Saturday 9 August 2008

How to write an article: Style II

Having defined the general level direction you have to think through all sub-elements of the paper. How it starts? All problems to be solved should be explicitly defined. By the way, most reviewers will read just the introduction and conclusions and if they will dislike those elements then the rejecting conclusion will be defined immediately without reading the paper body. Quite many authors will not describe in the conclusion what is done and what is new in compare to the previously published works.

The author should also consider sizes of each sub-chapters of the paper. Those should be balanced (!!). It is irrational (or may be ironical) to have a four pages introduction and a body of the same or even smaller size.

If the paper is theoretical and contains some variable to be used later in equitation or in an explanation then those variables should be in italic to distinguish between words and variables. For example if we start a graph theory paper then we could have written: “Lets have G=(V, E), where V is a set of vertices and E is a set of edges connecting vertices”.

It is important to add into the paper proves of what you stated. For example if you publish an algorithm, then it will be not enough to say that it should be faster than any previously published. Sometimes even mathematical proves should be accomplished by tests (as sometimes those do not follow your math) and especially if you have not defined any theoretical proves. Having added tests you should actually specify environment those tests where conducted in or define how those results can be else reproduced.

If the paper is not mathematical then all statements should be accomplished with use case defining how evidence of your theory where gathered, where, method and so forth.

The next important and logical part to have in the paper will be a comparison with other exciting methods including strong and weak sides of the method proposed in the paper. Notice that if you cannot find any weakness of it then you are likely to under-research the method. Science knows very little really universal methods. Sometimes there are some kind special cases when the method is not applicable.

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