| name | research-paper-writing |
| description | Plan, draft, revise, and polish rigorous academic research papers, including abstracts, introductions, related work, methods, theory, experiments, discussion, conclusions, response-to-reviewer material, and journal/conference resubmissions. Use when Codex is asked to write or improve scholarly manuscripts, strengthen research arguments, restructure sections, align claims with evidence, improve academic tone, prepare revision plans, synthesize literature into manuscript prose, or produce publication-focused editing. |
Research Paper Writing
Core Workflow
Use this skill to turn research material into precise, evidence-bound manuscript writing. Preserve the user's scientific intent, reduce overclaiming, and make the paper easier for expert reviewers to evaluate.
- Clarify the writing task: identify the target artifact, venue or audience, field conventions, section boundaries, word or page limits, and whether the user wants drafting, structural editing, line editing, or reviewer-response work.
- Gather local context first: read existing manuscript sections, notes, reviewer comments, figures, tables, code outputs, and project instructions before writing. Treat raw data and original files according to the workspace safety rules.
- Define the paper's contribution in one plain sentence, then check that each section supports it without inflating novelty, scope, or validation.
- Separate formal claims from evidence, interpretation, and speculation. State assumptions, limitations, and applicability conditions explicitly.
- Draft or revise in publication-ready prose with consistent terminology, clear topic sentences, and signposted logical transitions.
- Verify citations, factual claims, equations, figure references, table references, and cross-references before presenting final text. Use external literature search when the user asks for current related work, venue fit, or claims about the state of the field.
Task Patterns
For a new section:
- Ask what role the section must play if the context is missing.
- Build a short outline before prose when the logic is complex.
- Draft from specific claims, evidence, and constraints rather than generic filler.
- End by checking whether the section creates promises that later sections must satisfy.
For revision:
- Diagnose the main failure mode first: unclear contribution, weak positioning, missing assumptions, unsupported claims, thin validation, poor organization, or sentence-level density.
- Edit from high-level argument to paragraph flow to sentence polish.
- Preserve correct technical content; mark uncertainty instead of silently rewriting it into false certainty.
For reviewer response or resubmission:
- Extract each reviewer concern into an actionable item.
- Separate manuscript changes from response-letter wording.
- Use factual, respectful language. Do not argue from authority or imply the reviewer misunderstood unless the manuscript has been clarified.
- Keep a traceable mapping from comment to change.
For related work:
- Prefer primary sources, reviews, and canonical methods.
- Group literature by conceptual role, not by one-paper-per-sentence chronology.
- Explain the gap narrowly: what existing work does, what remains unaddressed, and how this paper responds.
Writing Standards
- Use precise, field-appropriate terminology consistently.
- Prefer modest verbs: "shows", "suggests", "estimates", "evaluates", "demonstrates under", "is consistent with".
- Avoid generic promotional phrases such as "novel framework", "bridges the gap", "significant impact", or "validated" unless the manuscript evidence justifies them.
- Keep paragraphs claim-led: topic sentence, support, interpretation, transition.
- Make limitations concrete: data scope, assumptions, model restrictions, generality, sample size, baseline coverage, sensitivity, and external validity.
- Keep equations, algorithms, and theorems readable by defining symbols before use and stating assumptions near the result.
References
Read only the reference file needed for the current task:
references/manuscript-structure.md: section-level purpose, outlines, and quality checks.references/revision-and-review.md: reviewer triage, response letters, resubmission strategy.references/style-and-claims.md: academic prose, claim calibration, and editing checklist.
