Claim 1: Any strong paper should possess at least some of the following characteristics:
- Solve a significant/important problem (such as being of practical relevance, having a broad impact, solving a long-standing problem)
- Come up with a significant conjecture (whose solution would be important)
- Use a sophisticated/surprising solution method
- Say something non-obvious/counter-intuitive
- Correct a popular misconception
- Shed new light/initiate a new line of research
- Demonstrate significant improvement over state of the art
- Make a valuable contribution to further research (e.g. present new metrics/models, provide new experimental data, present observations that clearly merit further study)
- Present convincing results (e.g. by validating simplified analysis with realistic experiments)
Claim 2: the following features are must-haves in a good paper:
- Demonstrate thoroughness and effort
- Be technically rigorous
- Present material in a clear, compelling manner
It would be nice to have some kind of a checklist like the above when writing a paper, to gauge its quality for oneself before submitting it for external review...
