The introduction frames through scope and definitions - Introduction: the hands of your paper - Paper structure and purpose

Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

The introduction frames through scope and definitions
Introduction: the hands of your paper
Paper structure and purpose

The writer’s intellectual honesty is demonstrated in many ways. One of them is a clear and honest description of the scope. Readers need to know the scope of your work because they want to benefit from it, and therefore need to evaluate how well your solution might work on their problems. If the scope of your solution covers their area of need, they will be satisfied. If it does not, at least they will know why, and they may even be encouraged to extend your work to solve their problems. Either way, your work will have been helpful.

Scope

In essence, the scope or frame of your contribution is set by the methodology, the data, the time frame, and the application field. Establishing a frame around problem and solution enables you to claim with some authority and assurance that your solution is “good” within that frame. Some writers leave the framing until later in the paper. I believe that a reader informed on the scope early is better than a reader disappointed by late disclosures restricting the applicability and the value of your work. Therefore, establish the scope early in your paper.

Use the answer to the “Why this way” question to make the scope more precise while enhancing the attractiveness of your paper and highlighting its novelty.

Our method does not need a kernel function, nor does it require remapping from a lower dimension space to a higher dimension space.

Our dithering algorithm does not make any assumption on the resolution of pictures nor does it make any assumption on the color depth of the pixels.

Not all assumptions in your paper affect the scope. These assumptions are best mentioned in the paragraphs to which they apply (often in the methodology section). Justify their use, or give a measure of their impact on your results, as in the following three examples: (1) Using the same assumption as in [7], we consider that...; (2) Without loss of generality, it is also assumed that ...; (3) Because we assume that the event is slow varying, it is reasonable to update the information on event allocation after all other steps.

Define

Another way of framing is by defining. In the following example, the authors define what an ’effective’ solution is. They do not let readers decide on their own what ’effective’ means.

“An effective signature scheme should have the following desirable features:

· Security: the ability to prevent attacked images from passing verification;

· Robustness: the ability to tolerate ...

· Integrity: the ability to integrate ...

· ...”5

When you define, you frame by restricting the meaning of the words to your definition. Demonstrating a solution is effective because it fulfills predefined criteria is easier than demonstrating a solution is effective when the evaluation criteria are up to the reader.

Scope and definitions ground the readers’ expectations and set strong foundations for the credibility of your results. In the next chapters two other credibility-enhancers will be considered: citations and precision.