Writing a Good Technical Research Paper

chillibreeze writer — Rajesh Solanki

The purpose of research is to create new knowledge or increase the store of human understanding and apply it to create new technologies for human welfare. The very best research work is useless if it cannot be effectively communicated to the rest of the world. Moreover, even if you believe that you know what your ideas and contributions are, you are likely to find that when you try to write or speak about them they can’t be communicated clearly. The process of articulating your thoughts, of which writing papers and giving talks is one aspect, is a valuable part of improving research.

The goal of technical writing is clarity, understanding and viability: the purpose is to communicate specific new ideas, concept or visions, which are practically feasible and everything about the document should contribute to this goal. If any part of the document does not do so, then delete or change that part of the document. This rule also indicates that you should know exactly what points your document intends to make; if you don't know the purpose, you cannot effectively achieve it.

A good technical research paper has a comprehensible statement of purpose, supporting points and a clear conclusion. It describes what has been done before about the main issue and what is new.
The goal of a paper is to describe novel technical results. There are four types of technical results:

1. An algorithm;
2. A system construct: such as hardware design, software system, protocol, etc.;
   One goal of the paper is to ensure that the next person who designs a system like yours doesn't make the same mistakes and takes advantage of some of your best solutions. So make sure that the hard problems (and their solutions) are discussed and the non-obvious mistakes (and how to avoid them) are discussed. (Craig Partridge)
3. A performance evaluation: obtained through analyses, simulation or measurements;
4. A theory: consisting of a collection of theorems.

A paper should focus on

• describing the results in sufficient detail to establish their validity;
• identifying the novel aspects of the results, i.e., what new knowledge is reported and what makes it non-obvious;
• identifying the significance of the results: what improvements and impact do they suggest.

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—About our writer: Rajesh writes for chillibreeze.

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