Related work is not a history lesson.
It is an argument for why your paper needed to exist.
"MF was proposed by Koren et al. (2009). Neural CF was proposed by He et al. (2017). LightGCN simplified GCN for RS (He et al., 2020). Recently, LLM-based RS has emerged (Zhao et al., 2024)."
This is a bibliography. It tells the reviewer nothing about why your paper needed to exist.
"Graph-based methods (LightGCN, NGCF) capture collaborative structure but lack semantic knowledge. LLM-based methods (KAPING, G-Retriever) add semantics but treat items as text, ignoring their relational structure. Neither addresses the interaction between structure and semantics — which we resolve."
The rule: Every paragraph in your related work must end with "but none of these address X — which we solve." If a paragraph doesn't do this, it's padding.
Group papers by the limitation they share, not the year they appeared. Typical RS related work sections:
Describe what the group does well → what they all share as a limitation → transition to the next group that partially addresses it → but still doesn't solve your specific problem.
Each paragraph is a stepping stone that narrows the gap until only your method fills it. The reader should feel the gap tightening with each paragraph.
Every paragraph ends with "but none address X — which we solve." No exceptions.
Group by shared limitation. Let the gap tighten across paragraphs until only you fill it.
Describe prior work at its best. A strawmanned related work section signals weak confidence in your own contribution.
Next: M6 · L4 — Writing the Method Section