Tips for writing a paper

Principles

During writing, we should bring new knowledge to the reader in a clear, structured order and at a slow pace, so that they can learn it gradually.

1. It is essential to recognise what the reader already knows and the questions likely in their mind at each stage of the paper. For example, if a reader is on Section 1 of a five-section paper, they already know A and B but not C, so we need to introduce C in the first paragraph of Section 1. By the second paragraph they know A, B and C, and may wonder about the details of C — call it C.1 — so we introduce C.1 there.
2. It is essential to recognise the relations between the pieces of knowledge we present at each section. For example, if Section 2 relies on a method introduced in Section 1, say so explicitly rather than assuming the reader will make the connection themselves.

Phrase bank: Academic Phrasebank — Introducing Work

Paper structure

Abstract

1. Introduce your field
2. Specific background of the study
3. Motivation: summarise the existing work and limitations of the existing work/research gaps
4. How do we deal with these issues/our findings/solution?
5. Our results
6. Impact of our work

Introduction

1. Introduce the general background
2. Introduce the specific background of the study, its importance and challenges.
3. Detail the representative existing work and limitations of the existing work
4. Our contributions
5. How do we structure this paper?

Related work

1. Discuss the closely related work, its strengths and weaknesses, and how this work addresses those limitations.

Methodology

1. Details of our methods

Experimental results

1. Detailed results for supporting our ideas

Conclusion

1. Summarise what we did, and the strength of the work
2. Limitations of the work and future directions