Instruction
2. Guidelines for improving inferential relations in your paper
2.1 Focus
Focus is very important for a paper: The text has to be at the service of one main message
that the reader can remember and tell somebody else in the one-minute lift chat.
Guideline 1 (G1): Try to summarize the main message of your paper in 12 to 16
words.
Do not rest until you have one focus. If you have two goals, try to see if one is the service
of the other (e.g., identify problems is at the service of identifying potential solutions).
The most common criticism in reviews I have seen is that the focus is not clear or not
consistent. A good way to check the focus of your paper is to highlight all sentences that
could be interpreted as indicating the focus: title, core sentences in the abstract, and
sentences that capture the aim, research question or conclusion. Then read all highlighted
text in one go to see if all these sentences are consistent.