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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/49066
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/49066
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

In this answer, I am going to explain to you why you shouldn't announce what you are about to write anyway.

It is boring and redundant and a waste of real estate on the page.

Start with a claim, or a key observation. Those can be interesting. Don't talk about your paper in your paper, get to your paper! A sentence saying "The goal of this work is XYZ." can be eliminated without any loss of information. It has to be followed by an explanation of what the heck XYZ is, so beginning with that explanation is better. Fewer words, same quantity of information.

Although such papers are not sales tools, the psychology of writing advertisements does still apply, to academic papers or novels: Readers want to be hooked by the first sentence, interested by the first sentence, and that is going to serve you well, if they are interested in the opening they will be happy to read some less interesting sentences to gain some context and lead them into the discussion or story or article or advertisement.

In advertising, we say that on every sentence the reader is looking for a reason to stop reading and throw it away. The only reason they don't is because you have created a question in their mind, and they are reading to get an answer, or you are saying interesting things that they want to know. Don't give them a reason to give up.

That is less true for academic articles, but the advice is sound. Don't bore them from the first sentence. They probably know what the article is about from your article title and the rest of the context; the journal it was in, the keywords you selected, etc.

Original score: 33