Choosing the right tense for your journal article or thesis

I always seem to have trouble remembering what tense should be used for what section of a thesis or journal article (makes for interesting proof-reading of student work!).  I sat down this weekend, as part of an academic writing workshop to finally pull some resources together that I can refer to in future.

So...

1.  The AJE has produced a short PDF detailing tense expectations for Scientific Manuscripts: http://www.aje.com/en/arc/dist/docs/AJE-Choosing-the-Right-Verb-Tense-for-Your-Scientific-Manuscript-2015.pdf   Its useful but quite detailed.

2.  This overview from Scitable was very helpful:

'In your scientific paper, use verb tenses (past, present, and future) exactly as you would in ordinary writing. Use the past tense to report what happened in the past: what you did, what someone reported, what happened in an experiment, and so on. Use the present tense to express general truths, such as conclusions (drawn by you or by others) and atemporal facts (including information about what the paper does or covers). Reserve the future tense for perspectives: what you will do in the coming months or years. Typically, most of your sentences will be in the past tense, some will be in the present tense, and very few, if any, will be in the future tense.'

Past tense 

Work done 
We collected blood samples from . . .
Groves et al. determined the growth rate of . . .
Consequently, astronomers decided to rename . . .

Work reported 
Jankowsky reported a similar growth rate . . .
In 2009, Chu published an alternative method to . . .
Irarrázaval observed the opposite behavior in . . .

Observations 
The mice in Group A developed, on average, twice as much . . .
The number of defects increased sharply . . .
The conversion rate was close to 95% . . .

Present tense 

General truths 
Microbes in the human gut have a profound influence on . . .
The Reynolds number provides a measure of . . .
Smoking increases the risk of coronary heart disease . . .

Atemporal facts 
This paper presents the results of . . .
Section 3.1 explains the difference between . . .
Behbood's 1969 paper provides a framework for . . .

Future tense 

Perspectives 
In a follow-up experiment, we will study the role of . . .
The influence of temperature will be the object of future research . . .