Target Audience

Target audience. The target audience is the group of people to whom the paper is addressed. Given the purpose, who then is the target audience? Like the contribution, this is not always obvious so it pays to include statements like “This paper will interest …“. Stating the target audience also helps a reader decide if the paper relates to them. Again experienced reviewers look for it and note its absence.

Everyone is no-one. You might think the best target audience is “everyone” but for scientific research that usually translates into no target audience, i.e. the target is no-one. It is like saying you love everyone when asked if you love your wife. So try to be more specific and pick a target audience

Tailoring. Having a target audience also helps the author tailor how the paper is written, e. g. a paper for programmers can have code examples not useful to designers. Decide the target audience in advance so you can tailor the paper to them.

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