How to write an academic paper, according to me — LessWrong

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Disclaimer: this is entirely a personal viewpoint, formed by a few years of publication in a few academic fields. EDIT: Many of the comments are very worth reading as well. Having recently finished a very rushed submission (turns out you can write a novel paper in a day and half, if you're willing to sacrifice quality and sanity), I've been thinking about how academic papers are structured - and more importantly, how they should be structured. It seems to me that the key is to consider the audience. Or, more precisely, to consider the audiences - because different people will read you paper to different depths, and you should cater to all of them. An example of this is the "inverted pyramid" structure for many news articles - start with the salient facts, then the most important details, then fill in the other details. The idea is to ensure that a reader who stops reading at any point (which happens often) will nevertheless have got the most complete impression that it was possible to

x How to write an academic paper, according to me — LessWrong Writing (communication method) Frontpage 45 How to write an academic paper, according to me by Stuart_Armstrong 15th Oct 2014 4 min read 27 45 Disclaimer: this is entirely a personal viewpoint, formed by a few years of publication in a few academic fields. EDIT: Many of the comments are very worth reading as well. Having recently finished a very rushed submission (turns out you can write a novel paper in a day and half, if you're willing to sacrifice quality and sanity), I've been thinking about how academic papers are structured -

How to write an academic paper, according to me — LessWrong

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