Research articles in computer science follow a format common to many sciences: They begin with an abstract summarizing the entirety of the research process, then go into a chronological account of the research, from theory to application to results to conclusions.
One section I’ve noticed in computer science articles that is less typical is a “Motivation” section, which explains why exactly this research is being done. This illustrates a view held in the computer programming discourse community that “purpose” is the most important aspect and all research must have a specific use. The above abstract emphasizes the functionality of the research first and foremost. In some other disciplines like biology, research can be done purely as a method of data accumulation, so that patterns in the body of research can be discerned afterwards. Computer science papers do not research this way, and are very goal-oriented. This can lead to innovations being overlooked, if they don’t have an immediate use.
The institutions that publish research papers in computer science are sometimes linked with the corporations that dominate the job market for the field, but can also be university-owned. Google and Microsoft both have a research department, but premier research-publishing institutions also include arXiv, which is linked with the Cornell University Library, and the Association for Computing Machinery, a not-for-profit organization of programmers.
When research is done, it becomes information for professionals in the field to use, and the process of turning information into knowledge into research begins again.
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