Related-work writing

Inputs

LITERATURE.md (related-work matrix from lit-scout), refs.bib (verified), the objective equation and framework from the introduction/overview.

Procedure

1. Choose axes. From the literature matrix pick one or two axes along which all relevant works improve (what they reduce, what structure they exploit). Write them as a pair of contrasting verbs if possible ("restricts where" / "restricts how"; "fewer rounds" / "fewer bytes").
2. Place each work. For each work record: axis, method in one line, cost formula in its own notation translated to ours, scope restrictions (†/‡), venue'year. Verify each cost formula against the original (page/section noted in LITERATURE.md). Where later papers paraphrase an earlier paper's bottleneck, compare with the earlier paper's own experiments section.
3. Build the table (templates/paper/sections/related_table.tex style): grouped rows, last row \textbf{Ours}, caption defines all symbols.
4. Write the paragraphs: lead-in (3 sentences) → classic works on axis 1 (one sentence each, shared limitation last) → recent works (two contrasting bullets) → bridge (\textbf{Insight from ...}) → \textbf{Our work.} (five sentences) → complementary approaches → concurrent work.
5. Tone filter: remove "unfortunately", "fail", "naive", "suffer", "only"; replace with factual scope statements ("... assumes ... rather than showing ...", "... instantiates a single case, leaving open ...").
6. Self-citation check: own prior work in third person, critiqued like others.
7. Coverage check with lit-scout: the last 12–18 months of ePrint for the topic keywords; any close concurrent work gets a labelled paragraph.
8. Bib hygiene: published versions over preprints when they exist; ePrint entries with the exact author list of the ePrint page; braces around acronyms in titles for splncs04. (Bib verification itself is owned by lit-scout.)

Placement in the paper

• IACR LNCS: usually §1.1 inside the introduction.
• Design papers: a "State of the art" subsection in the constraints/design section, one paragraph per competitor: who → technical core → its trade-off; last sentence points to the performance comparison section.
• Security conferences: often a separate section near the end; keep a short positioning paragraph in the introduction anyway.

Anti-patterns

• A chronological list of summaries without a thesis.
• Characterising a prior work by a number from a secondary source.
• A table whose "Ours" row differs from the abstract formula.
• Omitting the strongest baseline because it is inconvenient (reviewers will name it).

Output

paper/sections/related.tex, table in the same file or related_table.tex, verification notes appended to LITERATURE.md.