How to Write Academic Papers

Core resource: ICML 2022 Best Practices Page

Recommended Starting Point

• Bill Freeman's Slides on Writing Good Papers
• Also review the ICML Reviewer Tutorial & Review Form to understand how your paper will be read.

Paper Writing Checklist

Adapted from AAAI 2021 and Joelle Pineau’s reproducibility checklist.

1. Clear statement of claims and addressed problem.
2. Results support the claims (soundness).
3. Limitations and assumptions are explicitly stated.
4. Problem is novel and timely for the community.
5. Self-contained: experts can understand without external help.
6. Discusses related work and why the problem is important.
7. Guides new readers via citations to background resources.
8. Good writing and organization (abstract, title, problem vs. contribution, pseudocode, random access for experts, proofreading).
9. Theoretical contributions: clear assumptions, theorems, intuitive explanations, attribution, citations.
10. Computational experiments:
    • Explain experimental design and purpose.
    • Separate setup, results, and analysis.
    • Report randomness handling, metrics, algorithm choices, repetitions, variation/confidence intervals, hyperparameters, infrastructure.
    • Ensure code and data are provided or described.
11. Benchmarking: Availability, citations, reproducibility, documentation.

Additional Resources

• Aaditya Ramdas: stat-ML paper checklist
• Pat Langley: Crafting Papers on Machine Learning
• Zach Lipton: Heuristics for Scientific Writing (ML)
• Gent & Walsh: How not to do it
• Mitchell & Levesque: Pitfalls with Random SAT
• JMLR: Formatting and Editorial Checklist
• Kevin P. Lee: A Guide to Writing Mathematics
• Oded Goldreich: How to Write a Paper?
• Simon Peyton Jones: How to Write a Great Research Paper [talk page]
• D. Bertsekas: Ten Simple Rules for Mathematical Writing
• Rules and Tips for Writing Mathematics
• HKU Guide to Writing Mathematics
• Elements of Style - Strunk and White
• Paul Halmos: How to Write Mathematics
• Igor Pak: How to Write a Clear Math Paper
• JS Milne: Tips for Authors
• Steven G. Krantz: A Primer of Mathematical Writing

Last updated: August 2025