What to Do First?
Carefully review the paper requirements .
They describe the expected structure and all formal aspects that are important for your paper to be accepted for the competition. You can use them to create a checklist!
How to Shorten Your Coursework/Thesis for NIRS?
- Identify several key ideas in the literature review and dedicate a short paragraph to each of them.
- Group authors by similarity of ideas.
- Remove all duplicate information — for example, if you derive hypotheses from the literature review, remove them from the introduction.
- Pay attention to the conclusion of the full text. If you formulated it correctly, build the shortened version of the text for NIRS based on it.
- Make sure the logic of your research is not lost, and re-read the text after shortening.
What Do Evaluators Pay Attention To?
Evgeny Borisovich Feigin , member of the organizing committee for "Mathematics"
- Motivation: it is important that the author places their work in a scientific context and explains why the problem being solved in the work is interesting. The problem should be non-trivial, requiring new ideas and approaches.
- Clarity and completeness of the presentation of the work's logic and technical elements necessary for solving the problem; presence of detailed and complete proofs.
- Depth of immersion in the subject: the work should show that the author has seriously studied the subject and has a good understanding of their field.
- Possible applications and uses: connections with other problems in mathematics and/or mathematical physics are a big plus.
The higher the work is rated on these parameters, the greater the chances of becoming a winner.
Ilya Arkadievich Prakhov , research supervisor
- Format: the work should be presented in the form of an article, not a coursework or thesis. Look at how articles are structured in journals in your field.
- Make the text understandable for a wide audience. You can give the work to classmates, friends, parents to read and ask if everything is clear.
- Clearly highlight what is new in your research, what is the author's contribution.
- Shorten the text to the required volume by reworking the literature review so that it is clear which theses are used in your research.
Polina Vladimirovna Kolozaridi , research supervisor
- It is important that it is clear what problem you are solving, how you came to it, and what you did. Avoid complex constructions and "pomposity" that hide a simple thought.
- Explain why the topic and the chosen approach are important and suitable for each other.
- You can use a good academic article as a reference: try to write in the same spirit — clearly and strictly, but without simplifying the thought to banalities.
Igor Borisovich Orlov , member of the organizing committee for "Political Science"
- What immediately catches the eye is sloppiness in the reference apparatus: incorrectly formatted bibliographies and citations.
- Structure: presence of introduction, intermediate conclusions, and conclusion.
- Correctness of results and their correspondence to the set tasks; unity of title, object, subject, hypothesis, goal, and tasks.
- Presence of "traces" of application of the declared methods (for example, coding tables).
Empirical works look more advantageous, where mastery of methods of selection, analysis, and interpretation of data is visible. But descriptive works can also be strong if built in strict research logic and following the principles of scientific research.
Maria Parfenya, multiple competition winner
- Before submitting, be sure to re-read the text, correct rough spots and footnotes. If the work is too large, it is better to take one or two substantive chapters and edit the introduction for them, rather than randomly cutting paragraphs.
What to Do If You Submit at the Last Moment?
Anna Semenova, 2nd place in "Public Administration" (NIRS-2020)
For those who submit their work at the last moment, it is very important not to lose contact with the research supervisor and ask questions about details. Be sure to re-read the work before submitting: repetitions, incomplete sentences, incorrect citations — all of this can be removed in time.
Anna Dikova, 1st place in "Cultural Studies" (NIRS-2020)
Format your work properly. Then at any opportunity — conference, publication, competition — you can send the text in five minutes and calmly go watch Netflix.
Polina Sokolova, 2nd place in "History" (NIRS-2021)
Shortening your text is painful, but extra words often harm quality. Reading research is difficult, make it easier for reviewers: watch the volume and length of sentences.
I advise to shorten the text as much as possible and follow two rules:
- If a sentence takes more than two lines, try to split it; if you can't — make the next sentence very short.
- Leave thought repetitions only in the conclusion, in the main parts of the text they are usually unnecessary.
Victoria Korolkova, 3rd place in "Integrated Communications" (NIRS-2021)
If you are writing an article based on coursework, most of the time will be spent on editing. So the main thing is to carefully read the criteria and refine the text accordingly.
Arseny Krasnikov, laureate in "Philosophy" (NIRS-2021)
You will have time to submit the file at the last moment, but preparing a good work in the last hours is almost impossible. Allocate 3–4 days for working on the text and one day for checking and submitting.
Essentially, you need to:
- write an annotation;
- identify keywords;
- format according to requirements and check the bibliography;
- fit within 60,000 characters.
If there are more characters, you will have to shorten:
- Delete fragments that do not affect the overall idea of the research.
- Voluminous details can be moved to a separate document (Google Docs/spreadsheet) and provide a link in the appendix, if appropriate.
Top 3 Common Mistakes in Research Papers
Igor Borisovich Orlov , member of the organizing committee for "Political Science"
Unfortunately, even good works are not free from inaccuracies and errors.
- In first place — literature review by the principle of "who wrote what on the topic". Instead, an analytical review is needed: the logic of knowledge accumulation on your problem, not just a list of authors.
- In second place — methodology description "for the sake of it", when the declared methods are almost invisible in the text itself. This is especially visible where discourse analysis is declared, but in fact it's just "thoughtful reading".
- In third place — conclusions that are a copy of chapter conclusions. In the conclusion, you need to show what the research gives to science and what prospects it opens, not repeat what has already been said.