Hello Dr. X

To introduce myself, I am Y, in institute Z.

I have recently published some work on A [this should be a short description, not just a title. do keep it short though (1-2 short sentences)].

I enjoyed reading your work on B. [now 1-3 short feedback sentences. don't go too much into detail, but make sure it shows you read the work]

I think my work might be of interest to you, too. If you do find time to read it, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

My work is less than f pages/g characters (one of those two. don't use exact numbers for characters but round up to the next good looking number. don't use a font size of 8 and a big textblob without any line breaks and say it's only two pages long though ;)) long and really shouldn't take a lot of time to read through.

Link: Human interaction with cats [also as attachment in pdf form]

This would be a mail that might make me read what you wrote. (strongly depending on how relevant/interesting your description actually was)

There are several differences to your initial draft:

• No apologizing: You apologize when you did something wrong. Apologizing while you do it is an odd thing to consider polite, especially when you're apologizing for bothering someone as that person having to read through your apology is actually wasting more of his time ;) Also, it makes me feel like you're asking something unreasonable. If it wasn't, why would you have to apologize?

• Don't mention it's highly relevant to his work: When he reads your short description, he will know if it's relevant to his work or not. You should never tell someone what is or isn't relevant to him, especially when you're trying to get them to do something for you.

• Return the favor: I'm assuming that you did read his work. Otherwise how would you know it was 'highly relevant'? Also, if you're asking him to read your work and give you feedback, it's nice if you do the same for him. If you are coming from a... let's call it lower position though, just mention what you found interesting about it and don't give actual criticism. Bonus points if you mention parts that overlap with your work.

• Attachment: Now this point is debatable, as some people are more careful with attachments than with links, but for me it's the other way around. If someone sends me a link it might very well decrease the chance of me reading it. But like I said, different people are different. You also need to make sure that your attachment has a sensible name and is of course virus free if you do choose to go this route.

• Needed time: This part is based on some info in one of your comments. Since your work doesn't appear to be very long, you should definitely mention that. If someone wrote me a mail asking for feedback on work they did on something (in academia) I would expect it to be a full paper with complicated calculations I'd have to understand. Meaning a huge commitment of time. So that one sentence really makes a lot of difference. That being said, I feel like page/character count is sligthly better than telling me how much time I will need to read it. You have no idea how fast I read or how much I have to look up. I do.

I also think that if the link is interesting enough, then putting a tracking method in there is fine too?

No! Apart from spam filters, if I find out, I will never follow any link you send me in the future again, no matter how interesting your link was. If you really feel the need to do this, at the very least tell me so upfront, before I follow your link.

It's also very difficult to measure interesting enough.