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I am a Masters student in Computer Science. I am planning to write two papers. The first is based on computer simulation and queuing theory. I have written its literature review and everything else. The second paper is parallelization of my first paper.

I am just making the code for my first paper parallel in my second paper. The problem is I don't know what to write in the literature review section as this paper is just an extension of my previous paper. I can't write about past attempts at computer simulation and queuing theory because I already wrote about it in my previous paper. I also can't write about previous attempts at parallelization because nobody has tried to parallelize my work before and I don't think it would be relevant to list other parallel speedups in the literature review of my paper. What should I do?

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I think the best approach is to think of them as two completely separate papers. When you write the second paper you should write it as if you have read but not authored the first. You therefore need to add the necessary background and literature review to make it stand on its own. The reason for this is that anyone who finds your (second) paper once published will not necessarily know of the connection, may not have read the first, and will need a reasonable introduction to the subject.

So, each paper should be an entity of its own. The only clear case where this may not be necessary is if you publish two papers back to back as part 1 and 2 of a series with the same main title but differing sub-titles. Then it is clear that the papers belong together and you may expect people to note and read both papers to a larger extent.

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  • I was talking about literature review.What do I add in the literature review section of my second paper if all it does is parallelize the first paper's code?
    – zzzzz
    Apr 29, 2013 at 7:31
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    @iOsBoy That is what I am talking about as well. You need to provide a literature review (background) that is appropriate for the second paper and necessary to make it stand on its own. The basic thinking is that each paper is its own entity. Readers will not necessarily read the papers in the order you wrote them. But, you should of course make the coupling between them clear in the papers. Apr 29, 2013 at 7:36
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    tl;dr: Lock the first paper out of sight. Write the second paper from scratch, including the literature review. Add cross-references.
    – JeffE
    Apr 29, 2013 at 16:15

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