academic-paper-writing

name	academic-paper-writing
description	LaTeX conventions, paper structure (IMRaD), citation management, related work synthesis. Use when drafting papers, formatting LaTeX, or writing academic content.

Academic Paper Writing

Follow these conventions when drafting academic papers (especially in Computer Science / Systems).

Document Structure (IMRaD)

Typical systems and ML papers follow standard structure:

1. Introduction: Context, Motivation, Problem Statement, Contributions.
2. Background / Related Work: Placing the work in literature (can also be at the end).
3. Methodology / System Design: Architecture, core algorithms, and implementation.
4. Evaluation: Experimental setup, results, and discussion (answering specific research questions).
5. Conclusion: Summary and future work.

LaTeX Best Practices

• Separation of Concerns: Use separate .tex files for large sections (e.g., \input{sections/evaluation}).
• Macros: Define macros for system names or heavily used terms in a macros.tex file to ensure consistency (\newcommand{\sysname}{\textsc{MySystem}\xspace}).
• Formatting:
  • Avoid hard-coding formatting (\textbf, \textit) for recurring semantic concepts. Map them to a macro.
  • Break lines at the end of sentences (one sentence per line). This makes git diffs much cleaner.
  • Use \label immediately after \caption, \section, etc. Follow a naming convention like sec:intro, fig:architecture, tbl:results.

Citation Management

• Use BibTeX (.bib files).
• Citation keys should follow a consistent format, e.g., [AuthorYearVenue] like smith2024sigmod.
• Use \cite, or when using natbib/biblatex, differentiate between text citations \citet (Smith et al. show...) and parenthetical citations \citep (... as shown previously [Smith 2024]).

Related Work Synthesis

• Do not just list papers ("A did X. B did Y."). Group them by theme or approach.
• Clearly state how the current work differs or improves upon previous work.
• Be respectful to prior work; avoid aggressive or purely negative framing.

Style and Tone

• Use formal, objective, and precise scientific language.
• Prefer active voice where it adds clarity ("We implemented..." instead of "It was implemented...").
• Keep paragraphs focused on a single main idea with a clear topic sentence.