What (grammatical) tense to use when doing reference in a paper?

Question

For example, A published a paper with title B in 2000. Then, in my paper: > A says / said that [C works / worked out perfectly]. and >B illustrates / illustrated that [C works / worked out perfectly]. As the content between [] is derived from the original paper, the tense may vary. The pair of the simple present tense (in the source) and the simple past tense (in my current paper) is used as an example.

Answer 1

Once your paper is written the activities are in the past. For example, if your introduction were written as "this paper aims to explain...." You should correctly write it as "this paper aimed to explain...."