It is a well understood fact that all researchers are required to publish their work in some form. And since, the number of graduates, doctoral students and the competition to publish has gone up, the amount of literary work available in each domain is exploding. But, how readable are these papers?
I’ll outline about 6 points that I have learnt over time up till now. I too have a lot to improve and most of these findings are from personal experiences.
1. Write in third person
It is always a good practice to write in third person while drafting out your paper. Most top-tier conferences and journals have a policy of double-blind peer review which also requires you to reference your previous work in third person. For example: “…in our pervious work [1] we…” would ideally be “…the authors in [2] discuss… .” Although the fundamental concept of review is changing and more open-sourced based comments are accepted, this form of writing keeps the text clean and formal. Pro tip: Using a word processor to check spelling and grammar is not a bad idea at all.
2. Have a plan
A decent piece of work should take about 4-5 days or sometimes a week’s time to finish, provided the experimental results are readily available. A couple of days should go in revising the written content and split the other days to complete other pieces of the paper. I, personally would like to begin my ‘paper-writing-day’ by mentally preparing to write out that specific section; say, a sub-section describing the method of your research. I have observed that this approach helps in paying enough attention to the particular concept and not skipping out vital information. A modular approach to writing makes it both easy to write as an author and read as a peer.
3. Understand the publishers requirements
The publishers role in the ecosystem is rapidly changing with momentum towards more open-access papers, but even these papers have certain requirements to be satisfied. It helps in saving valuable time if you are well informed about the details of the final product before you start to write it. The good thing is, all leading publishers have maintained a up-to-date webpage/document of instruction on their preference of paper layout, structure and length. Pro tip: Learning to typeset using LaTeX can help in removing most of your layout/structure woes.
4. Efficient referencing
The modern researchers have never experienced a dearth of material to read and reference. This is a double-edged dagger. As an author, it is our responsibility to make it easy for the reader to assimilate information from the paper, but often I have noticed, authors are just satisfied if they are aware of their writing. This is most visible in referencing other papers/patents/sources. For example: “…in [3] 65% improvement is reported…” is simply pointing to the fact that only you are aware of the quantity that is increased by 65%, but as a reader my only option is to go to the referenced paper and look up the augmented quantity. My suggestion is include a word or two about the quantity under question. For example: “… in [4] 65% improvement in error-handling is reported” would clearly breakdown the quantity. In the later case, I’m nudging the reader’s attention to the referenced paper while still keeping him/her informed.
5. Visualise your final paper
Envision before and while you write as to how you would want the end result to be presented. This in some sense syncs with having a plan to write, but, here you have a picture about it. Let me explain. I have, in recent times, found the the Related Work/Literary Review section to be capriciously placed after the introduction. I’m now convinced that the related work can be either placed after discussing the Methodology or even better if it is compared with your work in the Results section. This comes to me, only when I visualise my final paper.
6. Abstract and Title
It is my humble request to write this piece of your paper at last. An abstract is a synopsis of the paper, and in all fairness, a synopsis can be written only after writing the paper. As a author of a technical paper, I would be inclined to overstate the abstract with finding of the research work, but this often fails to shed light on why the research was carried out in the first place. Having a good and exact abstract is like having good SOPs and recommendation letters. It is the first thing many reviewers read, and if they are unable to reach a conclusion, then they may begin to read the paper with a preconceived idea. On the other hand, most publishers display your paper title and the abstract only and as a reader who is scavenging for some material to embark upon a good abstract will draw attention. Avoid any references in the abstract. My only suggestion on formulating a title would be not to include all the paper’s keywords in the heading. For example: Smart Sensor Based Home Automation Using Cloud Computing and IoT. This is a complete fail. Additionally, avoid including words like Novel, Smart, Advanced etc. as these are words a reviewer/reader must use to comment on the work and not the author. Pro tip: titles could be questions also!
Final Pro tip: Use a Text-To Speech tool to hear what you have written. Many word processors and browsers now have a TTS engine build in.