipline
- Single-Author Norms in Humanities vs. Multi-Author Teams in STEM
- How Authorship Order Is Decided: Conventions Across Disciplines
- Citation Styles and Referencing Formats
- Research Paper Format: Margins, Fonts, Spacing, and Style Rules
- Scholarly Monograph
- Scholarly Writing pillar
