About Implications of Literature

Didn’t I explain the implications in my introduction section?
You will hopefully have already explained why and for whom your study is important. But you now also need to clearly state how you think your actual findings (which might differ from what you expected to find at the beginning) may be relevant and/or can be used in practical or theoretical ways, for future research, or by policymakers. These implications need to be based on your study’s parameters and results, and potential limitations of your methodology or sample should be taken into account to avoid overgeneralization. 
If you make the reader guess what the significance of your work might be or let them assume you don’t think that your work will be important for anyone except yourself and your colleagues who share your enthusiasm because they are working on the same topic, then an editor or reviewer might easily see that as a reason for a desk-reject. To avoid this, in the following, we will give you an overview of the different types of implications that research findings can have, provide some examples for your inspiration, and clarify where your implications should go in your paper. 


Table of Contents:

1. 
   Types of Implications in Research
   
2. 
   Recommendations Versus Implications 
   
3. 
   Research Implications Examples 
   
4. 
   Where Do the Implications Go in Your paper?
   

Types of Implications in Research
Depending on the type of research you are doing (clinical, philosophical, political…) the implications of your findings can likewise be clinical, philosophical, political, social, ethical—you name it. The most important distinction, however, is the one between practical implications and theoretical implications, and what many reviewers immediately notice and flag as an issue is when there is no mention of any kind of practical contribution of the work described in a paper. 
Of course, if you study a mathematical theory, then your findings might simply lead to the debunking of another theory as false, and you might need to do some mental gymnastics if you really wanted to apply that to a real-world problem. But chances are, in that case, your reviewers and readers won’t ask for a real-world implication. In most other cases, however, if you really want to convince your audience that your work deserves attention, publication, prizes, and whatnot, then you need to link whatever you did in the lab or found in the library to real life and highlight how your findings might have a lasting effect on your field (for example, methodologically), common practices (e.g., patient treatment or teaching standards), society at large (maybe the way we communicate), or ethical standards (e.g., in animal research). 
The question is not whether your findings will change the world, but whether they could if they were publicized and implemented—according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the essential meaning of implication is a “possible future effect or result”. This possible result is what you have to identify and describe. And while being creative is certainly allowed, make sure your assumptions stay within realistic expectations, and don’t forget to take the limitations of your methodology or your sample into account. 
If you studied the genetic basis of a disease in some animal model, then make sure you have good reason to draw conclusions about the treatment of the same disease in humans if you don’t want to put off the editor who decides whether to even send your manuscript out for review. Likewise, if you explored the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on higher education institutions in your country, then make sure the conclusions you draw hold in the context of other countries’ pandemic situations and restrictions and differences across education systems before you claim that they are relevant in a global context.