Paper requirements
The BREW workshop is meant to give the participants training in writing scientific papers. The papers
should be 3-5 pages, shorter than a normal journal paper. Most journals and conferences will have
their own, often very detailed requirements regarding how a paper is to be delivered, but the only
requirement for this workshop is that the paper be delivered in the PDF format (however, as a
friendly suggestion we'd recommend practicing your LaTeX/BibTeX skills and formatting the paper as a
\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}).
The following text covers the most typical sections in a scientific paper presenting a scientific result or method. Looking at the review guidelines when writing your paper can also be helpful, as your paper will be reviewed according to these guidelines. If you present a project plan, your paper does not need to have a result section, and you can either omit this section or comment on what kind of results you expect to get. Review papers will not be expected to have a result section either.
Abstract
Other researchers read the abstract to find out if this paper is interesting to them. The abstract is the only thing that appears when searching on line for scientific papers. All papers submitted to BREW must have a short abstract, around 100-200 words. This text should state what the paper is about and what the main findings of the work are. For this workshop, you should state what type of paper you have written in the abstract.
Introduction
This section should contain an introduction to the research field. Descriptions and references to the current state in your research field, competing methods and the scientific goal of the work presented are expected. The introduction should be between one half and one page. This is more brief than regular papers, but the introduction is none the less very important, and should contain references to relevant literature in the field, as your reader is not necessarily familiar with your field of research.
Methods
The method section should contain a description of the algorithm or method used in the paper, as well as descriptions of the data sets and databases used. How the method or algorithm is to be applied to find the desired result must also be stated. The descriptions should be sufficiently detailed so that other researchers can reproduce the results presented in the paper. The method section should be presented after the introduction.
Results
The results of the paper, preferably as tables and figures, are placed here. How the results were obtained in reference to the method section should also be explained.
Discussion and conclusion
This section should include explanations of your results, how your results compare to other methods and your methods contribution to the relevant research field. You should discuss the assumptions you have made for the work and the validity of your results, possible problems and their solution as well as possible objections to your method and results. If there is a disagreement in your field regarding methods or results and their interpretation, you should discuss how this may affect your results and whether your results may affect the disagreement. Try to present different points of view and cite the relevant literature.
References
All your references should be placed at the very end of the paper. Many journals have detailed instructions regarding the format of references, but for BREW we will require no special formatting, only that it is possible to uniquely identify each reference. You should at least include author(s), title, journal and the year of publication in the reference.
Useful resources for writing a scientific paper
Algorithm for writing a scientific manuscript - This article makes good suggestions on how to write
a scientific paper - Link
Scientific writing: Strategies and tools for students and advisors - Points out useful resources,
techniques and tools for scientific writing -
Link
Writing in the Sciences - Online Course by Stanford University (you can watch the videos without
enrolling) - Link
Scientific writing 101 - Link
Even more resources about scientific writing - Link