Some Suggestions to Write an Introduction

The introduction is certainly the most read section of any deliverable, and it largely determines the attitude of the reader/reviewer will have toward the work. Therefore, it is probably the most delicate part of the writing of a report.

Unfortunately, many people (even very experienced ones) seem to have difficulties at writing a good introduction. For some, it is a daunting task.

In this short article, I present a very simple method for writing a good introductory chapter. Actually, the core of this method was taught to me (10 years ago) by Krzysztof Apt. At that time, it surprised me in its simplicity and efficiency. In ten years, I have been happily applying it to all introductions I have written.

Of course, I am not the first one coming up with such a recipe: a necessarily incomplete list of links to articles about scientific writing is reported in the last section.

A Recipe for Writing an Introduction

An Introduction should contain the following three parts:

1. Background.

In this part you have to make clear what the context is. Ideally, you should give an idea of the state-of-the art of the field the report is about. But keep it short: in my opinion this part should be less than a page long. Half a page should suffice in case of a normal 15-pages article.

2. The Problem.

If there was no problem, there would be no reason for writing a report, and definitely no reason for reading it. So, please tell the reviewer  why she should proceed reading.  A simple sentence like "So far  no-one has investigated the link..." or "The above-mentioned solutions don't apply to the case ...", can sometimes be enough to clarify the point you want to get at. Experience shows that for this part a few lines are often sufficient.

3. The Proposed Solution.

Now - and only now! - you may outline the contribution of the report. Here you have to make sure you point out what are the novel aspects of your work. There are probably a zillion articles out there on that very subject: you can't expect the reviewer to know them all; so make his life easier and clearly highlight what is the difference between your method and the others. You can take your time here, but I suggest to avoid getting into too much detail.

In addition there can be the following optional ingredients:

4. Related work

My suggestion is to postpone this part to the end of the paper, unless there are good reasons for doing otherwise. For instance, one good reason for not following this suggestion is the presence in the literature of a very prominent related work, in which case you might want to give immediately an idea of what are the differences between your work and the prominent one. In general, though, I  find it much easier to have a related works section at the end of the report: one reads it when he has already a good idea of the technical contribution. In this case, include in the introduction a line saying "Related works are discussed in Section ...".

5. An anticipation of the conclusions

This is very difficult to do properly. I think that this part should be there only in reports that have a strong position-statement nature. If you decide to include this into the introduction, you might want to (a) keep it as short as possible, (b) refer as much as possible to the concluding section, and (c) keep it well separated from the rest of the introduction.

6. The outline (plan of the paper)

Personally, I find it useful only for long reports, otherwise I think it is a waste of paper. But this is my very personal opinion.

Two Extra Tips

Keep the parts well separated.

Personally, there are only very few things that I find more irritating than an introduction in which parts 1&2&3 are not clearly separated from each other. Use "itemize", if possible: it helps.

Keep it short.

Unless you know you can write well.

LINKS:

There are many resources on the matter. In particular there is an excellent website maintained by Toby Walsh with loads of links on on scientific writing, on presenting scientific articles, etc. http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~tw/phd/

My favourite links:

• How to have your abstract rejected, by Mary-Claire van Leunen and Richard Lipton. http://www.acm.org/sigplan/conferences/author-info/vanLeunenLipton.html
• Author Information for ACM SIGPLAN Conferences http://www.acm.org/sigplan/conferences/author-info/

The Useful Tips in Writing a Good Introduction

In writing a good introduction a few tips can be helpful:

1. Write after finishing: It is advisable to write the introduction at the end, as you will have a better perspective of the issue and will prevent missing points.

2. Keep it short: a good introduction is the one that highlights the objectives, outcomes and significant of research. You are going to make readers familiar with the field, not tell them a story to fall asleep!

3. The importance of problem statement: the whole aim of introduction is making audience ready for the important scene, research questions and objectives. It is extremely important that your readers know exactly what you are going to achieve. The importance of a clear problem statement becomes more, as later in discussion part you refer directly to the problem. If the problem is not clear, then discussion becomes unclear too.

4. Organize: start by writing an outline for your introduction. Try to link the parts with a smooth flow. You don’t want your readers to think that they are reading some unrelated pieces.

How to Write a Good Introduction?

Whether you are writing a research paper or conducting an academic thesis, introduction is the first part of your final document.

The aim of writing introduction is providing a bigger picture of your research for the audience. A complete introduction should answer to the following questions:

1. What is the problem going to be solved?
2. How it is going to be solved?
3. Why research problem and outcomes are important?
4. What will be the final use of the outcomes, and who can use them?

Different researchers and different academic institutes follow various structures for writing introduction, but most of them use sections:

1. Background:

The aim of this part is making your readers ready for the big story. Like a good movie, you need to warm up your audience by creating an interesting scene. One of the common ways is reviewing other researchers work on the same scope in a chronological way, from the 1st to the last.

2. Importance of Study:

In this part you have to show that your title is worthy. Showing the novelty of the study can do this; also you might link your work to the previous literature and try to improve their results and limitations.

Overall, this section tries to show the gap. What is missing that you are going to clarify? Or what are you going to reach?

It is also important to tell your readers who will use your research. To whom it will be useful? Is it only for academic people or also for practical use in businesses?

3. Research Questions and Objectives:

The core of your research lies here. Clear objectives and research questions let your audience know what you are exactly going to achieve at the end of the research. Some people make mistakes in this part, as although it seems simple, putting your goals in words might become tricky. Any change in the words will change the forecasted outcomes of your research.

4. Limitations:

Some researchers put this section in the last part, discussion. Whereas, others may put it in the introduction. In any of the ways, limitations as the name suggests tries to clear the problems and limitations in the path of conducting research. This can be unachievable data or limited tools.

5. Assumptions:

Research is all about justifying your every single word. For example, you should tell the readers that your study is based on only workers in Malaysia, or you may assume that all students at the same school are from a very similar socio-economic background. In fact it is for preventing misunderstanding of your readers and supervisors!