Author: Babak

Why and how to write the state-of-the-art.

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State-of-the-art (SoTA) is a step to demonstrate the novelty of your research results. The importance of being the first to demonstrate research results is a cornerstone of the research business. You cannot get a Nobel prize (anymore) by learning Einstein‘s…

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Writing the abstract.

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This posting is a part of my “Tips on technical writing” series.

The abstract is an important part of your report and will in most cases be the sole determinant of the impact of the research you did. This is because most researchers focus on abstracts when searching for literature. If you don’t have a good abstract, no researcher will read the rest of your paper/report!

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Clearly defining and justifying your research problem.

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Defining your research problem is the single most important, and at the same time the hardest part of your research. It is my experience that most students (and their supervisors) spend too little time on defining what they really want…

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Reveal your secrets as early and as often as possible.

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Remember, you are not writing a crime fiction! This is a very common mistake in technical writing, and is a very annoying one as well, especially for the reader! It is common practice in literary genres such as crime fiction…

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The importance of terminology in academic writing.

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One of the main problems reading an immature technical text is that it does not make consistent use of a clear terminology (also, wrongly, called vocabulary or glossary). A clear terminology emerges as you do your research, and you need…

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