This presentation discusses the following topics: What is a Survey Paper? Aim of the Survey Paper Research Paper vs. Survey Paper Need for Survey paper Components of a Survey paper How to write a Survey Paper Structure of a Survey Paper

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Introduction to
Survey Paper
Dr. C.V. Suresh Babu
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Topics
– What is a Survey Paper?
– Aim of the Survey Paper
– Research Paper vs. Survey Paper
– Need for Survey paper
– Components of a Survey paper
– How to write a Survey Paper
– Structure of a Survey Paper
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What is a Survey Paper?
“A survey article assumes a general knowledge of the area; it emphasizes the
classification of the existing literature, developing a perspective on the area, and
evaluating trends”
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– A survey paper classify existing different approaches to the problem, using a
well set of classification criteria.
– Surveying research papers generally mean to collect data and results from other
research papers
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Aim of the Survey Paper
– To build a framework of a research topic based on existing literature.
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Research Paper vs. Survey
Paper
– Regular research papers are a description of your own research.
– A survey paper is a service to the scientific community. You are doing
their research for them.
– Instead of reading 20+ papers to understand what a scientific topic is
about, they just need to read your paper.
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Don’t go for Survey paper, if
– there are less than 10 scientific papers in a field, do not write a survey.
– all the 10 are from the same author, do not write a survey.
– there is already an exhaustive, recent survey, do not write another
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Need for Survey paper
– Which subjects should you write a survey about: fields which are on the verge
of maturity, but do not yet qualify for a book.
– A good survey paper exposes research topic that needs more research focus.
– A survey paper mainly compile the information that is currently known about
the topic.
– It provides basic knowledge to new researchers.
– It also qualitatively and quantitatively validates information to researchers.
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Components of a Survey paper
– What should it go into a survey paper?
The question needs to be asked in reverse:
– What do you want from a survey?
– How do you make the survey most useful to the readers?
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How to write a Survey Paper
– Selecting a topic for survey is a challenging task. To make a good survey topic,
author should satisfy the following requirements:
1. It is an emerging field and popularity of the field will grow (over time).
2. Papers with new algorithms/approaches does exist.
3. A survey paper does not exist on the survey topic.
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Guidelines
– Author can start with reading general topics before moving to pick-up relevant
topic.
– It is advisable that author should read 20 to 40 (at least) well written papers
before start writing a good survey paper.
– Citation count and locality principle for papers could be a good idea to select
good papers.
– Before writing, author must develop good understanding of the field. Author
must completely be aware of the main research themes, trends,
challenges/issues, and results of that field. The author must add his/her
research experiences related to this research topic (if possible).
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Guidelines cont..
– The author must produce the essence of the topic in a legitimate way.
– To differentiate between approaches, author must present each approach using
same template and same type of figures (for easier understanding).
– It is recommended to have examples, classification, figures, summery or tables
to provide readers a good overview of the topic.
– Author should explain example and its potentials using his/her understanding of
the field.
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Guidelines cont..
– An example can be explained in detailed by using seven Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why, for Whom, hoW).
– To classify available approaches/methodologies author must decide what should be the main criteria.
– It is always recommended to find the reason that why this classification criteria is a contribution to the knowledge
domain. It is desirable to present classifications with examples.
– Figures must be clear and self-explanatory. e.g, figures can be used to explain examples in pictorial format or to
present an algorithm in pseudo-code format.
– Research methodology/strategy must be included to analyze hybrid approaches.
– It is also desirable that author should discuss plausible solutions of the existing challenges.
– Information flow in the paper must be well connected which will help to flourish the essence of the paper.
– In other way, it will increase the visibility of the paper.
– Before submitting to the journal, it must be reviewed by other peers.
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Mind it
– Survey paper does not publish new research
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Structure of a Survey Paper
1. Introduction to the topic
2. Program statement (how to classify and how to survey)
3. Classification
4. Characteristics of classes
5. Presentation of classes
6. Pros and cons
7. Predicted/Emerging trends
8. Conclusion
9. Acknowledgement
10. References
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Introduction to the topic
– A clear description of the field. What is it a subset of? What is the current status?
– Boilerplate is not useful → bla-bla-bla networks have seen a lot of interest in recent
years...
– short history: was there a seminal paper, research funding, special event, invention
of an algorithm which spurred the development. Do not be afraid to anchor your
domain in reality. 9/11 spurred a lot of research development (and funding) in
surveillance system. The introduction of java gave a new impetus to just-in-time
compiler optimization research, and so on.
– Which are the conferences, workshops, journals, special editions which are carrying
the papers related to the topic?
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Terminology
– Introduce the terminology of the field, describe what the various terms mean.
What is very important is to map the terminological variations.
– For instance, in the sensor network domain, mobile sink, mobile agent, mobile data
collectors usually means the same thing. In addition, some researchers borrow terms
like actuator, or invent specific new terms like “mole” for the same thing.
– You need to clerify these things, so start by keeping a note of the various terms
while you are reading papers.
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Research challenges
– The description of the various research challenges of the field. This is the hardest to
write, because it is the part which is creative. You need to provide an integral view
on the research activity of the field.
– You should start noting out the various objective descriptions from various papers.
But it is not enough to just put them together: you need to rewrite them in your
own words. Partially for the reason of copyright, and second, because you need to
write a good writeup, which covers all the papers not just one.
– One can call this step “reverse engineering a vision”. If your domain has a “vision”
paper, that might help, but be cautious: you still can not borrow your writeup from
the vision paper, if you really need to take a whole field.
– It is helpful to identify 3-4 main research directions, around which you will organize
your papers.
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Classification
Classification, slicing and dicing, taxonomy
– Sometimes it helps do introduce a new taxonomy that is classification scheme
in the field.
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Where you survey your papers?
And here comes where you survey your papers. This is how it goes:
– Decide what are you going to tell about each paper. You need to already read the paper in such a way that you know ahead what are
you want to tell about them. For instance:
– which one of the 3-4 big research directions they tell?
– what mathematical techniques or algorithms they rely on? (eg. linear programming, genetic algorithms, neural network, hidden
Markov models’ etc.).
– is this a theory or application paper?
– is it the continuation of another work? is it an improvement on another work? (you might want to present them in order!!!).
– do they use theoretical proofs? simulation? hardware testbed? real life deployment?
– which other technology they compare themselves with? In which way are they better? Note: all the papers you will encounter are at
least in some ways better than others. You need to identify the authors claim; higher performance (under certain assumptions)?
higher robustness? lower computational complexity?
It would help if you would assemble your reading list completely first, and when you read the papers, you write down the answers to these
question, as you read them.
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Citations
– Strong recommendation that in your survey do indicate the comes of the
authors as well: Laurel and Hardy [2] did this, W. E. Coyote [3] did that.
– There are two reasons for this.
1. It is politeness towards the authors, whose work you are surveying. Your debt to
them is much greater than in a cost of an original research paper.
2. When your reader read your survey paper as a primer for a field, they are also
interest in finding out, who are the researchers active in the field.
– If some university or lab had a special leadership role, it is worth mentioning as
well: Many early contributions in bla-bla-bla networks come from the
W.E.Loyote’s group at Hollywood Inst. of Tech Media lab.
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