Guidelines to Follow When Writing a Research Paper

Dec 31, 2019 · 4 mins read
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Guidelines to Follow When Writing a Research Paper

This article is not meant to be a complete guide for paper writing. It is just a cheat sheet for me to follow when I’m lost.

A research paper typically has the following sections:

  1. Title
  2. Abstract
  3. Introduction
  4. Literature review
  5. Methodology
  6. Experiment/Results
  7. Acknowledgments (Optional)
  8. Conclusion
  9. References
  10. Appendices (Optional)

1. Title

The title should express 3 aspects:

  1. The research domain
  2. Purpose of the research
  3. The methods used (methodology)

Additional tips:

  • Make it catchy to make the article seem interesting

2. Abstract

An abstract is a summary of the entire paper. It should contain:

  1. Problem domain
  2. Problems of existing approaches
  3. This paper’s approach
  4. Methods of evaluation & result
  5. Implication of result

Additional tips:

  • It should not be more than one paragraph
  • Since it is a summary of the entire paper, it’s best to write it after all the other sections are completed
  • An Abstract should be the most well-written part of the paper
  • Should excite a reader to read the rest of the paper

3. Introduction

An introduction should have the following sections:

  1. Describe the domain
  2. Describe the sub domain where this paper is focused on.
  3. Discuss problems in existing work and:
  4. why it needs to be solved and why it is important
  5. why no one solved it yet
  6. how others tried to solve it
  7. The contribution of this work:
  8. Short description of what it did and how (methodology)
  9. How it performed compared to work done by others

4. Literature review

  1. Find papers most related to your work. For each paper make a paragraph and:
  2. Discuss their contribution and how they did it (in short)
  3. Discuss their drawbacks

5. Methodology

For methodology:

  1. Divide it into several parts and discuss each part in a paragraph.
  2. Provide an algorithm/flow chart
  3. Provide an illustrative figure so that 90% of the methodology can be understood from the figure

6. Experiment/Results

Show chart/tables of results (A picture is worth a thousand words) Give an interpretation of the results (what is the reason of this result occurring) Mentions threats to validity

7. Conclusion

A conclusion should contain:

  1. A highlight of this paper’s contribution
  2. A future research direction from this paper’s work
  3. Limitations can be mentioned. However, it should be mentioned in a way so that it doesn’t make the contribution look insignificant

8. Acknowledgments

Thank persons/institutions that have provided you with:

  1. Data sets, information
  2. Research funds
  3. Research equipment

9. References

For all cited papers:

  1. Do not copy statements from their paper. Paraphrase their statements.
  2. You can cite using quotations, but it is not recommended. Paraphrasing is better.
  3. Bibtex provided by google scholar usually has mistakes. Make sure they are correct before adding it to your document.

10. Appendices

Information that is not essential to understanding the paper, but further explains your work goes to appendices.

Other tips:

  1. It’s best to write the sections in the following order:
    • Methodology- because you can write this straight away once the work is done
    • Results- because your methodology is written
    • Conclusion- Because you have results and you know what future work can be done from here
    • Related Work- now that your whole process is written, it is easier to cite the most suitable related papers
    • Introduction- everything is written, just give a good intro and background of the study
    • Abstract- A summary of everything
  2. Before writing a paper, see some of the published articles of the conference you are submitting to. This will give an idea of what kind of arrangement they expect in a paper. For example, some prefer related work at the end of the article, and some prefer it after the introduction.
  3. Beware of plagiarism. Any hint of plagiarism could ban you from further submitting papers to any conferences.
  4. If the reviewers ask for a blind submission, try not to write in a way so that they can assume who you are. For example, if you’re citing your previous work, don’t say “in our previous work”. Better to say “from John et al. [7] …”
  5. If you mention the equipment you used, describe specifications only and try not to use the company’s name as it might have copyright issues.

This article is heavily influenced by the wisdom of my Professors- Dr. Md Shoyaib sir and Dr. Kazi Muheymin-us-Sakib sir.

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