How to Write a Great

Research Paper

Seven Simple suggestions

By: Simon Peyton Jones
Microsoft Research, University of Cambridge
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
1. Think of a Brillant idea and write the paper early – You need to have a
fantastic idea before you can write a paper. Do not be intimidated.
Writing the paper early:
 Writing papers is a primary mechanism for doing research (not just for
reporting it)
 Forces us to be clear, focused
 Crystallises what you don’t understand
 Opens the way to dialogue with others:
o Reality check;
o Critique and
o Collaboration
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
2. Identify your key idea – The business of writing a paper is to convey from
your brain into the minds of your readers about your ideas.
- Your goal is to convey a useful and re-usable idea.
 You want to infect the mind of your reader with your idea, like a virus.
 Papers are more durable than programs. (Mozart)
The greatest ideas are (literally) worthless if you keep them to yourself.
The idea – A re-usable insight, useful to the reader.
 Your paper should have just one “ping”: one clear, sharp idea.
 You may not know exactly what the ping is when you start writing; but
you must know when you finish
 If you have lots of ideas, write lots of papers.
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
Can you hear the ping – Many papers contain good ideas, but do not distil what they are.
- Make certain that the reader is no doubt what the idea is. Be 100% explicit:
 “The main idea of this paper is....”
 “In this section we present the main contributions of the paper.”
3. Tell a story – Your narrative flow: Imagine you are standing in front of a white board and
explaining to a colleage,
 Here is a problem
 It is an interesting problem
 It is an unsolved problem
 Here is my idea
 My idea works (details, data)
 Here’s how my idea compares to other people’s approaches
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper

A typical Structure of a Conference Paper

and its expected readers:
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
The Structure (conference paper)
 Title
 Abstract ( 4-5 sentences)
 Introduction (1 page)
 The problem (1 page)
 My idea (2-3 pages)
 The details (5 pages)
 Related work (1-2 pages)
 Conclusion and further work (0.5 pages)
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
The introduction (1 page)
 Describe the problem
 State your contributions
…and that is all

ONE PAGE!
(Example)
Use an example to introduce the problem
How to Write a Great
Research Paper
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
4.State/Nail your contributions
 Write the list of contributions first
 The list of contributions drives the entire paper:
the paper substantiate the claims you have
made. (Implementation)
 The reader thinks “ gosh, if they can really
deliver this, that’s be exciting; I’d better read
on”.
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
Example:
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
Evidence
 Your introduction makes claims
 The body of the paper provides evidence to support
each claim
 Check each claim in the introduction, identify the
evidence, and forward-reference it from the claim
 “Evidence” can be: analysis and comparison, theorems,
measurements, case studies.
How to Write a Great
Research Paper
How to Write a Great
Research Paper
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
5.Related work: later (1-2 pages)
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
What really happened in practice is Related work forms some kind
of barrier with your reader …
How to Write a Great
Research Paper
How to Write a Great
Research Paper
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
6. Put your readers first (examples) – what does it mean? The first way to put
our readers first relate to the middle section… The middle section is the
longest but is the most easiest to write.
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
After you have learned the general solution to something it’s very tempting to
present the general solution first, the trouble is it is not motivating to your
readers because you reader do not have the intuitions that you have carefully
built-up by studying this problem.
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
The best way to do is…
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
How to convey the intuition:
How to Write a Great
Research Paper
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
7. Listen to your readers – How?, Find guinea pigs and tell them
exactly what you want (Where they get lost)
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
Getting expert help
 A good plan: when you think you are done, send the
draft to the competition saying “could you help me
ensure that I describe the work fairly?”.
 Often they will respond with helpful critique (they are
interested in the area)
 They are likely to be your referees anyway, so getting
their comments or criticism up front is Jolly Good.
 How to Write a Great
Research Paper
Listening to your reviewers