How to write an introduction for a research paper

A research paper introduction is arguably one of its critical parts. It’s designed to grab the reader’s attention, introduce the topic of the paper, and highlight its importance, as well as provide the readers with a basic roadmap to your piece. And despite all these critical objectives, introductions are often overlooked and deemed unimportant by students, completed as an afterthought. In this post, we’ll try to change your mind about the introduction for research paper and provide an actionable guide on how to write an introduction paragraph for a research paper quickly and efficiently.


Tip from SpeedyPaper:

Leave writing a research paper introduction for last when the rest of the paper is done. This way, you’ll be able to summarize what you’ve already done instead of agonizing over the blank page.

Writing an introduction for a research paper: step-by-step guide

To make writing a research paper introduction easier, let’s break it into small, manageable chunks. Completing each of them will only take you a few minutes, and in the end, you’ll have a perfect opening for your research paper.

By the way, if you need more pointers on how to write an outline for a research paper, check out our detailed guide.

Step 1. State your topic

Whichever paper you’re working on, you must always keep the word count requirements at the forefront of your mind. To make the most of it, start the introduction for research paper by boldly stating your topic. You can use a question, a fact, or a number to make the opening more exciting and turn it into a hook like you would use in an essay.

For example, you could start a research paper on the deterioration of ChatGPT like this:

The number of correct answers to Math problems by ChatGPT plummeted from 98% to 2% within six months.

Tip from SpeedyPaper:

Tailor the opening of your paper to the prompt. For example, an argumentative piece can open with a controversial question, but hard facts would work better for a paper based on empirical research.

Step 2. Provide background information on the issue

Once you’ve established the general direction of the paper, you need to provide the readers with a big picture of the issue and walk them through your reasoning for choosing it. Think of this part of the research paper introduction as a condensed literature review, complete with relevant citations. Instead of rewriting every relevant piece of data you find, synthesize the information concisely to give every reader, even those completely unfamiliar with the issue, a solid idea of what you’re talking about.

Like the whole introduction, the length of this part depends on the overall word count of your research paper. Still, it will probably be the biggest chunk of the opening. Let’s continue our example from earlier:

According to recent studies (Chen, 2023), the accuracy of OpenAI-powered GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 dropped significantly over the course of 2023, affecting the responses concerning Math and Programming. At the same time, researchers (Shumailov, 2023) warn that using generated content for teaching GMM, VAE, and LLM models can lead to model collapse within a few thousand generations.

Tip from SpeedyPaper:

Your choice of the works cited within the introduction for research paper can tell readers a lot about your expertise and work ethic. So make sure to choose relevant and respected sources with varying, but objective takes on the problem.

Step 3. Highlight the relevance and objective of the study

After you’ve covered the basics with background information, it’s time to narrow it down to the actual problem you’re working on. You can achieve this by highlighting the gaps within the existing research and its limitations. You should also emphasize the relevance of the issue within the research paper introduction, answering the questions like ”Why should anyone care?” or “What’s in it for the reader?”.

Here’s the relevant part of our introduction to a research paper example:

Despite the results presented in these studies, the LLM relevance and efficiency metrics could not be considered universal. Moreover, the researchers do not provide proof of the overall deterioration of ChatGPT responses to generic questions.

Tip from SpeedyPaper:

The secret to how to write a research paper introduction is thinking of it as a funnel. You start with the big picture (the wide end of the funnel) and gradually narrow it down to the point—your research question or thesis statement.

Step 4. Formulate a research question

You could say that all the previous steps were leading up to this—the core of your research paper introduction. Depending on the type of paper you’re working on, it can take on the form of a thesis statement (suitable for argumentative research papers), a research question, or a hypothesis (suitable for research papers based on empirical data). Think of it as the ultimate goal of your paper, a statement you want to prove, or a question you wish to answer.

Here are a couple of examples that could work for our introduction of a research paper:

This paper argues that generated content may be the culprit of deteriorated ChatGPT response quality and support the need for broad regulation of the proliferation of generated content.

or

It is hypothesized that the proliferation of generated content affects the response quality of ChatGPT rather than its interactions with users.

Step 5. Outline the paper

Although it’s not a mandatory part of our step-by-step guide on how to write a good introduction for a research paper, a short overview of the overall structure can help readers better understand the layout and know what to expect from the rest of the piece. Regardless of the scope of your assignment, this mini-outline should be no more than a couple of sentences long. You don’t need to go into much detail, but you should always use the present tense instead of the future, as it’s more appropriate for the academic writing style.

Here’s what this section of the research paper introduction could look like:

This paper first covers the standardized tests for assessing the LLM response relevance, then implements these methods to evaluate ChatGPT responses on various topics. Finally, the paper considers the relationship between content used in training and the quality of the responses.

Research paper introduction examples

Now that we’ve gone over how to write a research paper introduction and explained each step in detail, let’s see a sample introduction for research paper based on our recommendations:

The number of correct answers to Math problems by ChatGPT plummeted from 98% to 2% within six months. According to recent studies (Chen, 2023), the accuracy of OpenAI-powered GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 dropped significantly over the course of 2023, affecting the responses concerning Math and Programming. At the same time, researchers (Shumailov, 2023) warn that using generated content for teaching GMM, VAE, and LLM models can lead to model collapse within a few thousand generations. Despite the results presented in these studies, the LLM relevance and efficiency metrics could not be considered universal. Moreover, the researchers do not provide proof of the overall deterioration of ChatGPT responses to generic questions. This paper argues that generated content may be the culprit of deteriorated ChatGPT response quality and support the need for broad regulation of the proliferation of generated content. This paper first covers the standardized tests for assessing the LLM response relevance, then implements these methods to evaluate ChatGPT responses on various topics. Finally, the paper considers the relationship between content used in training and the quality of the responses.

You can find more examples of research paper introductions across sample papers in the SpeedyPaper database. And if you decide you need more assistance with this task, feel free to reach out for online paper help.

Final thoughts

Now you know how to write an introduction to a research paper, and with our step-by-step guide and writing tips, you should breeze through the task. But if you stumbled across our post too late to finish the paper on time, you can always get professional help. All it takes is typing “Write my research paper introduction” in live chat, and our support managers will get in touch and walk you through the process of ordering a chapter or buying term paper wholesale. SpeedyPaper experts specialize in writing various essays for money, so you can be sure your piece will be well-researched, original, perfectly formatted, and delivered to your inbox right on time.