Master Beginners
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This document provides guidance on academic writing and the research process. It discusses topics like choosing publication venues, writing introductions and conclusions, citing related work, and responding to reviews. The document emphasizes rigor, avoiding informal language, and focusing on the most important ideas. Overall, it aims to help readers improve the quality and impact of their research publications.
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Master Beginners
- 2. LEIC 2000 Unisys Portugal Lecturer at Técnico since 2002 MEIC 2006 Visiting Student at MIT in 2009 DEIC 2014 First publication in 2004 Since then, about 30 more http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/miguel.pardal
- 3. Share experience Provide tools Learn from you Best thing about being a teacher
- 6. Map the world Choose the destination Plot the course Navigate to destination Arrive at destination
- 7. Map the world Research area Choose the destination Problem Related work Plot the course Solution proposal Technical challenges Navigate to destination Evaluation Arrive at destination Contributions
- 8. What is the problem being solved? What are the requirements? What is the related work? What will be done? What are the technical challenges? How will the results be measured?
- 9. “X is better than Y!” How do you know that? From your own work Experimental results Statistically valid From the work of others Citations
- 10. How to name the authors in text 1 name: Smith 2 names: Smith and Williams 3+ names: Smith et al. Presenting a new system/result “Smith et al. [22] proposed a new system to…” Supporting a statement “Indeed system X was evaluated as the fastest [22]”
- 11. Our research is only possible because of the work of others before us Actual People, Labs, Universities
- 12. From the start, keep a reference repository Save the PDF Identify each paper Author name Year Journal/Conference acronym Keywords
- 16. Technical report Workshop paper Conference paper Book chapter Journal article Book
- 20. Choose top sources ACM IEEE Usenix Start with most recent papers They will cite other relevant works Go to where the research community meets
- 21. Good conference ? Accept rate < 20% Only 1 in 5 submitted papers gets accepted Check conference rankings Good journal ? Impact factor: average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal
- 26. Write a short summary of paper Should fit in an index card What is relevant? System characteristics Assumptions Examples/scenarios ... State strong and weak points
- 27. Use note taking app with search OneNote, EverNote, … https://www.onenote.com/ https://evernote.com
- 28. Tables are great for comparing things Start with existing columns, or think of your own Add more columns if you need Empty cells remind you of what you don’t know yet System Initial Release Latest Version … Windows [Gates83] 1983 10.0 Mac [Jobs84] 1984 10.11 (El Capitan) Linux [Torvalds91] 1991
- 31. Move 1 – Establish the “territory” Claiming centrality and/or Making topic generalizations and/or Reviewing items of previous research Move 2 – Establish the niche Counter-claiming or Indicating a gap or Question-raising or Continuing a tradition Move 3 – Occupy the niche Outlining purposes or Announcing present research Announcing principle findings Indicating research article structure http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Swalesian-Introduction
- 32. A model is a simplification/abstraction of a complex object To show relevant characteristics Easier to manipulate than the actual object Represent: Structure Behavior
- 34. Class Diagram
- 35. Sequence Diagram
- 36. Asking questions Finding answers Checking if answers are good enough
- 37. Qualitative Looks at requirements Satisfied Partially satisfied Unsatisfied Quantitative Metrics Key performance indicators
- 38. How long, on average, does the system take to respond to requests? How many simultaneous users can the system hold without degrading performance levels? …
- 41. The work is almost complete Is writing worth it? YES To write is to express thoughts into words So that others may learn Your own learning is not complete without the “distillation process” that comes with writing
- 42. Use the most common science language, so that your work may reach the widest audience English What about Portuguese and other languages? Still important for scientific divulgation
- 43. Introduction Problem and Contributions Proposal Evaluation Results and Discussion Related Work Conclusion Contributions and Future Work
- 44. 3 tells Say what you will say Say Say what you said Provide guidance and context to the reader
- 45. Each “middle” chapter in a dissertation should have: Introduction text Main content sections Summary section Highlight most important points to carry forward Transition to next chapter
- 46. Most important ideas first Should appear in the beginning of the paragraph Details and alternatives should appear later
- 47. Be direct, to the point “There are many important systems in computer history, in particular, regarding remote graphical systems, one of the first widely used contributions was the X system [22]” -> “The X system [22] was the first widely used remote graphical system”
- 48. Use more formal language Avoid oral contractions We’re -> we are Don’t -> do not Gonna -> going to Ain’t -> am not Avoid possessives Joana’s work -> The work by Joana The system’s characteristics -> The characteristics of the system
- 49. Use correct tense Proposal – future tense – will do Dissertation – past tense – did Use the third person Sometimes first person plural is OK – we
- 50. Avoid passive voice It creates uncertainty about who is the subject of the phrase “The system was shown to have good performance” vs “We have shown that the system has good performance”
- 51. Avoid informal (colloquial) expressions “At the end of the day, the best system is …” “It is a matter of life and death that…” “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, so a different approach was attempted…” “The performance has hit a wall…”
- 52. Avoid exaggerations (hyperboles) "infinite“ Infinity is not a large number "innumerable“ It means uncountable “impossible” It means outside the realm of possibility
- 54. Avoid possibly rigorous terms used in a non-rigorous way “scalable” It means that the system can sustain a performance level when the number of users increases by orders of magnitude (10, 100, 1000) Not that it supports many users “real-time“ It means subject to specific time constraints Not that the system is fast
- 56. Process to increase the quality of the writing Follow sound science practices Reviews are not always constructive… Do not get offended by it, the comments are not about you, they are about your work You should be the first to know that there is always something to improve… Blind review You will not know who the reviewer is Double blind review The reviewer also does not know who you are
- 57. English quality Structure Literature review Complete and to the point Motivation for decisions Rigor Avoid misunderstandings Identify the limitations of your own work They will be found anyway (sooner or later) They are future work opportunities
- 58. Technical report Workshop paper Conference paper Book chapter Journal article Book Increasing public exposure and scrutiny
- 59. First promising results Workshop Ongoing work with evaluation Conference Fully developed and with final innovative findings Top conference Journal
- 60. Science is personal and social People and communities are central Reading related work Learn from other authors Cite them Compare what they did Writing about your work Explain in a concise way Learn from the reviewers Share with others
- 61. Miguel.Pardal@tecnico.ulisboa.pt Obrigado Thank you “The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” ― G.K. Chesterton
- 62. IEEE Authorship Series and toolbox: http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/ authors/authors_journals.html Guide by Miguel and Joana Pardal: http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/miguel.pardal/www/doc/ quick-guide-research.pdf Thanks to Miguel P. Correia for the review
- 64. Widely used Produces documents with excellent aesthetics Easy to follow template rules Built-in support for mathematical expressions. Generates the reference list automatically! BibTeX It is a programming language (with comments) These are the main contributions: % do not forget to add the prototype!