The Introduction

Here is the Stanford InfoLab's patented five-point structure for Introductions. Unless there's a good argument against it, the Introduction should consist of five paragraphs answering the following five questions:

What is the problem? Why is it interesting and important? Why is it hard? (E.g., why do naive approaches fail?) Why hasn't it been solved before? (Or, what's wrong with previous proposed solutions? How does mine differ?) What are the key components of my approach and results? Also include any specific limitations.

Then have a final paragraph or subsection: "Summary of Contributions". It should list the major contributions in bullet form, mentioning in which sections they can be found. This material doubles as an outline of the rest of the paper, saving space and eliminating redundancy.

(Exercise: Write the bullet list for the multiway sort example.) Related Work The perennial question: Should related work be covered near the beginning of the paper or near the end? Beginning , if it can be short yet detailed enough, or if it's critical to take a strong defensive stance about previous work right away. In this case Related Work can be either a subsection at the end of the Introduction, or its own Section 2.

, if it can be short yet detailed enough, or if it's critical to take a strong defensive stance about previous work right away. In this case Related Work can be either a subsection at the end of the Introduction, or its own Section 2. End, if it can be summarized quickly early on (in the Introduction or Preliminaries), or if sufficient comparisons require the technical content of the paper. In this case Related Work should appear just before the Conclusions, possibly in a more general section "Discussion and Related Work". The Body Guideline #1: A clear new important technical contribution should have been articulated by the time the reader finishes page 3 (i.e., a quarter of the way through the paper). Guideline #2: Every section of the paper should tell a story. (Don't, however, fall into the common trap of telling the entire story of how you arrived at your results. Just tell the story of the results themselves.) The story should be linear, keeping the reader engaged at every step and looking forward to the next step. There should be no significant interruptions -- those can go in the Appendix; see below. Aside from these guidelines, which apply to every paper, the structure of the body varies a lot depending on content. Important components are: Running Example: When possible, use a running example throughout the paper. It can be introduced either as a subsection at the end of the Introduction, or its own Section 2 or 3 (depending on Related Work).

When possible, use a running example throughout the paper. It can be introduced either as a subsection at the end of the Introduction, or its own Section 2 or 3 (depending on Related Work). Preliminaries: This section, which follows the Introduction and possibly Related Work and/or Running Example, sets up notation and terminology that is not part of the technical contribution. One important function of this section is to delineate material that's not original but is needed for the paper. Be concise -- remember Guideline #1.

This section, which follows the Introduction and possibly Related Work and/or Running Example, sets up notation and terminology that is not part of the technical contribution. One important function of this section is to delineate material that's not original but is needed for the paper. Be concise -- remember Guideline #1. Content: The meat of the paper includes algorithms, system descriptions, new language constructs, analyses, etc. Whenever possible use a "top-down" description: readers should be able to see where the material is going, and they should be able to skip ahead and still get the idea. Performance Experiments We could have an entire treatise on this topic alone and I am surely not the expert. Here are some random thoughts: Many conferences expect experiments.

It's easy to do "hokey" or meaningless experiments, and many papers do.

It's easy to craft experiments to show your work in its best light, and most papers do.

What should performance experiments measure? Possiblities: Pure running time Sensitivity to important parameters Scalability in various aspects: data size, problem complexity, ... Others?

What should performance experiments show? Possibilities: Absolute performance (i.e., it's acceptable/usable) Relative performance to naive approaches Relative performance to previous approaches Relative performance among different proposed approaches Others?

The Conclusions In general a short summarizing paragraph will do, and under no circumstances should the paragraph simply repeat material from the Abstract or Introduction. In some cases it's possible to now make the original claims more concrete, e.g., by referring to quantitative performance results. Future Work This material is important -- part of the value of a paper is showing how the work sets new research directions. I like bullet lists here. (Actually I like them in general.) A couple of things to keep in mind: If you're actively engaged in follow-up work, say so. E.g.: "We are currently extending the algorithm to... blah blah, and preliminary results are encouraging." This statement serves to mark your territory.

Conversely, be aware that some researchers look to Future Work sections for research topics. My opinion is that there's nothing wrong with that -- consider it a compliment. The Acknowledgements Don't forget them or you'll have people with hurt feelings. Acknowledge anyone who contributed in any way: through discussions, feedback on drafts, implementation, etc. If in doubt about whether to include someone, include them. Citations Spend the effort to make all citations complete and consistent. Do not just copy random inconsistent BibTex (or other) entries from the web and call it a day. Check over your final bibliography carefully and make sure every entry looks right. Appendices Appendices should contain detailed proofs and algorithms only. Appendices can be crucial for overlength papers, but are still useful otherwise. Think of appendices as random-access substantiation of underlying gory details. As a rule of thumb: Appendices should not contain any material necessary for understanding the contributions of the paper.

Appendices should contain all material that most readers would not be interested in. Grammar and Small-Scale Presentation Issues In general everyone writing papers is strongly encouraged to read the short and very useful The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Here's a random list of pet peeves.