Past, Present, and Future: Using Verb Tenses Correctly in Scientific Research Manuscripts

Roger Watson, BSc PhD FRCP Edin FAAN

Writer’s Camp Counselor

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The correct and consistent use of verb tenses is essential in scientific manuscripts.

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Proper verb tense helps readers understand what is known, what was done, and what the results mean. Incorrect use is illogical in the context of a scientific manuscript as it can lead to confusion.

The reader, who in the first instance will be an editor followed by reviewers, need to know what it is exactly that you have done. For example, stating that you intend to do something within your methods section causes ambiguity. The reader needs to know that you have done it.

From Proposal to Manuscript

Most studies that are written up as manuscripts and then submitted to scientific journals will begin life as a research proposal. The proposal may be for funding or for approval by an ethics committee or institutional review board. Such prospective documents will mainly be written in the future tense, as in, “We intend to recruit 500 participants,” although sections of the literature review will be written in either the present or past tense.

If referring, for instance, to extant government policy with a bearing on your proposed project, this would be referred to in the present tense, for example, “Current Californian State health policy dictates nurse-to-patient ratios must not exceed 5 patients to every one nurse.” However, if referring to research work relevant to the proposal you may use the past tense as in “Previous studies have shown that…”.

When it comes to writing up a manuscript following completion of the project then you need to take care not simply to copy and paste aspects of your proposal into the manuscript without checking that the tenses make sense. Specifically, anything concerned with the proposal concerned with the design and methods, which will have been written in the future tense in the proposal, must now be altered to the past tense. Thus, phrases such as, “We aim to investigate…” should become, “We investigated…” and “Participants will be recruited…” becomes “Participants were recruited.”

When you change your methods section to past tense, make sure what you said you would do matches up with what you actually did. If you planned for 500 participants but only recruited 100, change that. If you’re writing for someone who has seen your proposal, for example a funder, then you will need to explain the discrepancy. The same applies to a dissertation as the committee will expect it.

For journal submissions, the editor and reviewers will not know what you planned to do, so there is usually no need to explain. But if a change in your methods has affected your results, then it is worth noting this briefly as a limitation, without undermining your study.

The discussion section of your proposal will have been aspirational and, to some extent, speculative. Much of it may be used as it is but ensure that you clarify that you are now discussing what you found and not what you aimed to discover. Once you have altered the tenses in a section you must read the whole section to ensure that everything is congruent with the new tense.

Manuscript

In turn, below, I outline the appropriate tenses to use in each section of a typical research manuscript. These points are summarized in Table 1.

Title

Titles can be written in both the present and the past tense. However, some have no tense as they are written as ‘noun phrases’, for example, “A study of stress in nursing students.” Such a phrase has no verb associated with it; therefore, it has no tense. However, where verbs are introduced into titles, for example, “Mindfulness reduces stress in nursing students” there is a verb, ‘reduces’, and such titles should be written in the present tense. If a study is clearly retrospective, such as “Outcome of implementing a mindfulness intervention to reduce stress in nursing students,” which is also a noun phrase, the past tense is implied.

Abstract

In the abstract a combination of past and present tenses should be used. The past tense should be used for what has been done such as the methods and results. For example, “We included 300 nursing students” and “The intervention led to a 20% reduction in stress.” For conclusions in the abstract the present tense should be used, as in “These results suggest that a mindfulness intervention is useful in alleviating stress in nursing students.”

Introduction

A combination of past and present tenses should also be used in the introduction, using the present tense for general facts, accepted knowledge, and current understanding such as, “Stress among nursing students is common in undergraduate programs” or “Previous studies show that interventions for stress among nursing students can be effective in alleviating stress.” However, when referring to specific previous studies or findings, the past tense should be used, for example, “Smith et al. (2021) found that counseling was an effective intervention.”

Methods

There is only one correct tense for the methods section and that is the past tense. In the methods section you are stating what the design, methodology, and methods are, and this has already been done. Therefore, you refer to this in the past, for example, “We recruited 100 participants” and “Stress was measured using the Nursing Student Stress Questionnaire.”

Results

Similarly, the results have been achieved, and these should be referred to in the past tense. Thus, “Most of the participants identified as female (85%)” or “The intervention group showed significantly lower levels of stress.”

Discussion

In the discussion section, you can return to using a combination of present and past tense, depending on the context. You should use the present tense for interpreting findings and drawing conclusions from your results. For example, “These results support the hypothesis that mindfulness protects against stress” and “This finding is consistent with the relevant literature on the topic.” Where you are referring to your own results or to the results of others, you may use the past tense, as in, “Our analysis shows that the level of stress experienced by nursing students increases as they progress through their program” or “Brown et al. (2022) demonstrated that younger students experience higher levels of stress than older students.’” If you are discussing the limitations of your study then this is best done in the past tense, for example, “The major limitation in our study was failure to recruit an adequate number of participants” or “The cross-sectional design did not permit us to draw any conclusions about the relationship between cause and effect.”

Conclusion

To summarize findings, the present tense should be used, as in, ‘This study demonstrates that mindfulness is an effective intervention for stress in nursing students.’ If you are making any recommendations then you should use the future tense, such as, ‘Further studies will be necessary to confirm the relationship between mindfulness and stress’ or ‘It will be necessary to recruit larger samples in future studies.’

Table 1. Summary of the use of tenses in a scientific manuscript

Section	Tense	Purpose
Abstract	Past & Present	Describe what was done and conclude
Introduction	Present & Past	State known facts/cite past studies
Methods	Past	Detail procedures used
Results	Past	Report findings
Discussion	Present & Past	Interpret data/refer to past work
Conclusion	Present & Future	Summarize and suggest next steps

Author: Roger Watson

Reviewed and Edited by: Leslie H. Nicoll & Jayne Jennings Dunlap

Copyright ©2025, Writer’s Camp and Roger Watson. CC-BY-ND 4.0

Citation: Watson R.  Past, Present, and Future: Using Verb Tenses Correctly in Scientific Research Manuscripts. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2025; 1(2):10. doi:10.5281/zenodo.16759947