Academic publications spread knowledge across researchers and contribute to improving our general understanding to this world. Although scientific articles may be mathematically intensive or full of intricate terminologies, the language can be fluid, elegant, comprehensible, even beautiful, to boost efficiency of information exchange and peer discussions. In addition, the literature is permanently archived to stimulate students' interest, which has remarkable long-term value.
These are my principles of writing a beautiful article:
- The title should be as compact and direct as possible.
- The content should be as clear and self-descriptive as possible.
- The language should be as plain as possible.
- The case studies (if have) should be as minimum as possible.
According to the "golden rule" above, I keep a recod of high-quality publications I have read, grouped by respective disciplines.
Abadie, Alberto, and Guido W. Imbens. "Matching on the estimated propensity score." Econometrica 84.2 (2016): 781-807.
This paper derived an adjusted large sample distribution of propensity score matching estimators, and introduced widely used propensity score matching with clarity.
Shourangiz-Haghighi, Alireza, et al. "Developing more efficient wind turbines: A survey of control challenges and opportunities." IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine 14.4 (2020): 53-64.
This is a magazine paper focusing on educational introduction of wind turbine control and wind farm topology. Although the breadth and depth of the survey are limited, the langauge is easy-to-follow and appealing to general public.
Veers, Paul, et al. "Grand Challenges: Wind energy research needs for a global energy transition." Wind Energy Science 7.6 (2022): 2491-2496.
The magic Veers has is to phrase a well-knonw concept or opinion in a profound and convincing way. For instance, "The notion that we can simply take hardware that has been successful to this point and multiply the deployment by a factor of 5 or 10 fails to appreciate the harsh reality that the technology demands of the future will be significantly different than they have been to date". When motivations of the paper series is demanded, "The charter for the authors was not to suggest particular innovative solutions or to tout specific technology advances, but to review the literature and to articulate the most critical needs, with the intent to synthesize and clarify".