How to Read &Write Good Technical Papers?

1. How to Read &Write Good Technical Papers? Presented By Dr. Mohammad Mehedi Hassan Assistant Professor Information Systems Department, CCIS King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA Email: mmhassan@ksu.edu.sa Phone: 4695202

2. Outline • What is a technical paper? • How to read a technical paper? • Factors affecting writing a Good Paper? • Contents of a Technical Paper • Writing Style • Strategies in Writing a “Good” Paper • Summary

3. What is a technical paper? • A brief and to-the-point document which describes a body of technical work • There are many types of technical papers • Survey papers • Journal papers • Conference papers • Letters

4. How to read technical papers? • Should not read everything • Know what’s going on (e.g., scanning proceedings) • title, authors, abstract • Papers in your broad research area • introduction, motivation, solution description, summary, conclusions • sometimes reading more details useful, but not always • Papers you may want to improve on • read entire paper carefully

5. What to note after reading? • Authors and research group • Need to know where to look for a paper on particular topic • Theme of the solution • Should be able to go back to the paper if you need more info • Approach to performance evaluation • Note any shortcomings

6. Papers Communicate Ideas • Our goal: to infect the mind of our reader with our idea, like a virus • Papers are far more durable than programs Fallacy: The greatest ideas are (literally) worthless if you keep them to yourself

7. Factors affecting writing a Good Paper? • Good Research Results • Time • Need to be ‘focus’ • Careful Planning and Need to be‘Creative’ • Organization of the Paper • Writing Styles • Language

8. Writing Papers Model: 1 Idea Do Research Write Papers

9. Writing Papers Model: 2 • Forces us to be clear, focused • Crystallizes what we don’t understand • The purpose of our research is: • To convey OUR IDEA Idea Do Research Write Papers Idea Write Papers Do Research

10. Conveying the Idea • Here is a problem • It’s an interesting problem • It’s an unsolved problem • Here is my idea • My idea works (details, data) • Here’s how my idea compares to other people’s approaches

11. Getting ready to write a paper • What type of paper am I writing? • conference, journal etc. • What do I wish to state? • Have I got all the background work with me? • Have I organized the paper? • What electronic format will I use? • LaTeX, MS Word, …

12. Contents of a paper • Title of the paper • Authors, designations, and addresses • Abstract (150 to 250 words) • Keywords • Sections describing the work • Introduction (Background) • Previous Work (Literature Survey) • Proposed Work (Algorithm, Design, Methodology) • Analysis (Complexity Analysis, Quantitative Analysis, Statistical Analysis, …) • Implementation and Results • Conclusions

13. Title • Should not be too long • “Short and Sweet” • No Abbreviations or Acronyms • (Unless well established terms like PID) • Well reflective of your Main Contribution • It should reflect the novel part of your research • Try to “coin” an attractive (or catchy) title • Should be followed by Names and Affiliations • According to the Journal’s or Conference’s format

14. Abstract • Usually 1 paragraph, generally between 100-250 words • Major points to include • Problem statement/Overview of current research situation/Motivation • Proposed technique (the main contribution of your paper) • The solution (you should describe the results briefly) • A brief conclusion Should Not Include: • References • Avoid “general motivation” • The sentences in the abstract should not be repeated later in the paper “word-for-word” • Avoid equations and math

15. Introduction • Define the problem • Why is it worth solving? • What did others do? • Why did they not succeed? • Why do I believe I did better? • Contribution of the paper • Is there anything new in the paper? • How good are our results? • Summary of our approach/results

16. Stanford InfoLab’s Patented 5-Point Structure for Introductions • What is the problem? • Why is it interesting and important? • Why is it hard? (E.g. why do naive approaches fail?) • Why hasn’t it been solved before? (Or what’s wrong with previous proposed solutions? How does mine differ?) • What are the key components of my approach and results? Also include any specific limitations

17. State Clearly the Contributions

18. Related works • Brief description of the existing body of work • Citations to published work • In [2], Rosetti and Longfellow described the meaning of life. Wordsworth presented a different view point in [3]. • Bring out the specific advantage of your work w.r.t. published work. • However, the Rosetti-Longfellow formula [2] fails for technologies below 0.2 micron. In this paper, we extend their formula to the deep submicron domain. Fallacy: To make my work look good, I have to make other people’s work look bad

19. Related works • Point out both advantages and disadvantages of related work • (provides context; defuses objections; be honest) • Discuss all references that you cite DO NOT • Write a laundry list • Bash the references • Include irrelevant references • Write a paragraph about a very peripheral work

20. Sections and Subsections • Organize each section into subsections and (possibly) sub-subsections 1. Introduction 1.1 Problem Description 1.1.1 Inductance Extraction 1.1.2 Transmission Line Models

21. The proposed Technique • Can be divided into several sub-sections • Provide a general description of the technique or method you proposed (use block diagrams where appropriate) • In another section, start with the general theory first then followed by your own formulations • Write down your algorithms (equations)/strategy and provide explanation on them • Figures may be required where necessary

22. Hardware/Software Development • Provide a description of how the software is developed • Computer specs, Programming Languages used, Flowcharts, Block diagrams, etc. • Provide sufficient description of the hardware setup/ designed • technical specifications, block diagrams, sensor limitations, components used, photos of the hardware, etc. • Highlight the uniqueness of your hardware compared to similar products (if any)

23. Application of Proposed Technique • Usually new techniques/algorithms are tested using simulations • Provide a write-up on how the simulation is carried up • including all assumptions used, how important parameters are chosen/selected, etc. • Similarly for hardware application, describe how the experiments have been carried out • Only discuss experiments which are relevant to show the effectiveness or superiority of the proposed technique

24. Results and Discussions • Results can be tabulated in several forms • use graphical form where applicable • Comparison with existing techniques • Provide discussions • correct analyses of experimental results show the quality of the paper • Always provide answers to why the experiments went such a way • Every figure shown in the paper must be addressed in the text • What conclusion can you draw from your experiments?

25. Figures and Tables • Number all the figures and tables • Graphs are also shown as figures • Provide captions for all figures and tables • Fig. 3. Floorplan of the SONAR Chip • Refer to each figure and table • In Figure 3, we show the floorplan of the SONAR Chip as obtained using the MASON software

26. Conclusions • Highlight the major advantages of the technique/method proposed when compared with other techniques • Don’t just repeat the introduction/abstract • Re-emphasize the novelty of the research work • Write down the limitations of your research work if any such that reviewers cannot ‘attack’ the weaknesses of the technique • Write suggestions to improve the problems or limitations of the proposed technique (such as in future work)

27. References • References are important in a technical paper • With adequate references, they reflect that you have made a • substantial study/survey of the existing or current techniques, • understand their limitations and disadvantages, in short it means you understand the problem statement • All references must be cited in the text of your paper

28. Language and Style: Tense • Text can be written in either the past or present tense • Past tense is OK for describing results of an experiment but use present tense for a general conclusion • “We observed that the expression of Bmp4 WASincreased. This suggests that the gene IS regulated by Shh.” • Present tense is more immediate and indicates that a process is ongoing WHATEVER TENSE IS USED, BE CONSISTENT AND DON’T SWITCH BACK AND FORTH IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH !!!

29. Visual Structure • Give strong visual structure to your paper using • sections and sub-sections • Bullets • Italics • laid-out code • Find out how to draw pictures, and use them • Paragraphs are important to break the text up into readable units • The first and last sentence of a paragraph is most important

30. Visual Structure- Example

31. Use the Active Voice • The passive voice is “respectable” but it DEADENS your paper. Avoid it at all costs

32. Use Simple, Direct Language

33. Frequent Errors Writing a Paper • Avoid excessive use of boring verbs such as “show, observe, occur, exhibit…..” • Avoid complex ways of saying a simple thing • “The results showed that dog weight increased” versus “The dogs weighed more”. • Use of “suggest that ….” ; “hypothesize that….” “possible that….” • These phrases do not need “may”, “might” • e.g. “Our results suggest that Hoxa3 may be involved in thymus development” (not correct) • “Our results suggest that Hoxa3 is involved in thymus development” (correct)

34. Before Sending to the Journal • Have the paper read by several people • Listen to what they say, especially if same criticism comes up several times • Check and recheck spelling, figures, references, legends etc • Reviewers can be really annoyed by careless editing and mistakes reflect badly on your science • Make sure you have followed all the requirements of the journal about electronic submission etc.

35. Some Strategies in Writing a “Good” Paper • Identify the novelty of the research work • Study related works and compare your approach • Identify the current problems and limitations • Find how to overcome the limitations • List down the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed technique • Do not allow reviewers to attack your weaknesses • Provide a good analysis on the research results • Do not just write down what has been observed from your experiments • Explain why these observations are ‘so and so’ • Provide a summary of results and how results led to the conclusion

36. Summary • If you remember nothing else: • Identify your key idea • Make your contributions explicit • Use examples to describe the idea