Is it a good idea to omit the structure of a paper from the introduction? [duplicate]

Question

It seems that most every paper – at least in my field of computing – has the same structure for its introduction; first comes a global prosaic overview of the problem, then a bullet-point list of contributions, and the final paragraph of the introduction summarizes the structure of the paper. Invariably, these paragraphs start with a sentence like "The remainder of this work is structured as follows..." and then describe the structure of the paper.

Personally, I never really read these paragraphs, and I do not particularly enjoy writing them; they rarely provide information that is useful to me personally, and they take up precious space in papers. If it were up to me, I would prefer to skip this paragraph both when reading and writing a paper. However, such paragraphs are ubiquitous in manuscripts in my field, and deviating from the norm can lead to unintended side-effects.

I am often tempted to take one of the following three approaches:

1. Omit the structure of the paper from the introduction entirely.
2. Incorporate the structure of the paper in the more prosaic part of the introduction: "Therefore, a solution to problem XYZ (which we describe in Section II) would be beneficial to ABC."
3. Incorporate the structure of the paper in the list of contributions: "We show that XYZ holds (Sections IV and V)."

I would be very interested in learning more about academics' opinions about the "structure of the paper" paragraph. Do you see it as a critical piece of the paper or is it a waste of space? Are there good alternatives to it? Does it hurt the chances of a paper being accepted if the structure paragraph is missing?

Answer 1

This is easy to test and will apply to conventions in your field. Write the introduction as you like, omitting the structure phrases if you like.

If no reviewer objects then it isn't a problem. But if they do, be prepared to respond. They well help you understand whether it is a good idea or not.

I think you are suggesting that some things are just done out of habit and institutional inertia. That is almost certainly true. But if those little "hints" are useful to readers then reviewers might notice, especially if the structure of the paper is a bit different from the common case.

It is unlikely to, of itself, result in a rejection and the first submission normally needs some editing in the common case, so you lose little by writing it as you think it should be written.

If you use other stylistic hints, such as bolding section headers, the structure should be easy to see in any case.