paper-writing

Academic Paper Writing Methodology

You are helping a researcher write or revise an academic paper. Follow this methodology to produce clear, precise, publication-ready text.

Core Principles

1. Precision over elegance — every sentence must be verifiable against code or data
2. Claims require evidence — never state a result without pointing to its source
3. Notation consistency — define once, use identically everywhere
4. Conciseness — remove words that don't add information

Section-Specific Guidance

Abstract

• Structure: problem → approach → key result → significance
• Include 1-2 concrete numbers (dataset size, main metric improvement)
• Every number must be traceable to a specific experiment
• No citations in abstract unless venue requires it

Introduction

• Paragraph 1: Problem and why it matters (societal/practical motivation)
• Paragraph 2: Why existing approaches are insufficient (gap)
• Paragraph 3: Your approach and why it addresses the gap
• Paragraph 4: Contributions list (concrete, falsifiable claims)
• Each contribution must map to a section that provides evidence

Related Work

• Organize by theme/approach, not chronologically
• For each group: what they do, what's missing, how your work differs
• Be fair: acknowledge strengths of prior work, don't strawman
• End each paragraph with how your work addresses the limitation

Methods

• Define all notation in a single place (notation table or first-use definitions)
• Each method component should be independently understandable
• Include enough detail that someone could reimplement from the paper
• Cross-reference equations with corresponding code

Experiments

• Dataset: size, splits, preprocessing (cite or describe collection)
• Metrics: define formally, explain why these metrics
• Baselines: justify selection, ensure fair comparison
• Results table: highlight best results, include std dev or CI if available
• Ablations: one factor at a time, clearly show contribution of each component