paper-structure

paper-structure is a skill for Claude Code from muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills. It costs 0 tokens per session (2,225 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for planning the sections and order of an academic paper. It covers research papers, dissertations, essays, case studies, technical reports, and journal manuscripts.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose a paper structure, create an outline, decide which sections to include, and organise academic writing for a particular discipline or purpose.
Why use it?
It prevents using the wrong structure for the type of paper you are writing. It explains formats such as IMRaD, which means Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the academic-writer plugin — 27 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to choose a paper structure, create an outline, decide which sections to include, and organise academic writing for a particular discipline or purpose.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/paper-structure
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills --skill paper-structure
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install academic-writer, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 27 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for paper-structure

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/paper-structure/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/paper-structure)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/paper-structure"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/paper-structure/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for paper-structure

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/paper-structure"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills/paper-structure.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,225 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00000 $0.02225
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.01112
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00445
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00222

Measured 11d ago against content hash 75b3cce4881a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

paper-structure scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/paper-structure/SKILL.md · 207 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 207 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Paper Structure

The architecture of an academic paper is dictated by its genre, methodology, and disciplinary context. Always identify the paper type before selecting a structure. Applying the wrong structure is one of the most serious structural errors in academic writing.


Structure Selection Guide

Paper Type Primary Structure Common Disciplines
Empirical quantitative research IMRaD STEM, Psychology, Education
Empirical qualitative research IMRaD (modified) Sociology, Education, Nursing
Literature review Funnel (thematic) All disciplines
Argumentative essay Classical / Thesis-led Humanities, Social Sciences
Case study Analysis-Synthesis Business, Sociology, Medicine
Dissertation / Thesis Chapter-based All disciplines
Journal manuscript Journal-specific (IMRaD base) All
Technical report Problem-Method-Results Engineering, CS
Health policy brief 4-section policy structure Public Health
SOAP note SOAP Medicine, Nursing

1. IMRaD — The Universal Empirical Research Structure

Introduction → Methods → Results → Discussion

This is the undisputed standard for quantitative and qualitative empirical research across STEM and social sciences.

Introduction

Follows the CARS model (Swales, 1990):

  • Move 1 — Establishing a Territory: Validate the topic's significance: "X is a fundamental property of..." / "X plays an important role in..."
  • Move 2 — Establishing a Niche: Identify the gap, problem, or controversy: "To date, little is known about..." / "Previous research has failed to..."
  • Move 3 — Occupying the Niche: State your purpose and what your study does: "This study therefore set out to..." / "This paper argues that..."

Ends with: a clear statement of research aim, research questions and/or hypotheses, and a brief outline of the paper's structure.

Methods

Goal: absolute reproducibility — another researcher should be able to exactly replicate the study.

Read the full file on GitHub · 207 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 207 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 75b3cce4881a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

paper-structure is a skill published in the GitHub repository muhammad1438/academic-writer-skills (6 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 2,225 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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