A rule to live by: I won’t use anything I can’t explain in five minutes. (Philip Crosby)
Every now and then as editor, I see an author upset at a rejection of a paper because the referee “clearly did not grasp the key point of the paper”.
In many cases this is because the key point is not stated prominently enough in the introduction, instead being buried in a footnote, an obscure remark, a lemma, or even not explicitly mentioned at all.
This can be as much the fault of the author as it is of the referee; it is incumbent on the author to state as clearly as possible what the merits, novelties, and ramifications of the paper are, and the fact that an expert in the field could read the introduction and not see these is a sign that the introduction is not yet of publication quality.
In particular, the introduction should spend some time comparing and contrasting the paper to other literature, and demonstrate why the paper’s results and techniques are new, interesting, and/or surprising given this context.For instance, if new difficulties had to be resolved here which were not present in previous work, or if counterexamples indicate that the result or proof cannot be improved in various obvious directions (e.g. by dropping a hypothesis, strengthening a conclusion, or by using a simpler method in the literature), then these points need to be made prominently.
The introduction should also clearly state (or at least paraphrase) the main results of the paper, and ideally should also outline how and where these results are to be proved. Of course, these results need to be described accurately and in appropriate detail when doing so. If the main result is too technical to be placed in the introduction (e.g. because it requires a large number of complicated definitions in order to state precisely), then a simpler (but still interesting) special case can be stated instead, or an informal statement of the theorem given (but in the latter case it should be clearly indicated that that this statement is informal, and that a more precise version will be given later).
For similar reasons, the title and abstract should get right to the point and make it clear what the substance and novelty of the paper is; remember that these are the first impressions that the reader will have of your paper, and so you should make the most of that opportunity.
See also “Organise the paper“.
3 comments
Comments feed for this article
31 July, 2009 at 12:01 am
peter acquaah
beautiful
22 November, 2009 at 6:28 am
Advice on writing paper « Computer Vision
[…] the introduction to “sell” the key points of your paper; the results should be described accurately. One should also invest some effort in both organising […]
19 April, 2016 at 6:06 am
Idea的第一个印象源自Introduction – 菜青虫的白板
[…] 这个是陶哲轩博客上的一篇文章,根据内容以及自己的感受,记录一些笔记。说实话,他的文章都值得去读一下。如果确实对理论部分比较头疼,或者对稀疏学习不太感兴趣。起码也要对他博客上的On writing系列有所扫读。确实是英文论文相关的真知卓见。以下内容,是根据各段做出一个简单的总结,并不是详细的翻译,中括号里边的内容是对自己对相应内容的一些感慨与想法。 […]