Writing a research paper for publication structure and recommendations (computer science)

Speakers:
Tawfeeq Alsanoosy– Taibah University
Writing a Research Paper for Publication:
Structure and Recommendations (Computer Science)

Recap
◆ How to look for top-ranked venue! and the valuation
metrics; and
◆ Is my work ready to publish in the top-raked venue?
Copyright © 2020 Tawfeeq Alsanoosy

Recommendations
1. Find a worthy (practical, industrial) problem. Problem leads to publications. So, you
need to Read …. Read …. READ;
2. Write a draft;
3. Choose the best-fit journal/conference (considering type of conference/journal,..);
4. Understand the submission process (Double blind peer review, length, Referencing
style, Formatting, .. , etc.);
5. Write the paper;
6. Proofreading/plagiarism;
7. Ask for Feedback from Others in Your Field;
8. Review and read;
9. Take a Break;
10. Review, review, review ... and review;
11. Criticise your idea and writing;
12. Review and submit.

You have a problem and you have some
interesting results that you would like to
tell the world about it (your awesome
results).
Assumption

◆ Please, write in one or two sentences the idea of your research in the chat
box (In English or Arabic)
What is your research about ?

Different structure of a paper: Examples
CLASSIC
◆ Title
◆ Abstract
◆ Keywords
◆ Introduction
◆ Background
◆ Related works
◆ Methodology
◆ Results
◆ Discussion
◆ Conclusions
◆ References
◆ Title
◆ Abstract
◆ Keywords
◆ Introduction
(Background)
◆ Related works
◆ Methodology
◆ Results and Discussion
◆ Conclusions
◆ References
◆ Title
◆ Abstract
◆ Keywords
◆ Introduction
◆ Methodology
◆ Results
◆ Discussion
◆ Related works
◆ Conclusions
◆ References
◆ Title
◆ Abstract
◆ Keywords
◆ Introduction (Background
and Related works)
◆ Methodology
◆ Results and Discussion
◆ Conclusions
◆ References

Different structure of a paper: Examples
◆ Title
◆ Abstract
◆ Keywords
◆ Introduction
◆ Related works
◆ Methodology
◆ Experiment and Results
◆ Discussion
◆ Conclusions
◆ References
◆ Title
◆ Abstract
◆ Keywords
◆ Introduction
◆ Problem definition
◆ Methodology
◆ Experiment and
Results
◆ Case Study
◆ Conclusions
◆ References
Depend on many factors (Conference/journal requirements/common style, type of research,
argument, the story wants to tell, problem try to solve, methodology, the results emerged, etc. )
◆ .
◆ .
◆ .
◆ .
◆ …other structures
◆ .
◆ .
◆ .
◆ .
◆ .
◆ Title
◆ Abstract
◆ Keywords
◆ Introduction
◆ Related works
◆ Problem definition
◆ Methodology
◆ Experiment and Results
◆ Conclusions
◆ References

Some of the contacts are taken from Scott slides
http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~mack/temp/HCIERP_slides_all.zip

What is
messing
here
?????
Tinwala, H., &
MacKenzie, I. S.
(2010). Eyes-free
text entry with
error correction
on touchscreen
mobile devices.
Proc NordiCHI
2010, 511-520,
New York: ACM.
In this slides,
the method
section refers
to the research
methodology
section

Title
◆ Every word tells!
◆ The title must…
◆ Identify the subject matter of the paper
◆ Narrow the scope of the work
◆ A title should be neither too broad nor too narrow
◆ The title is critical as it informs the readers what is the question being examined and
what benefit they will get from the paper
Eyes-free Text Entry with Error Correction on Touchscreen Mobile Devices
Narrows the scopeSubject matter
(in a general sense)

Title
◆ A title may include a sub-title, usually following a separator, such as a colon (no
rules here)
◆ A title may strive to catch the reader’s attention
11
◆ Examples of a Paper’s Title
 MEgo2Vec: Embedding Matched Ego Networks for User Alignment Across Social
Networks
 SSDMV: Semi-Supervised Deep Social Spammer Detection by Multi-view Data Fusion
 Formal vs. Case-Study-Based Approaches for the Identification of Cultural Influences in
Requirements Engineering
 Big data analytics in supply chain management: A state-of-the-art literature review
 Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering: Preliminary Results from
Interviews with Researchers

Authors and Affiliations
◆ … follow the title
◆ Format as per the template file
12
Title
Authors and affiliations
Details matter! Ensure the font
family, font size, font style, and
positioning are correct.

Abstract
◆ Written last
◆ Typically a word limit (100 to 250 words)
◆ A single paragraph, no citations
◆ The abstract’s mission is to tell the reader…
1. What is the problem
2. The important of the problem
3. How you tray to solve it
4. The main result
5. How it will contribute/benefit
◆ Common fault:
◆ Treating the abstract as an introduction to the subject matter (don’t!)
14

Abstractexamples
15
Example 1: Requirements Engineering (RE) activities require intensive
communication to ensure an accurate elicitation and documentation of
clients’ requirements. Culture influences the way in which individuals
communicate; therefore, RE activities could be strongly influenced by
individuals’ cultures. This paper presents a framework for examining and
mapping between cultural influences and RE activities. To construct the
framework, we adopted Hofstede's model and conducted 41 interviews
with RE practitioners from different domains and across two cultures,
complemented by 30 follow-up interviews to consolidate the collected
data. The framework demonstrates mapping between the cultural index
values (as per Hofstede’s model) and the identified cultural influences on
RE activities. The framework is intended to help RE practitioners
determine the cultural influences they may encounter, and to overcome
potential cultural issues by applying mitigation strategies. The evolution
of the framework showed significant statistical results.
Example 2 : Alharthi, Ahmed D., Maria Spichkova, and Margaret Hamilton. "Sustainability requirements for eLearning systems: a systematic
literature review and analysis." Requirements Engineering 24.4 (2019): 523-543.
Example 2 : eLearning systems have become a very important
part of teaching, both as web-based systems for online
education and as auxiliary tools for face-to-face study, where
they provide an additional learning support for on-campus
learners. To insure the sustainability of an eLearning system
on both individual and social levels, we have to cover many
aspects of sustainability requirements: human, technical,
economic, and environmental. This paper provides a
systematic literature review of the sustainability meta-
requirements for eLearning systems to identify open problems
and to present the state of the art of this research area. We
analysed 124 papers, so we identified 18 high-level
sustainability requirements for eLearning systems.
Example 1: Alsanoosy, Tawfeeq, Maria Spichkova, and James Harland. "A Framework for Identifying Cultural Influences on Requirements
Engineering Activities." PACIS. 2020.

Abstractexamples
16
Example 3: This paper focuses on the system requirements and
architecture w.r.t. their decomposition and refinement: how the
refinement-based verification can be used to optimize verification
process, and which influences it has on the specification process.
We introduce here specification decomposition methods, applying
which ones can not only to keep the specification readable and
manageable, but also find out a number of inconsistencies and
under specifications during specification phase as well, without
starting a formal verification process.
Example 4 : Ishak, Noor Azniza, et al. "Emotional intelligence and psychographic profiles of the potential first class students." Asian Social
Science 9.17 (2013): 247-258.
Example 4 : The study examined the correlation between
emotional intelligence dimensions and psychographic
attributes among Potential First Class students. The
study also explored the differences between age and
ethnicity factors on the level of psychographics attributes
among 424 potential first class students (69 males and
355 females).The result showed significant relationship
between emotional intelligence dimensions as well as
significant correlation between psychographics
attributes. Furthermore, significant relationship was
found between emotional intelligence construct and
psychographics attributes. In addition, the results
showed that there were differences on the level of
psychographics attributes based on the age and ethnicity
factors. Lastly, the study recommended that emotional
intelligence, and psychological constructs are important
factors that could improve student success, especially
for the university students.
Example 3: Spichkova, Maria. "Architecture: Requirements+ decomposition+ refinement." Softwaretechnik-Trends 31.4 (2011): 1-4..

Keywords
◆ Used for database indexing and
searching
◆ Chosen by the author(s)
◆ Important ????
◇ The paper comes high on
the list of any keyword
search that potential readers
conduct in databases
18

The introduction
here covers the
background and
the related work.
Should not be
that long

Introduction
◆ Opening section provides an overview for the history and current state of the art.
◆ Headings vary (e.g., Introduction, Background, …)
◆ Gives the context for the research (the topic, the motivation, the context of the
study, the scope)
◆ “What?” and “So what?” What is the paper about, and why should the reader care?
◆ Be mindful of the paper length, it is almost always capped. If the paper, after
completion, is too long the introduction is one place to look to trim
20

Expected content
◆ Define the problem
◆ Some background to understand the issues
◆ Some technical details of the proposed solution
◆ Motivation for the paper (i.e., why is the topic relevantimportant?),
◆ Related work (briefly you put related work as separate section)
◆ An account of what has not been appropriately addressed by previous researchers in this
context (i.e., what is still missing in this field of research?)
◆ Contribution of the work: A summary sentence stating how the answer of your question
will contribute to the overall field of study
◆ What is novel and interesting about the research?
◆ The solution in brief.
◆ Outline of the paper
21

Examples
22

Background
23
◆ Can be section or sub-section, I prefer to be a separate section
◆ Definition of the main concept
◆ Description of the main concept
◆ Some justification for your selections
◆ How much I need to put… just enough for the reader to understand what is in
the following sections

Background: DO NOT DO IT
24
 Provide unnecessary background information
 Exaggerate the importance of the work (e.g., give a long list of the importance)
 Fail to make clear what research questions the paper is trying to answer

Related work
25
◆ Can be section or sub-section, I
prefer to be new section
◆ The most important related
works
◆ Missing the most important
related works is risky
◆ How your work is different
from them
◆ Discuss related work (how it is
similar and how it differs)
◆ Include citations (with full
bibliographic information in
reference section at end)
Example: Gmach et al. [21] proposed a profiling approach for the
sustainability of data centres, to quantify energy during design and
operation of data centres. Similarly, Jagroep et al. [22] demonstrated
a software energy profiling to analyse software changes in energy
consumption between releases of a software product. Although both
studies focused on energy consumption that could impact
environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability,
individual and social dimensions were ignored in the measurement.
Our approach covers the five dimensions of sustainability to
quantify the sustainability of any software system, starting from the
requirements phase and continuing over the phase of maintenance
Example: Alharthi, Ahmed D., Maria Spichkova, and Margaret Hamilton.
"Sustainability Profiling of Long-living Software Systems." QuASoQ/TDA@
APSEC. 2016.

Break 
◆ Break: for about 10 minuets
◆ Describe your feeling
26
[1] Sleepy [2] Headache [4] Happy and
enjoying
[3] Boring

27
In this slides,
the method
section refers
to the research
methodology
section

Research methodology
◆ How the study was conducted to prove the research (hypotheses) or answer the research
question.
Research
Methodology
Interview
Experiment
Survey
Mixed of all
Focus
groups
Observation
Examples
ML, DL, Al model
Interview, survey
SLR
Each has different Methodology structure

Research methodology
◆ How the experiment research study was designed and carried out
◆ It must be straight-forward: simple, clear, predictable (like a recipe)
◆ Reviewers tend to pay close attention to the methods section (Allows to scour papers
quickly to find key points “might used Headings”)
◆ Research must be replicable:
◆ provide sufficient information that a skilled researcher could replicate the
experiment if he/she chose
◆ does not require explicit step-by-step instructions but rather references to prior
publications that provide such details
◆ How much is enough? should be given the ability to reproduce the results and the
ability to judge the results.
29

What to write
◆ Describes the experiments in details
◆ A good method section should not
only describe what was done and
how it was done, but it should
justify the experimental design as
well
30

Example: Practical research such as AL, ML
◆ The overall process of the proposed method (e.g., input/output).
◆ Discuss the evaluation part of the proposed solution.
◆ What are the datasets/testbed used to evaluate the proposed solution.
◆ What are the evaluation metrics used to evaluate the proposed solution.
◇ Machine learning (e.g., accuracy, precision, recall etc.).
◇ Performance (e.g., latency, throughput etc.)
◆ What are the baseline & the state-of-the-art solutions that the proposed
solution will be compared.
◇ Discuss these baseline and solutions & why did you select them.
◆ Allow the reviewerresearcher to critically judge a study's overall validity
and reliability.
Ref. Leedy, P.D., 1989. Practical research: Planning and design. Macmillan publishing company.

Example: Apparatus
◆ Describe the system, hardware, software used….
◆ Give all the details necessary (device specification such as number of CPU,
process, Nvidia, GPU, etc.)
◆ If technical details were disclosed in the Introduction, just refer the reader back to
an earlier section (e.g., “the software included the algorithm described in the
preceding section”)
◆ Use screen snaps or photos of the interface/the experiment, if necessary
32

Experiment proceduremethodology
◆ A photo/figure provides clarity about the experimental procedure.
◆ In some papers/disciplines, the experiment can be separated (from the
methodology) in section called "experimental settings".
33
Li, Chaozhuo, et al. "SSDMV: Semi-supervised deep social spammer
detection by multi-view data fusion." 2018 IEEE International Conference on
Data Mining (ICDM). IEEE, 2018.

Example of the Expected Content for Interviews
 Interview: Number of interviews, time and data, where these interviews were
conducted (countries, city, company, office), time of the interviews, …, etc.
 How you recruit participants (Students, Employed, post in social media), were they
volunteers or were they paid?
 Selection criteria: age, gender, year of experience, involved in, …, etc
 Data collection method: Semi-structured interview (closed-ended or open-ended
questions), How you formulate the questions, how the Interview conducted (what
happen before the interview), …, etc.
 Data analysis method: Content analysis/thematic analysis (describe the step by step,
how did you transcribe the data, did you used any tool), when did you start analysing
the data, …, etc.
You need to JUSTIFIED your approach, but you might not write all your justification for
some approaches IN THE PAPER due to the page limit or it can be assumed.
34

35
◆ Describe the datasets used to evaluate your solution.
 Why did you choose them? Are they publicly available or did you collect
them? What are the datasets characteristics (e.g., dimension & number of samples).
◆ Explain the evaluation metrics used to evaluate the proposed solution.
 What are they & why did you choose them.
 Classification -> (e.g., accuracy, precision etc.)
 Regression -> (e.g., Mean Square Error).
◆ Explain the state-of-the-art baselines.
 What are they, why did you choose them & what are their parameters. Did
you tune the parameters or used them as the original paper.
◆ Explain training and testing process.
 Pre-processingData cleaning, Normalisation, split data #% train,#%test etc.
Example of the Expected Content for conducting experiment

Results and Discussion
◆ The most difficult section to be wetting in any paper and for
most of the researches. So, not only you.
◆ Results and discussion can be combined or speared.
◆ The results and discussion section is often quite long
◆ It is simply a presentation of the results obtained
corresponding to the methods described in the previous
section, organized to make them accessible to the reader
◆ Statistical approach and tests
37
8:00 AM
12:00 AM

◆ Give results that address the studies issue.
◇ It is your job to distinguish what is important and relevant from what is
unimportant
◇ An important goal when presenting results is to clearly designate those
results that are new (never before published), while properly citing results
that have been previously published
◆ Visuals (Use generously)
◇ Use as appropriate, to illustrate and create interest
◇ Line charts, bar charts, etc.
◆ Compare (if Results and Discussion are not speared)
◇ Draw comparisons with related work (cited, of course)
38
Results and Discussion

Results
39
Bar chart Line chart
Independent variable
Dependent variable
time

◆ Evidence does not explain itself (provide the interpretation of
the results in the context of the existing knowledge (i.e., how
do the results contribute to what is already known? How far
do they break with existing knowledge and prepare new
ground?).
◆ The purpose of the Discussion section is to explain the results
and show how they help to answer the research questions
posed in the introduction.
◆ This discussion generally passes through the stages of
summarizing the results, discussing whether results are
expected or unexpected, comparing these results to previous
work, interpreting and explaining the results (answer “SO
WHAT”), and informing the reader about limitations of the
methods.42
Discussion

◆ Discuss results that are not presented or not relate to any of the results
(Under no circumstances should the discussion include any speculation
that may not be supported by the results reported)
◆ Lack of organization (e.g., no logical order);
◆ Ignore resultsfactslimitations that do not support the conclusions
◆ Draw conclusions from results without sound logical arguments to back
them up.
43
Discussion: DO NOT DO IT

Threat to validity
◆ Acknowledge and address the mitigation of your work
◆ Can be in separate section or a part of a section (e.g., methodology, discuses)
44
Example 1: We were concerned that cultural bias
might affect our data analysis. To mitigate cultural
bias, we conducted 41 interviews with
practitioners working in 41 different organisations,
targeting a large variety of samples with different
experiences. We also applied thematic analysis to
report only the dominant themes, validated by
follow-up interviews.
Example 1: Alsanoosy, Tawfeeq, Maria Spichkova, and James Harland. "A
Framework for Identifying Cultural Influences on Requirements
Engineering Activities." PACIS. 2020.
Example 2: The basic threat to any SLR is the
likelihood of not discovering all relevant studies. To
minimise this possibility, we developed our research
strategy to include four phases. We manually
inspected four publication avenues to develop the
search string to elicit sets of keywords that were used
in previous studies. Then, we evaluated the search
string and found that it identified the papers selected
originally. In addition, we conducted forward and
backward snowballing to ensure the
comprehensiveness of our investigation. We believe
that the number of unidentified papers (if there are
any) is too small to influence the findings of our
review
Example 2: Alsanoosy, Tawfeeq, Maria Spichkova, and James Harland.
"Cultural influence on requirements engineering activities: a systematic
literature review and analysis." Requirements Engineering (2019): 1-24.

Conclusion
◆ Conclusion is generally short
◇ Summarize what you did
◇ Restate contribution and/or significant findings
◆ TO CONSIDER: Reader might read the introduction, skim through the figures,
then jump to the conclusion. So, provide the key message(s) in the conclusion.
◆ Identify topics for further work (but avoid developing new ideas in the
Conclusion section)
◇ provide a future work for you or future direction for other to work in.
46

Conclusion: DO NOT DO IT
◆ Repeat the abstract as it is;
◆ Introduce new evidence or new arguments;
◆ Repeat the arguments made in the results or the
discussion; and
◆ Discuss limitations of the study.
47

References
◆ Full bibliographic information for papers cited
◆ Format as required (details matter!)
◆ Need to work in (authors names with special characters, capital letter,
missing references, incomplete references )
48

Citation Examples
49
Basic citation:
Do not treat citations as nouns:
Group multiple citations together:
Exception (within parentheses):

Citations and Reference Lists
◆ Format citations and references as required for the type of
submission
◆ Use Management Software
50

Formatting
◆ Details matter! Details…
◆ Punctuation, spelling, capitalization, italics, quotations, abbreviations,
numbers, variables, sentence structure, tone, economy, etc., etc., etc.
◆ Get the formatting right, actually… perfect
◆ So perfect, the reader doesn’t even notice
◆ British or American spelling fine; be consistent
51

Writing for Clarity
◆ The goal in writing a research paper is
communication
◆ Effective communication demands clarity:
◆ A clear mind attacking a clearly stated
problem and producing clearly stated
conclusions1
◆ Easer said than done
52
1 Day, R. A., & Gastel, B. (2006). How to write and publish a scientific paper (6th ed.).
Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.

Get Rid of Clutter
◆ Rule #17: Omit Needless Words:
◇ A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary
sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary
lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
◇ You can tighten long papers by eliminating redundancy, wordiness, jargon,
evasiveness, overuse of the passive voice, circumlocution, and clumsy prose.
53
More
examples in
the next slide

Original New
In order to do this To do this
Should be able to understand Should understand
A common desired feature of all these types of tools A desired feature of these tools is
A desired feature is
We implemented this in the form of a "clone" tool We implemented this as a "clone" tool
Add a greater degree of realism Add more realism
The software used was our The software was our
This is good for stacking objects one on top of the other. This is good for stacking objects.
Prior gaming experience affects Gaming experience affects
The underlying concept of this technique is The underlying concept is
A speech synthesizer is used to speak the character. A speech synthesizer speaks the
character.
With this goal in mind With this in mind
There are two paths that can be taken to reach the There are two paths to reach the
There are two paths to the
Shows a reasonable improvement in Shows improvement in
There are a large number of steps There are many steps
The selection was made based on The selection was based on
The following sections provide an overview of previous
work
The following sections review previous
work
We now review work
Solutions that are available Solutions available
The use of the homing keys helps users Homing keys help users
One of the advantages of utilizing a pie menu An advantage of pie menus
Participants were able to reach 7 wpm Participants reached 7 wpm
The only method that has the potential The only method with potential
The top five most frequent letters The five most frequent letters
Since the set of vowels is easily recognized Since vowels are easily recognized
Novice users Novices
The rate at which the user moves the cursor The rate the user moves the cursor
One point to note is that One point is that
Note that
The way in which words are put together
in phrases
The way words are put
together in phrases
Two different methods of input are Two methods of input are
Figure 1 shows all the equipment used in
this study
Figure 1 shows the equipment
Studies conducted in the past have found Studies have found
Between the two games that they used in
the study
Between the two games
Smith and Jones ran a user study
investigating
Smith and Jones investigated
This idea was developed to address This idea addressed
Initially, we ran an exploratory pilot study We ran a pilot study
One of the games we chose for our
experiment was
One of the games was
Platform games are characterized by
requiring
Platform games require
Is described in the next section. Is described next.
When used for playing Metal Slug When playing Metal Slug
This may explain the reason why… This may explain why…
At their own discretion At their discretion
Than originally estimated Than estimated
Between each device Between devices
Dating back to Dating to
This suggests that there is some promise
in using…
This suggests promise in
using…
Much of the work done on… Much of the work on…
While also being demanding of visual
attention
While also demanding visual
attention
See the following website
https://www.eecs.yorku.ca/course_archive/2017-
18/F/6329/announcements.html

Recommendations for writing a paper
1. Define the objective, type and message/problem of the paper.
2. Define audience and select the right avenue journal conferences.
3. Make a good first impression with your title and abstract.
4. Write for readers (consider the reader’s perspective when writing the paper).
5. Write in short using simple words (Avoid waiting for big blocks).
6. Write a well-focused and clearly structured manuscript (supports readers in
understanding it better).
7. Edit the text for clarity, logic, presentation, language, grammar, and length.
8. Ask researcherssupervisor to criticise your work.
9. Do not rush submitting your article for publication.
10. If a manuscript is not accepted, do not give up.

A strong manuscript?
◆ Has a clear, useful, and exciting message
◆ Has one area of focus;
◆ Expressed in simple language rather than complicated scientific jargon;
◆ Grasp the significance easily;
◆ Leave no room for doubt;
◆ Present novel results;
◆ Acknowledge limitation gently;
Keep in mind: Editors, reviewers, and readers are all busy people – make things easy to save their time and
get your paper acceptedcited

Thanks!
Any questions?

Writing a research paper for publication structure and recommendations (computer science)

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