Some time ago, a reviewer made a suggestion in a report on one of my submitted journal articles that I have used many times since. The reviewer offered what was almost a standardized recipe for writing a good academic paper introduction. Researchers often complain about peer reviewers. I would like to share this “magic formula,” which I found exceptionally useful.

“Perhaps you can try using the 4 x 4 introduction structure which someone once shared with me. A standard for a good introduction is four paragraphs with approximately 4 sentences or so each. The first paragraph describes your topic and it can be provocative but must show what we already know about the topic. In the second paragraph you use a helicopter perspective to sketch out what we don’t know as well as the gap or missing element you will address. The third paragraph explains what you do in your paper (e.g. I develop a cross-level model of xxx) drawing from xxxx). The last paragraph explains how and why this is a significant contribution.” — Reviewer 2