Technical Writing is a broad term that encompasses a wide variety of documents in science, engineering, and the skilled trades. The major types of documents in technical writing can be grouped into four major categories

· Reports and communications in day-to-day business

· Technical papers, magazine articles, books, and theses for purposes of education, teaching, and the sharing of information and knowledge

· Patents

· Operational manuals, instructions, or procedures

The research paper ultimate goal is clarity. The readers should understand the concepts and the results. The writer is trying to technically write his/her research papers with clarity of their intentions. Your objective is clear communication to the reader, not beauty or eruditeness or narration of your discoveries and reasoning process. Don't waste their time, or at least don't waste it up front. Give the paper to somebody else to read. If you can, find two people: one person familiar with the technical matter, another only generally familiar with the area. (1-3)

Papers can be divided roughly into two categories, namely original research papers and survey papers. There are papers that combine the two elements, but most publication venues either only accept one or the other type or require the author to identify whether the paper should be evaluated as a research contribution or a survey paper. (Most research papers contain a "related work" section that can be considered a survey, but it is usually brief compared to the rest of the paper and only addresses a much narrower slice of the field.)

A Research Paper should focus on

· Describing the results in sufficient details to establish their validity;

· Identifying the novel aspects of the results, i.e., what new knowledge is reported and what makes it non-obvious;

· Identifying the significance of the results: what improvements and impact do they suggest.

Research Papers:

A good research paper has a clear statement of the problem the paper is addressing, the proposed solution(s), and results achieved. It describes clearly what has been done before on the problem, and what is new. The goal of a paper is to describe novel technical results. There are four types of technical results: (3)

· An algorithm;

· A system construct: such as hardware design, software system, protocol, etc.; one goal of the paper is to ensure that the next person who designs a system like yours doesn't make the same mistakes and takes advantage of some of your best solutions. So make sure that the hard problems (and their solutions) are discussed and the non-obvious mistakes (and how to avoid them) are discussed. (Craig Partridge)

· A performance evaluation: obtained through analyses, simulation or measurements;

· A theory: consisting of a collection of theorems.

Attributes of Technical Writing:

The remainder of this Chapter describes the specific attributes of technical writing and shows examples of how technical writing differs from other types of writing. In general, technical writing has a degree of formality, and it generally focuses on a specific subject with the purpose of making something happen or sharing useful information or knowledge. Ten general attributes of technical writing are listed and described in the(4)

Following sections:

· It pertains to a technical subject.

· It has a purpose.

· It has an objective.

· It conveys information/facts/data.

· It is impersonal.

· It is concise.

· It is directed.

· It is performed with a particular style and in a particular format.

· It is archival.

· It cites contributions of others.

· There are probably more attributes, but the attributes in the above list define some key characteristics that distinguish technical writing from other types of writing.

Things to Avoid:

The following things to avoid while writing a research paper

Too much motivational material

Three reasons are enough -- and they should be described very briefly.

Describing the obvious parts of the result

"Obvious" is defined as any result that a graduate of our program would suggest as a solution if you pose the problem that the result solves.

Describing unnecessary details

A detail is unnecessary, if its omission will not harm the reader's ability to understand the important novel aspects of the result.

Spelling errors:

With the availability of spell checkers, there is no reason to have spelling errors in a manuscript. If you as the author didn't take the time to spell-check your paper, why should the editor or reviewer take the time to read it or trust that your diligence in technical matters is any higher than your diligence in presentation? Note, however, that spell checkers don't catch all common errors, in particular word duplication ("the the"). If in doubt, consult a dictionary such as the (on line) Merriam Webster.(5)

Text in Arial:

Arial and other sans-serif fonts are fine for slides and posters, but are harder to read in continuous text. Use Times Roman or similar serif fonts. Unusual fonts are less likely to be available at the recipient and may cause printing or display problems.

Research Paper Structure:

The technical research paper must be in the following ways

· Title

· Author

· Abstract

· Introduction

· Related Work

· Body of paper

· Summary and Future Work

· Acknowledgements

· Bibliography

· Appendix

Title:

· Avoid all but the most readily understood abbreviations.

· Avoid common phrases like "novel", "performance evaluation" and "architecture", since almost every paper does a performance evaluation of some architecture and it better be novel. Unless somebody wants to see 10,000 Google results, nobody searches for these types of words.

· Use adjectives that describe the distinctive features of your work, e.g., reliable, scalable, high-performance, robust, low-complexity, or low-cost. (There are obviously exceptions, e.g., when the performance evaluation is the core of the paper. Even in that case, something more specific is preferable, as in "Delay measurements of X" or "The quality of service for FedEx deliveries".(6)

· If you need inspiration for a paper title, you can consult the Automatic Systems Research Topic or Paper Title Generator.

Authors:

The IEEE policies (Section 6.4.1) used to state the following about authorship: The IEEE affirms that authorship credit must be reserved for individuals who have met each of the following conditions:

1) Made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the manuscript,

2) Contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content, and

3) Approved the final version of the manuscript, including references. This has now moved to the IEEE PSPB Operations Manual, Section 8.2.1.

Abstract:

· Abstract, typically not more than 100-150 words;

· The abstract must not contain references, as it may be used without the main article. It is acceptable, although not common, to identify work by author, abbreviation or RFC number. (For example, "Our algorithm is based upon the work by Smith and Wesson.")

· Avoid use of "in this paper" in the abstract. What other paper would you be talking about here?

· Avoid general motivation in the abstract. You do not have to justify the importance of the Internet or explain what QoS is.

· Highlight not just the problem, but also the principal results. Many people read abstracts and then decide whether to bother with the rest of the paper.

· Since the abstract will be used by search engines, be sure that terms that identify your work are found there. In particular, the name of any protocol or system developed and the general area ("quality of service", "protocol verification", "service creation environment") should be contained in the abstract.(7)

· Avoid equations and math. Exceptions: Your paper proposes E = m c 2.

Introduction:

· Introduction (brief): introduce problem, outline solution; the statement of the problem should include a clear statement why the problem is important (or interesting).

· Avoid stock and cliché phrases such as "recent advances in XYZ" or anything alluding to the growth of the Internet.

· Be sure that the introduction lets the reader know what this paper is about, not just how important your general area of research is. Readers won't stick with you for three pages to find out what you are talking about.

· The introduction must motivate your work by pinpointing the problem you are addressing and then give an overview of your approach and/or contributions (and perhaps even a general description of your results). In this way, the intro sets up my expectations for the rest of your paper -- it provides the context, and a preview.

· Repeating the abstract in the introduction is a waste of space. Example bad introduction: Here at the institute for computer research, me and my colleagues have created the SUPERGP system and have applied it to several toy problems. We had previously fumbled with earlier versions of SUPERGPSYSTEM for a while. This system allows the programmer to easily try lots of parameters, and problems, but incorporates a special constraint system for parameter settings and LISP S-expression parenthesis counting.

· The search space of GP is large and many things we are thinking about putting into the super gpsystem will make this space much more colorful.

· A pretty good introduction, drawn from Eric Siegel's class:

· Many new domains for genetic programming require evolved programs to be executed for longer amounts of time. For example, it is beneficial to give evolved programs direct access to low-level data arrays, as in some approaches to signal processing \cite{teller5}, and protein segment classification \cite{handley, koza6}. This type of system automatically performs more problem-specific engineering than a system that accesses highly preprocessed data. However, evolved programs may require more time to execute, since they are solving a harder task.(6-8)

Previous or obvious approach:

(Note that you can also have a related work section that gives more details about previous work.) One way to control the execution time of evolved programs is to impose an absolute time limit. However, this is too constraining if some test cases require more processing time than others. To use computation time efficiently, evolved programs must take extra time when it is necessary to perform well, but also spend less time whenever possible.

Approach/solution/contribution:

The first sentence of a paragraph like this should say what the contribution is. Also gloss the results. In this chapter, we introduce a method that gives evolved programs the incentive to strategically allocate computation time among fitness cases. Specifically, with an aggregate computation time ceiling imposed over a series of fitness cases, evolved programs dynamically choose when to stop processing each fitness case. We present experiments that show that programs evolved using this form of fitness take less time per test case on average, with minimal damage to domain performance. We also discuss the implications of such a time constraint, as well as its differences from other approaches to {multi objective problems}. The dynamic use of resources other than computation time, e.g., memory or fuel, may also result from placing an aggregate limit over a series of fitness cases (9)

Related Work:

Related Work (or before summary). Hint: In the case of a conference, make sure to cite the work of the PC co-chairs and as many other PC members as are remotely plausible, as well as from anything relevant from the previous two proceedings. In the case of a journal or magazine, cite anything relevant from last 2-3 years or so volumes.

Body of Paper:

The body of paper consists of

· problem

· approach, architecture

· results

The body should contain sufficient motivation, with at least one example scenario, preferably two, with illustrating figures, followed by a crisp generic problem statement model, i.e., functionality, particularly emphasizing "new" functionality. The paper may or may not include formalisms.

· Architecture of proposed system(s) to achieve this model should be more generic than your own peculiar implementation. Always include at least one figure.

· Realization: contains actual implementation details when implementing architecture isn't totally straightforward. Mention briefly implementation language, platform, location, dependencies on other packages and minimum resource usage if pertinent.

· Evaluation: How does it really work in practice? Provide real or simulated performance metrics, end-user studies, mention external technology adaptors, if

Summary and Future Work:

· In all but extended abstracts, numerical results and simulations should be reported in enough detail that the reader can duplicate the results. This should include all parameters used, indications of the number of samples that contributed to the analysis and any initial conditions, if relevant.

· When presenting simulation results, provide insight into the statistical confidence. If at all possible, provide confidence intervals. If there's a "strange" behavior in the graph (e.g., a dip, peak or change in slope), this behavior either needs to be explained or reasons must be given why this is simply due to statistical aberration. In the latter case, gathering more samples is probably advised.

· Figures should be chosen wisely. You can never lay out the whole parameter space, so provide insight into which parameters are significant over what range and which ones are less important. It's not very entertaining to present lots of flat or linear lines.

· The description of the graph should not just repeat the graphically obvious such as "the delay rises with the load", but explain, for example, how this increase relates to the load increase. Is it linear? Does it follow some well-known other system behaviors such as standard queuing systems?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

· Acknowledge your funding sources. Some sources have specific wording requirements and may prefer that the grant number is listed. The NSF requires text like "This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant EIA NN-NNNNN."

· Generally, anonymous reviewers don't get acknowledged, unless they really provided an exceptional level of feedback or insight. Rather than "We thank X for helping us with Y", you might vary this as "X helped with Y.".(10)

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

· Avoid use of et al. in a bibliography unless list is very long (five or more authors). The author subsumed into et al. may be your advisor or the reviewer. Note punctuation of et al.

· If writing about networks or multimedia, use the network bibliography. All entries not found there should be sent to me. A listing of frequently-used references for networks is available.

· Internet drafts must be marked ``work in progress''. Make sure that they have been replaced by newer versions or RFCs. Any Internet Draft reference older than six months should automatically be suspicious since Internet Drafts expire after that time period.

· Book citations include publication years, but no ISBN number.

· It is now acceptable to include URLs to material, but it is probably bad form to include a URL pointing to the author's web page for papers published in IEEE and ACM publications, given the copyright situation. Use it for software and other non-library material. Avoid long URLs; it may be sufficient to point to the general page and let the reader find the material. General URLs are also less likely to change.

· Leave a space between first names and last name, i.e., "J. P. Doe", not "J. P. Doe".

· References such as John Doe, "Some paper on something", technical report are useless. Cite the source, date and other identifying information.

· For conference papers, you MUST name the conference location, month and the full conference name, not just some abbreviation. Page numbers are nice, but optional. All of this information is readily available via the IEEE or ACM digital libraries.

· Check if Internet drafts have been published as RFCs or if there's a newer version.

· Having a citation (10)

Appendix:

· Detailed protocol descriptions

· Proofs with more than two lines

· Other low-level but important details

CONCLUSION:

It is recommended that you write the approach and results sections first, which go together. Then problem section, if it is separate from the introduction. Then the conclusions, then the intro. Write the intro last since it glosses the conclusions in one of the last paragraphs. Finally, write the abstract. Last, give your paper a title.

REFERENCES:

1. Gerson,Sharon J and Gerson, Steven M, (2004), Technical Writing Process and Product, Ed3, Pearson Education, New Delhi.

2. The Golden Age of Technical Communication Journal of Technical Writing and Communication April 24, 2016 0: 0047281616641927v1-47281616641927

3. Wicked Problems in Technical Communication Journal of Technical Writing and Communication January 1, 2014 44: 23-42

4. A "Virtual Fieldtrip": Service Learning in Distance Education Technical Writing Courses Journal of Technical Writing and Communication April 1, 2013 43: 181-200

5. Bridging the Gap between the Technical Communication Classroom and the Internship: Teaching Social Consciousness and Real-World Writing Journal of Technical Writing and Communication April 1, 2012 42: 183-197

6. Living the Rhetoric: Service Learning and Increased Value of Social Responsibility Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture October 1, 2005 5: 427-444

7. A Case of Multiple Professionalisms: Service Learning and Control of Communication about Organ Donation Journal of Business and Technical Communication October 1, 2003 17: 413-438

8. Two Assignments that Integrate Cross Cultural and Social Issues Business and Professional Communication Quarterly January 1, 2003 66: 107-117

9. A Service Learning Approach to Business and Technical Writing Instruction Journal of Technical Writing and Communication April 1, 1998 28: 189-205

10. https://www.teachervision.com/writing-research-papers/ re-search-paper-how-write-bibliography.

Received on 17.11.2016 Modified on 27.12.2016

Asian J. Management; 2017; 8(4):1400-1404.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2017.00214.1