Introduction to research activities: reading and writing scientific papers and dissertations. Presentation made on October 2015, under invitation of NEIIST (Núcleo de estudantes de Engenharia Informática - computer science and engineering student group)

1. Miguel Pardal
Oct. 2015

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 20 more
http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/miguel.pardal

3. Share experience
Provide tools
Learn from you
Best thing about being a teacher 

4. Read
Write

7. “X is better than Y!”
It needs to be grounded!
Work of others
Citations
Own work
Experimental results
Statistically valid

8. Our research is only possible because of
the work of others before us
Actual People, Labs, Universities
Keep a reference repository
Save the PDF
Identify each paper
Author name, year, (conference acronym, keywords)

11. Technical report
Workshop paper
Conference paper
Journal article
Book chapter
Book
Increasing
public exposure and
scrutiny

12. IEEExplore:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org
ACM:
http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm
AAAI:
http://www.aaai.org/Library/library.php

13. Google Scholar:
http://scholar.google.com/
Microsoft Academic:
http://academic.research.microsoft.com/
ResearchGate
Mendeley
Academia.edu

14. Start with the best sources
Good conference ?
Accept rate < 20%
Only 1 in 5 submitted papers gets accepted
Good journal ?
Impact factor - average number of citations to recent
articles published in the journal
Start with the more recent papers
They will cite older, relevant work in their
references
Find out where the community gathers

15. Title
Abstract
Introduction
Figures
Conclusion
References
Read related work

16. Short summary of paper
Should fit in an index card
What is relevant?
System characteristics
Assumptions
Examples/scenarios
...
State good and
identify bad points
Use note taking app with search
OneNote, EverNote, …

17. 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

18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_operating_systems

20. A model is a simplification/abstraction of
a complex object
To show relevant characteristics
Easier to manipulate than the actual object
Represent:
Structure
Behavior

22. Class Diagram

23. Sequence Diagram

25. The work is (almost) complete
Is it worth writing?
YES
To write is to express thoughts into words
Use the third person, past tense
So that others may learn
Your own learning is not complete without the
“distillation process” that comes with writing

26. 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

27. Conference
Ongoing work
Journal
Fully developed and final findings
Journals have 3 times more citations, but
It is harder to be accepted
Conditional accepts
Takes a long time until final publication

28. Process to increase the quality of the
writing
Follow sound science practices
Reviews
Not always constructive
Do not get offended
It is not about you, it is about your work
You should be the first to know that there is always
something to improve…

29. 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

30. Introduction
Problem
Related Work
Proposal
Methodology
Results
Discussion / Evaluation
Conclusion
Contributions
Future Work

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. 3 tells
Say what you will say
Say
Say what you said
Provide guidance and context to the reader

33. 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!

37. Science is personal and social
People and communities
are central
Read
Learn from other authors
Cite them
Compare what they did
Write
Explain in a concise way
Learn from the reviewers
Share with others

38. 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

39. Guide by myself and Joana Pardal:
http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/miguel.pardal/www/doc/
quick-guide-research.pdf
IEEE Authorship Series and toolbox:
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/
authors/authors_journals.html