How to Write Great Papers

I watched a video that was recommended by my professor. It contained a lot of interesting tips.

Don’t wait: Write

It’s better to follow:

Idea -> Write -> Research

Instead of:

Idea -> Research -> Write

Because by starting to write down immediately you can crystallize your idea. It forces you to be clear and focused.
Then it’s easier to discuss it with other people because you have concrete material to reference.

Writing papers is primary mechanism of doing research.

Identify your key idea

It’s important understand what idea you want to convey. The goal of the paper is to infect the reader with this idea.
The paper should have just one, clear idea. If you have lots of ideas just write lots of papers.

Do not be afraid on developing apparently trivial ideas, often it turns out that they are quite interesting.

Even the greatest ideas are worthless if you keep them by yourself.

Tell a story

You should capture the reader attention in the introduction, because most of the time the reader does not dive further if it’s not engaged.
You should clearly state the problem and your solution in a way that keeps the reader interested in your idea.

“This seems a though problem!” “I wish I knew how to solve that.” “Mmh, the solution is very clever!”

It’s better to do it by giving a simple example and not the general case.

Act like you are trying to explain it on a whiteboard.

Nail your contributions

Clearly point out what your contributions are: they drive the entire paper. Do not leave you reader wondering what they are reading about.
They should be refutable (written in a form that can be verified), so very precise and not vague.
Then you provide evidence to support each claim.

Related work: later

You should introduce your idea first because it should be the focus of the paper and the reader could get tired of reading other technical descriptions.
After explaining your contributions in detail you can expand on other approaches and, even better, make comparisons and point out the benefits and weakness of your idea.

Put your readers first

Don’t be overly technical as it might exaust your reader or make them feel stupid.
Try to instill an intuition first (using a simple example) then dive into the details. The other way around does not work.

Listen to your readers

Ask as much people as possible to read your drafts. Give them specific instruction like:

“Read until you don’t make sense of what is written then stop”.

This way you can point out where the paper is overcomplicated.

Be truly grateful for criticism as well as prise.