ABSTRACT
The Introduction to a full-length paper should be sufficiently long to allow you (i) to place your research in the context of earlier relevant work by others, (ii) to explain your reasons for performing your study, (iii) to mention the methods that you used in your study, and (iv) to provide an indication of the conclusions that you will draw from your results in the Discussion at the end of your paper. However, you need to avoid writing an Introduction that is too long. A long Introduction is appropriate for a dissertation (also known as a thesis) because the doctoral candidate needs to show that she has a very thorough grounding in her field and a full understanding of its history, but the Introduction to a research paper is not intended to show the extent and depth of your knowledge of the field. The researchers who are likely to read your paper are unlikely to be novices in your field and they will not need to be led through its entire history since the earliest experiments by, for example, an obscure Frenchman in the late 1880s. The purpose of the Introduction is to allow those who are at least somewhat familiar with your area of research to orient themselves and to prepare themselves to follow your train of thought, your experiments, and your conclusions from them.
