How to write a related work?¶

Standing on the shoulders of giants is a popular phrase amongst academics. This phrase captures the idea that no research stands in isolation and that all work builds upon existing knowledge. The related work section is where you position your research in the context of recent work and demonstrate scholarship. In this article I will describe how to write a related work section with a template for organising notes on papers.

What is related work?¶

Fig. 4 Overview of how the related work section is grouped and critiqued.¶

Related work is research that closely relates to your own and depends on the framing of the overall research outlined in the introduction. The outline of how the related work section is assembled is shown in Fig. 4.

How to identify your related work?¶

Pick a venue for your research¶

The choice of conference or journal influences the related work that reviewers expect to see in your paper. It’s a good idea to check publications from the last 3 years from the selected venue to confirm you have not missed key papers.

Establish a position for your paper¶

Start by identifying the position of your paper and how you plan to pitch the research findings. Your supervisors and mentors will help with positioning the research. A position describes the way you plan to present your research paper and includes a motivation.

Identify research areas¶

Identifying research areas by answering the questions: what have others done to solve related problems? How have others used the techniques I am using? Select the three research areas that are closest to your research.

Scan the literature and come up with themes¶

Look for research in the three research areas that has been published from top ranked venues in the last 3 years. Group the related work into sub-themes.

Writing the related work¶

Start by outlining the key research areas related to your research and then summarise the research area by listing out the sub-themes with multiple citations for each sub-theme where possible. Then provide a critique of the related work by a) highlighting a gap, b) showing how your research is different, c) describe how you improve existing techniques, or d) showing how your work is complimentary. A common mistake when writing related work is to list out each relevant paper and talk about the individual findings. This should only be done for a few papers that are very similar to yours to provide a deeper critique. Another common problem in the related work section is to describe what the research papers do and provide no analysis in the context of your work. Assume that the reviewers are familiar with the related work and want to know how your work relates to the existing research.

A template for organising your related work¶

A goal of related work is to demonstrate scholarship; that you understand the field and can contextualise your research. Also demonstrate that you are an active member of the community by building upon prior knowledge and addressing known gaps. In your own words, fill out each column of this template to help organise your related work. The next step is to start to group papers around core themes that emerge.

How to write a methodology?

How to write a thesis?

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