Rules for Structuring Papers

When a paper is written and read, everyone involved has their own motivation and priority. Authors want their important contributions to reach the broadest audience possible. Editors want the paper to be signficant. Reviewers want to quickly understand whether the contributions are validated by the results. Readers want to quickly undertand the conceptual conceptions before going through it in depth.

A successful paper communicates the relationship between data, methods, and interpretations. The interpretations culminate in a claim that gives significance to the work. This claim has to be supported by data and logic that gives it credibility. The paper’s logic should be carefully planned such that there are logical steps to reach the conclusion.

Principles

1. Present only One central contribution per paper, which is communicated in the title.
2. Write for flesh-and-blood human beings who do not know about the work.
3. Stick to the Context-Content-Conclustion (CCC) scheme. Title and abstract reveals content quickly to the impatient reader. A patient reader will spend time in understanding the context. For the whole paper, 1. Introduction sets the context.
   2. Results are the content. 3. Discussion is the conclution
4. Optimize your logical flow by avoiding zig-zag and using parallelism Avoiding Zig-Zag: Related sentences, or related paragraphs should be strung together. Using Parallelism: Across consecutive paragrams or sentences, use similar structure to help the reader focus on the content.

The components of a papers

1. Tell a complete story in the abstract.

   The one question is (context)

   Here we do (content)

   What we found (content)

   How it matters (conclusion)

2. Get across why the paper matters in the introduction. Big problem in science | -> Field domain

   Narrower Problem Within | what field knows

   Yet narrower paper Gap | remaining gap

   Summary -> Our Approach and Our Results

3. Communicate the results as a sequence of statements that build on one another to support the central contribution. Methods Summary

   Logic 1 (e.g. Raw Data) | -> To answer our questions, General methods

   Logic 2 (e.g. Processed) | Figures tell whole story

   Logic n (e.g. final statistics) | -> The current question, How we asked it, The answer

4. Discuss how the gap was filled, the limitations of the interpretations, and relevance to the field. Results -> Conclusion | we found, we filled a gap

   Limitations in filling gap | -> Limitations, Details

   Limits in generalization | How to interpret / fix

   Contributions beyond | -> Strength, What it is useful for

   Science is better now | The difference made

5. Allocate time where it matters: Title, abstract, figures, and outlining.

6. Get feedback to reduce, reuse and recycle the story.

All these rules are taken from [0]. All credits belongs to the original authors.

[0] Mensh B, Kording K (2017) Ten simple rules for structuring papers. PLoS Comput Biol 13(9): e1005619. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005619

Rules for Reading Papers

1. Pick Your Reading Goal
2. Understand the Author’s Goal
3. Ask Six Questions
   1. What do the authors want to know? (motivation)
   2. What did they do? (approach/methods)
   3. Why was it done that way? (context within the field)
   4. What do the results show? (figures and data tables)
   5. How did the authors interpret the results? (interpretation/discussion)
   6. What should be done next?
4. Unpack each figure and table
5. Understand the formatting intentions
6. Be critical
7. Be kind (when sharing critique, give authors, benefit of the doubt)
8. Be ready to go the extra mile (Recommended to read three times, look up terms, read supplemental materials and read one or two cited papers)
9. Talk about it
10. Build on it.

All the rules are taken from [0]. All credits belongs to the original authors.

[0] Carey MA, Steiner KL, Petri WA Jr (2020) Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper. PLoS Comput Biol 16(7): e1008032. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032

About NLP

[In Progress]

Natural Language

A system of communication that evolves naturally through use, repetition and change without conscious planning or premeditation. Each language has its own structure that can be learned.

Syntax are the rules for composing language. Semantics is for understanding the meaning of the composed language.

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About That

A blog about that, but that can be anything.

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