A guidebook to writing great research papers. In this work, we predominantly go over some of the key ideas to follow in order to write a great research paper. Note that, though paper-writing is an art, which could greatly sway the decision of your paper acceptance, the publication process in general, is stochastic and no point getting depressed over xD.

Just start writing

Instead of creating an idea, working on it for months, and then writing the research paper once you have all the results. It is more straightforward to start writing from the beginning. This allows other readers to more easily follow along with your logical reasoning and the sentences become more coherent, instead of densely packed gibberish. It also helps us to be clear, and focussed. It also makes collaboration more easy. Furthermore, it crystallizes what we don’t understand. “Writing papers is a primary mechanism for doing reserach (not just reporting it).”

Identify the key idea

You want to infect the mind of your reader with your idea, like a virus. Papers are far more durable than programs (like Mozart). Papers are meant to be an idea-conveying mechanism. Never worry about if you have a good idea or not, nobody knows. Write the paper, and let the world decide that for you. Finally, a paper should have just one “ping”: one clear, sharp idea. If you have lots of ideas, write lots of papers. Many papers contain good ideas, but do not distil what they are. Make certain is in no doubt what the idea is. Be 100% explicit: “The main idea of this paper is….”, or “In this section we present the main contributions of the paper…”. Maybe create a section called “Main Idea”. As a general rule, your paper needs to convince the audience three key points:

• The problem is important. The problem has a significant impact and consequences. You can buttress your argument by showing that others consider the problem important as well.
• The problem is hard. Explain that obvious techniques and existing approaches do not suffice. Showing what others have tried can be effective here.
• You have solved the problem. This is often demonstrated via experiments. Keep in mind how you expect the behavior of readers to change once they appreciate your contributions. You’ll also need to convince your readers that your contributions are novel. When expressing this, it is helpful to explain why no one else thought of your approach before, and whether similar insights would apply to other problems.

Tell a story

Your narrative flow should follow something like this:

• Here is a problem
• It’s an interesting problem
• It’s an unsolved problem
• Here is my idea
• My idea works (details, data)
• Here’s how my idea compares to other people’s approaches

So, let’s convert this to the conference setting:

• Title (1000 readers)
• Abstract (4 sentences, 100 readers) - write at the end.
• Introduction (1 page, 100 readers)
• The problem (1 page, 10 readers)
• My Idea (2 pages, 10 readers)
• The details (5 pages, 3 readers)
• Related work (1-2 pages, 10 readers)
• Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

What should my introduction look like?

The introduction should only involve two ideas:

• Describe the problem
• State your contributions … and that is all

Using an example to introduce the problem. Basically write your motivation in the introduction. Then, comes the contributions of your paper. The list of contributions drives the entire paper: the paper substantiates the claims you have made. Furthermore, contributions should be irrefutable. Do not use something like “we study the properties of …”. Use forward references instead of having a section of structure of the paper. The introduction (including the contributions) should forward reference to the material of your paper that substantiates this claim.

Never put the related works section right after the introduction. Put it right at the end before conclusion. The goal is to convey your key idea. This related works section is a barrier between your idea and the readers. The readers might not know much about the problem yet; so your descriptions of related works are absolutely incomprehensible. Furthermore, describing alternative approaches gets between the reader and your idea. One fallacy is that “To make my work look good, I have to make other people’s work look bad”. One doesn’t have to do this. Giving credit is very nice, it does not diminish your paper. Warmly acknowledge people who have helped you. Be generous to the competition, and also acknowledge weaknesses in your approach. Make sure to add this weaknesses at the end of your related works.

Put your readers first

Try not to recapitulate your journey. Do not add material that sounds impressive but does not work. Do not send your reviewers to sleep, and/or makes them feel stupid. Conveying the intuition is primary, and not secondary. Once the reader understand the intuition, he/she could understand the whole paper, but not vice versa. Introduce your problem and your idea, using EXAMPLES.

Listen to your readers

Experts are good. Sometimes, even non-experts are also very good. Get your paper read by as many friendly gunea pigs as possible.