如何写好论文的引言

[chengjun]

如何写好论文的引言

小谷围札记 2022-09-25 11:11 发表于广东

论文引言的重要性不用多说，写好引言也非易事。Keith Head教授曾根据James Brander的经验提供了一个写作论文引言的“配方”，南洋理工大学包特教授在微博上概译了这个配方。以下转载该配方的概译和英文原文。如果它们对你有帮助，请感谢James、Keith、和包特。

前两天请JEBO主编Daniela Puzzello来讲座的时候，她推荐大家看一篇Keith Head写的The Introduction Formula，也就是论文引言的“标准配方”。这篇文章的原文可以在Keith Head的网站上找到。据Keith Head说，这些经验的原本提出者是UBC的另一位教授，James Brander。我仅摘取其中主体部分进行大概翻译，准确意思请大家参考原文。——包特

“标准配方”的论文引言由以下五部分组成：
1、“钩子”（原文是Hook，大概类似于中文说的“引子”或“噱头”）：这部分的目的是通过告诉读者，这篇论文和一些有意思的事情相关，从而吸引他们的注意力和阅读兴趣。一般来说，使得一个话题 Y 看起来有趣的特点通常包括以下几点：

• Y很重要：当Y上升或下降的时候，人们从中受益，或受损。
• Y很令人迷惑：我们很难找到一个关于它的简单回答。
• Y具有争议性：一些人认为答案是这么一回事的时候，另一些人觉得是另一回事。
• Y在现实中体量很大（比如服务业），或者很常见（比如交通堵塞）。

在这部分需要避免的事情包括：
“诱导转向法”（商业上常见的骗术，商家用低价消费品吸引顾客过来，但转而推销给他们更贵或者更不好的东西）：向大家许诺一个有趣的话题，但结果讲了一个别的东西，特别是无聊的东西。
“我朋友们都在做”：除了说很多人都在做这个话题以外讲不出别的理由。
（虽然作者没有明说，结合上下文，作者应该认为这部分的篇幅是一个自然段。）
2、问题（Question）：这个部分是关于论文真正要讲的问题。这部分你要做的事打比方来说可能和在一场审判里基于充分的细节证据，对案犯进行指证一样。目的是让读者对论文研究问题有清楚的认识，并且期待在文章结束获得比较满意的答案。这部分可以通常分为两段，而且在两段之间（这里作者的意思应该是第一段末或第二段初的“承上启下句”）你应该说“本文将处理并解决这个问题”。
3、 “前作回顾”（或者“文献回顾”，英文是Antecedents）：这部分的目的是指明与本文最为相关的关键先前文献，并以此让读者更容易理解本文的贡献。这部分的常见错误是讨论一些仅仅是在同一领域，但和本文主旨并不相关的论文。这部分的注意事项是，你需要给前作足够的地位和贡献认可，但同时，尝试以不失礼貌的方式指出它们在某方面的不完全或者不完善（从而论证本文的改进看起来是有价值的）。
4、“增加值”（即“本文贡献”）：列举大约三个本文相比之前文献的贡献。这一段可能对于审稿人决定是否拒掉你的论文至关重要。这一段和“问题”那一段的重要区别是：贡献是基于特定先前文献规定的范畴的，而问题则应该是关于整个话题，让对此有大而化之了解的读者都能理解的。因此从行文关系上，增加值对应前作回顾，而问题则对应引子。作者说James Brander提出文献和贡献有时可以夹杂在一起写，篇幅大概是三段。
5、“路径图”（Road map）：这部分即下文结构概览。这部分应避免写一些看起来对所有文章都适用的没有信息量的话（比如“这部分是文章的中间，接下来我们就到了结尾”）。相反，应尝试用关键性的“路标”归纳一些量身定制的结构单位，比如“问题、解决方案，结果”(problems, solutions, results…)。这部分总体来说写得越短越好，因为读者接下来通常更有兴趣的是论文主体部分。
最后，作者简单说了一下，把引言写好是很重要的。最好的写法是先写引言，然后根据后面内容的增加会随时调整引言。这样论文写完的时候引言就被改了很多次了。写好引言不仅是为了给读者和审稿人更好的第一印象，更重要的是帮自己理解自己的论文到底真正意义在哪里。从某种意义上来说，如果你一直写不出好的引言，那多半是因为你在写一篇错误的论文。

The Introduction Formula

When I arrived at UBC, my colleague John Ries, who had been hired the year before, explained to me that Jim Brander had given him a formula for writing introductions. I'm afraid I didn't pay much attention at the time because I thought it would stifle my creative juices (is that a mixed metaphor?). Finally, I think I ended up internalizing the rules and now I thought I should make them explicit because they have served us well and I wish I could referee more papers that follow them.
1.Hook: Attract the reader's interest by telling them that this paper relates to something interesting. What makes a topic interesting? Some combination of the following attributes makes Y something worth looking at.

• Y matters: When Y rises or falls, people are hurt or helped.
• Y is puzzling: it defies easy explanation.
• Y is controversial: some argue one thing while other say another.
• Y is big (like the service sector) or common (like traffic jams).

Things to avoid:
The bait and switch: promising an interesting topic but delivering something else, in particular, something boring.
"all my friends are doing it" : presenting no other motivation for a topic than that other people have written papers on it.

2. Question: Tell the reader what this paper actually does. Think of this as the point in a trial where having detailed the crime, you now identify a perpetrator and promise to provide a persuasive case. The reader should have an idea of a clean research question that will have a more or less satisfactory answer by the end of the paper. Examples follow below. The question may take two paragraphs. At the end of the first (2nd paragraph of the paper) or possibly beginning of the second (3rd paragraph overall) you should have the "This paper addresses the question" sentence.
3. Antecedents: Identify the prior work that is critical for understanding the contribution this paper will make. The key mistake to avoid here are discussing papers that are not essential parts of the intellectual narrative leading up to your own paper. Give credit where due but establish, in a non-insulting way, that the prior work is incomplete or otherwise deficient in some important way.
4. Value-Added: Describe approximately 3 contributions this paper will make relative to the antecedents. This paragraph might be the most important one for convincing referees not to reject your paper. A big difference between it and the earlier "question" paragraph is that the contributions should make sense only in light of prior work whereas the basic research question of the paper should be understandable simply in terms of knowing the topic (from the hook paragraph). John suggests that "Antecedents" and "Value-added" may be intertwined. They may also take up to 3 paragraphs.
5. Road-map: Outline the organization of the paper. Avoid writing an outline so generic that it could apply to any paper ("the next section is the middle of the paper and then we have the end"). Instead customize the road map to the project and possibly mention pivotal "landmarks" (problems, solutions, results...) that will be seen along the way. But keep this short because many readers will now be eager to get to the heart of the paper.

Brander suggests that you write the intro first but then read and edit it every time you compose other parts of the paper. Thus by the end, the intro will have received more attention, more times, than any other part of the paper. The introduction is not just important because of the "first impressions" idea that it will tilt the referee for or against you (though it probably will). It is also vital to making sure you know yourself what you are doing in the paper and why. If you can't write a good introduction, then you may be writing the wrong paper.