Source Bibliography
This document lists all authoritative sources used to build this skill, organized by topic.
Origin & Attribution
The writing philosophy, citation verification workflow, and conference reference materials in this skill were originally compiled by Orchestra Research as the ml-paper-writing skill (January 2026), drawing on Neel Nanda's blog post and other researcher guides listed below. The skill was integrated into hermes-agent by teknium (January 2026), then expanded into the current research-paper-writing pipeline by SHL0MS (April 2026, PR #4654), which added experiment design, execution monitoring, iterative refinement, and submission phases while preserving the original writing philosophy and reference files.
Writing Philosophy & Guides
Primary Sources (Must-Read)
| Source |
Author |
URL |
Key Contribution |
| Highly Opinionated Advice on How to Write ML Papers |
Neel Nanda |
Alignment Forum |
Narrative framework, "What/Why/So What", time allocation |
| How to Write ML Papers |
Sebastian Farquhar (DeepMind) |
Blog |
5-sentence abstract formula, structure templates |
| A Survival Guide to a PhD |
Andrej Karpathy |
Blog |
Paper structure recipe, contribution framing |
| Heuristics for Scientific Writing |
Zachary Lipton (CMU) |
Blog |
Word choice, section balance, intensifier warnings |
| Advice for Authors |
Jacob Steinhardt (UC Berkeley) |
Blog |
Precision over brevity, consistent terminology |
| Easy Paper Writing Tips |
Ethan Perez (Anthropic) |
Blog |
Micro-level tips, apostrophe unfolding, clarity tricks |
Foundational Scientific Writing
| Source |
Author |
URL |
Key Contribution |
| The Science of Scientific Writing |
Gopen & Swan |
PDF |
Topic/stress positions, old-before-new, 7 principles |
| Summary of Science of Scientific Writing |
Lawrence Crowl |
Summary |
Condensed version of Gopen & Swan |
Additional Resources
| Source |
URL |
Key Contribution |
| How To Write A Research Paper In ML |
Blog |
Practical walkthrough, LaTeX tips |
| A Recipe for Training Neural Networks |
Karpathy Blog |
Debugging methodology that translates to paper structure |
| ICML Paper Writing Best Practices |
ICML |
Official venue guidance |
| Bill Freeman's Writing Slides |
MIT |
Visual guide to paper structure |
Official Conference Guidelines
NeurIPS
| Document |
URL |
Purpose |
| Paper Checklist Guidelines |
NeurIPS |
16-item mandatory checklist |
| Reviewer Guidelines 2025 |
NeurIPS |
Evaluation criteria, scoring |
| Style Files |
NeurIPS |
LaTeX templates |
ICML
| Document |
URL |
Purpose |
| Paper Guidelines |
ICML |
Submission requirements |
| Reviewer Instructions 2025 |
ICML |
Review form, evaluation |
| Style & Author Instructions |
ICML |
Formatting specifications |
ICLR
| Document |
URL |
Purpose |
| Author Guide 2026 |
ICLR |
Submission requirements, LLM disclosure |
| Reviewer Guide 2025 |
ICLR |
Review process, evaluation |
ACL/EMNLP
| Document |
URL |
Purpose |
| ACL Style Files |
GitHub |
LaTeX templates |
| ACL Rolling Review |
ARR |
Submission process |
AAAI
| Document |
URL |
Purpose |
| Author Kit 2026 |
AAAI |
Templates and guidelines |
COLM
| Document |
URL |
Purpose |
| Template |
GitHub |
LaTeX templates |
Citation APIs & Tools
APIs
| API |
Documentation |
Best For |
| Semantic Scholar |
Docs |
ML/AI papers, citation graphs |
| CrossRef |
Docs |
DOI lookup, BibTeX retrieval |
| arXiv |
Docs |
Preprints, PDF access |
| OpenAlex |
Docs |
Open alternative, bulk access |
Python Libraries
| Library |
Install |
Purpose |
semanticscholar |
pip install semanticscholar |
Semantic Scholar wrapper |
arxiv |
pip install arxiv |
arXiv search and download |
habanero |
pip install habanero |
CrossRef client |
Citation Verification
Visualization & Formatting
Figure Creation
| Tool |
URL |
Purpose |
| PlotNeuralNet |
GitHub |
TikZ neural network diagrams |
| SciencePlots |
GitHub |
Publication-ready matplotlib |
| Okabe-Ito Palette |
Reference |
Colorblind-safe colors |
LaTeX Resources
| Resource |
URL |
Purpose |
| Overleaf Templates |
Overleaf |
Online LaTeX editor |
| BibLaTeX Guide |
CTAN |
Modern citation management |
Research on AI Writing & Hallucination
| Source |
URL |
Key Finding |
| AI Hallucinations in Citations |
Enago |
~40% error rate |
| Hallucination in AI Writing |
PMC |
Types of citation errors |
| NeurIPS 2025 AI Report |
ByteIota |
100+ hallucinated citations |
Quick Reference by Topic
For Narrative & Structure
→ Start with: Neel Nanda, Sebastian Farquhar, Andrej Karpathy
For Sentence-Level Clarity
→ Start with: Gopen & Swan, Ethan Perez, Zachary Lipton
For Word Choice & Style
→ Start with: Zachary Lipton, Jacob Steinhardt
For Conference-Specific Requirements
→ Start with: Official venue guidelines (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL)
For Citation Management
→ Start with: Semantic Scholar API, CrossRef, citation-workflow.md
For Reviewer Expectations
→ Start with: Venue reviewer guidelines, reviewer-guidelines.md
For Human Evaluation
→ Start with: human-evaluation.md, Prolific/MTurk documentation
For Non-Empirical Papers (Theory, Survey, Benchmark, Position)
→ Start with: paper-types.md
Human Evaluation & Annotation
| Source |
URL |
Key Contribution |
| Datasheets for Datasets |
Gebru et al., 2021 (arXiv) |
Structured dataset documentation framework |
| Model Cards for Model Reporting |
Mitchell et al., 2019 (arXiv) |
Structured model documentation framework |
| Crowdsourcing and Human Computation |
Survey |
Best practices for crowdsourced annotation |
| Krippendorff's Alpha |
Wikipedia |
Inter-annotator agreement metric reference |
| Prolific |
prolific.co |
Recommended crowdsourcing platform for research |
Ethics & Broader Impact
| Source |
URL |
Key Contribution |
| ML CO2 Impact |
mlco2.github.io |
Compute carbon footprint calculator |
| NeurIPS Broader Impact Guide |
NeurIPS |
Official guidance on impact statements |
| ACL Ethics Policy |
ACL |
Ethics requirements for NLP research |
