Introduction

Writing an Introduction section can be difficult, in particularly knowing what to include and what to leave for later. To assist here, a helpful template is CARS, Create A Research Space. It uses three “moves”, starting very wide, and gradually zooming in on the specifics.

Move 1: Establish The Territory

At the beginning of the paper, the reader barely know which research area is being addressed. So, you need to start wide, and answer two questions.

  • What is the problem?
  • Aren’t there available solutions already?

This is done in three steps.

  1. Claim centrality. Be bold.
  2. Present a classic problem in the selected area. Again, be bold.
  3. Review previous research. As the problem is so common, other researchers have obviously worked on this for a while. Be nice to them, they provided the pillars on which you stand.

Move 2: Establish a Niche

Explain why this paper is needed, separating it from the previous work. This can normally be done in one of four ways, so select the one that fits best.

  1. Counter-claiming. Maybe the previous work was wrong?
  2. Indicate a gap. Very few solutions work in all situations, and you may have identified one where the previous work either doesn’t work at all, or is bad.
  3. Question raising. Maybe there is room for improvement with the existing solutions?
  4. Continue a tradition. It may simply be time to repeat a previous study.

Move 3: Occupy the Niche

Now, explain why the paper expands the body of knowledge.

  1. Clearly explain the purpose of this paper, for example in the form of research questions or hypotheses.
  2. Present your main findings, listing the contributions. This is basically the Results and Discussion sections, compressed into a single paragraph. Be concrete and specific. If there are multiple authors, it may be a good idea to state who did what, as a “Statement of contributions” list.
  3. Provide an overview of the rest of the paper. Doing this as a list of “section X contains this, section Y contains that” is typically super boring, so it can be better to integrate this into the previous two points.