What is Information Structure

This chapter analyses the thematic organization of the instruction to authors’ section of selected online academic scientific journals’ sites. Fifteen scientific journals were selected randomly from different fields in the sciences. The theoretical framework for the study is provided by Systemic Functional Linguistics. The results showed that the marked theme had a higher occurrence than the unmarked theme. The marked themes were realized by adverbials and grammatical subjects. The unmarked themes were realized by subjects and predicates. Simple themes had a higher occurrence than multiple themes while interpersonal themes had more frequency than textual themes. The editors observed the given-new information structure as there was a low occurrence of entirely new information. The derived theme pattern was mostly used while the split-theme pattern had the least occurrence. The results show that the editors of these journals made use of these structures to organize their message logically and coherently.