Adding related work to an academic project report

Question

In an academic project report, what phrasing should I use to introduce and explain related work? I have to explain several previous projects; I would like to be clear but also avoid repetition.

I came up with the following two examples:

Previous research in this area has focused on the following: ...

In this section we discuss related work...

What question are you asking? I'm not getting this. (Also, you may want to define "best".) — Goodbye Stack Exchange, Apr 30 '12 at 16:51
I believe that he's asking the best way to segue between his words and when he's about to start talking about someone else's words that were seen in another academic paper. — Nathan C. Tresch, Apr 30 '12 at 17:04
I think I understand the question; I've edited appropriately. Noah, hope this is good :) — Standback, Apr 30 '12 at 17:07
@noah - Are you using APA or MLA? Or another style guide altogether? — Goodbye Stack Exchange, Apr 30 '12 at 17:08
@NeilFein- Well, I am not really sure. It has an Abstract, Introduction, Related Work, Implementation, Experiments, Conclusion and Future Work. I think I would put it under APA. — Noah, Apr 30 '12 at 22:02
Your school/department/journal should have the style guide specified somewhere. If it's too early to tell (i.e., you're working on a paper and don't know where it's going to be published), you can make some good guesses with the information in this question. — Goodbye Stack Exchange, May 01 '12 at 01:24
@NeilFein- Alright. It's APA. Thanks for pointing that out, though. — Noah, May 01 '12 at 02:10

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 17 '12 at 21:15

1

"Previous research in this area has focused on..." sounds perfectly fine as an intro to a "related research" section. You may want to make it clear whether it's your previous work or other research in the area that you're building on.

answered Sep 17 '12 at 21:15

Kelly Tessena Keck

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Adding related work to an academic project report

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