Even if you're publishing nothing really new, you can publish something that looks at something in a slightly different way and it can be useful to some people.

Even if you're publishing nothing really new, you can publish something that looks at something in a slightly different way and it can be useful to some people. I agree that a lot of these papers are poorly written, but there's nothing wrong with being unoriginal, not everything has to be groundbreaking. I recommend watching Simon Peyton Jones' talk on how to write a great research paper: http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1464870 http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1464870