simiananomaly t1_itic16r wrote on October 23, 2022 at 9:19 PM

Reply to comment by IluvitarTheAinur in [D] Comprehension issues with papers from non-English speakers by Confused_Electron

I would say though the intro is the most important part. People with little time will read only the intro, especially the last paragraph of it, to get an idea of what the authors wanted to do and why, and read the rest only if really interested. This meaning it should be the part written with most care and clarity.

IluvitarTheAinur t1_itio97a wrote on October 23, 2022 at 10:42 PM

I disagree, once you are in the field, you look at abstract->figures->conclusions.

Introductions are useful if you are reading a paper outside your field or if you are hunting for citations to write your own paper related to the topic.

So as far as getting citations is concerned, introductions are pretty low priority

simiananomaly t1_itl49eu wrote on October 24, 2022 at 1:27 PM

Right if you know what it's going to be about, abstract and figures on top, agreed (and titles in the ML domain go a long way it seems). We often read papers in a very wide range of domains and applications and well-written intros are a very good parameter to decide what will be read or not, I suppose for people writing overarching reviews it tends to be the case too.