## 11.2. Reconstructing the thoughts of others

If you would like to have an example for an outline, you can reverse engineer one. This is the idea of the reverse outline. Take a journal article that you think is very clear and that others also recommend as a good example. For instance: if you know in which journal you would like to publish your paper, go to the website of the journal, and find the most cited paper of that journal. Go through the article section by section, and ask yourself: what is the purpose of this section? How do the authors reach that goal in this particular section? Describe the purpose of each section in one sentence. Take another sentence to describe how the authors achieve that purpose. To illustrate how this works, I will give you the outline for the section you are currently reading.

11.2. Reverse outline

Explain the reverse outline method.

The reverse outline method is the reverse of the outline method: it starts with a text and reconstructs its goals and instruments to achieve them.