Capstone: Research AI System

12. Paper Structure

Chapter 12 of 18 · 20 min

KEY INSIGHT

Standard paper structure exists because it works. Deviations should be deliberate, not from ignorance. Readers have mental models for where information lives—fighting those models creates friction. Academic and technical paper structure has evolved to optimize reader comprehension. Respect conventions unless you have specific reasons to deviate. ### The Classic Structure **Abstract (150-250 words)**: Compressed summary. One sentence each on motivation, approach, results, and implications. Write this last—it should reflect everything else. **Introduction (1-2 pages)**: Establish the problem, motivate why it matters, preview contributions, roadmap the paper. End with a summary of contributions, often bulleted. **Background/Related Work (1-2 pages)**: Context readers need. Define terminology, explain prior approaches, identify gaps your work fills. This section prevents reinventing explanations and shows scholarly awareness. **Approach (2-4 pages)**: Core technical content. Explain what you built with enough detail for replication but not so much that the core gets lost. Use figures to convey architecture. **Experiments (2-4 pages)**: Evaluation setup, metrics, baselines, results. Present results before interpreting them—the interpretation comes next. **Discussion (1-2 pages)**: What the results mean. Why they turned out this way. Generalizability and limitations. **Conclusion (1 paragraph)**: Summary and future directions. Don't introduce new claims. ### Section-Level Organization Within sections, use the "topic sentence + support" pattern: ```markdown ## 3.2 Semantic Indexing The semantic index stores compressed representations of document content to enable approximate similarity search. [Topic sentence] Our index consists of two components: [supporting detail 1] The index is built offline during document ingestion... [supporting detail 2] Updates to the index are batched to amortize overhead... [supporting detail 3] ``` Each paragraph should have one main idea expressed in the first sentence. Supporting sentences provide evidence, examples, or elaboration. If a paragraph's first sentence doesn't summarize it, restructure. ### Figures and Tables as Arguments A figure showing performance comparison makes a claim. The caption must state the claim: ```markdown # Bad caption: "Figure 3: Performance results" # Good caption: "Figure 3: Our system achieves 2.3× higher throughput than the baseline across all batch sizes while maintaining <1% accuracy degradation (see Section 4.2 for accuracy breakdown)." ``` ### Length Management Most venues have strict page limits. Allocate space proportionally: - Problem and motivation: 10-15% of length - Approach: 30-40% of length - Experiments: 30-40% of length - Related work and conclusion: 10-20% of length Cut by removing redundant explanations, not by shrinking text. A tight, complete paper beats an expanded, padded one.

3.2 Semantic Indexing

The semantic index stores compressed representations of document content to enable approximate similarity search. [Topic sentence]

Our index consists of two components: [supporting detail 1]

The index is built offline during document ingestion... [supporting detail 2]

Updates to the index are batched to amortize overhead... [supporting detail 3]


Each paragraph should have one main idea expressed in the first sentence. Supporting sentences provide evidence, examples, or elaboration. If a paragraph's first sentence doesn't summarize it, restructure.

### Figures and Tables as Arguments

A figure showing performance comparison makes a claim. The caption must state the claim:

```markdown
# Bad caption:
"Figure 3: Performance results"

# Good caption:
"Figure 3: Our system achieves 2.3× higher throughput than the 
baseline across all batch sizes while maintaining <1% accuracy 
degradation (see Section 4.2 for accuracy breakdown)."

Length Management

Most venues have strict page limits. Allocate space proportionally:

Problem and motivation: 10-15% of length
Approach: 30-40% of length
Experiments: 30-40% of length
Related work and conclusion: 10-20% of length

Cut by removing redundant explanations, not by shrinking text. A tight, complete paper beats an expanded, padded one.

EXERCISE

Outline your research system paper using the standard structure. For each section, write one sentence summarizing what that section must accomplish. Show the outline to a colleague and ask if they can predict your key contributions from the section summaries alone.