Research Day 03: How to write a research paper

• Papers communicate ideas
• Idea -> write paper -> do research
• Write a paper, and give a talk about any idea, no matter how weedy and insignificant it may seem to you.
• Writing the paper is how you develop the idea in the first place.

Conveying the idea when writing a paper

 I. Structure of a research paper

1. Abstract (4 sentences)
2. Introduction (1 page)
3. The problem (1 page)
4. My idea (2 pages)
5. The details (5 pages)
6. Related work (1-2 pages)
7. Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

II. For the Abstract section using the four sentences model [Kent Beck]

1. State the problem
2. Say why it's an interesting problem
3. Say your solution achieves
4. Say what follows from your solution

III. For the Introduction

1. Describe the problem
2. State your contributions. They can be bulleted list of contributions
1. Write a list of contributions first
2. The list of contributions drives the entire paper: the paper substantiates the claims you have made.

 IV. For my idea, the details and related work

Your introduction makes claims. The body of paper provides evidence to support each claim. Evidence can be analysis and comparison, theorems, measurements or case studies.

References
Simon Peyton Jones, "How to write a great research paper", Microsoft Research, Cambridge