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Chapter 13: Writing Your First Research Paper

“A great paper doesn’t just report results—it tells a clear, credible story of discovery.”

Why This Chapter Matters

Writing your first research paper is intimidating.
There’s the structure, the formatting, the references, the figures—and the invisible voice in your head whispering: “Am I doing this right?”

This chapter is here to quiet that voice.

We’ll walk you through the anatomy of a research paper, explain what goes where (and why), and show you how to go from raw notes and experiments to a polished, submission-ready manuscript.

Conceptual Breakdown

🔹 The IMRaD Structure: Your Default Template

Most computer science research papers follow this core format:

Section Purpose
Introduction State the problem, why it matters, and your core contribution
Methodology Explain what you did, how, and why you did it that way
Results Present your findings with tables, charts, and comparisons
Discussion/Conclusion Reflect on what your results mean, limitations, future work

Some papers also include a Related Work section (usually near the intro) and an Abstract at the very beginning.

📌 Tip: Read 2–3 papers from your target venue and mimic their structure closely.

🔹 What Goes Into Each Section?

Abstract

  • A summary of your entire paper in ~150–250 words
  • Should answer: What problem? What method? What result? Why it matters?

Introduction

  • Hook the reader: Why is this problem important?
  • Define the gap in prior work
  • State your objective and main contribution clearly
  • Summarize key prior studies and how your work builds upon or differs from them
  • Use citations strategically to position your work

Methodology

  • Describe your approach, system design, dataset, experimental setup
  • Be clear enough that someone could reproduce your work

Results

  • Show your findings with tables, graphs, metrics
  • Compare against baselines or prior work when possible

Conclusion

  • Restate what you achieved
  • Mention limitations and suggest future work
  • End with a strong takeaway message

🔹 Common Formatting Styles: ACM and IEEE

Most CS venues will ask you to submit in a specific format.

Format Where It's Used Tools Available
IEEE Engineering and many AI conferences LaTeX template, Word template on IEEE author center
ACM SIG conferences (CHI, SIGIR, SIGCOMM, etc.) ACM Primary Article Template (Word + LaTeX)

✅ Always start with the official template of your target venue. Never try to format from scratch.

🔹 Helpful Writing Tips for Beginners

  • Use active voice where possible

    e.g., “We trained a CNN model…” instead of “A CNN model was trained…”

  • Keep sentences short and precise

  • Use section headers to break up the narrative
  • Start writing before your experiments are done—write in parallel
  • Don’t wait for the “perfect phrasing” on first draft—just write

📌 Writing is revising. Your first draft isn’t final—it’s a map to the final.

Self-Check Questions

  1. Have you read 2–3 recent papers from your target venue to mirror structure and style?
  2. Do you have a clear research contribution you can articulate in 1–2 sentences?
  3. Have you started drafting your Abstract and Introduction—even before results are finalized?

Try This Exercise

Paper Skeleton Starter
Open a new doc or Overleaf project and create the section headers:

  • Abstract
    1. Introduction
    1. Related Work
    1. Methodology
    1. Results
    1. Conclusion and Future Work
  • References

Then write one bullet point under each header. That’s your first outline.

Researcher’s Compass

You don’t need to be an expert writer to publish your first paper.
You just need to:

  • Understand the structure
  • Write clearly and honestly
  • Revise with feedback
  • Follow the formatting rules

And most importantly: Start writing before you feel ready.
Research doesn’t become real until you’ve put it on the page.