HOW TO WRITE A GOOD PAPER

1. HOW TO WRITEA GOOD PAPER Jehan-François Pârisjfparis@uh.edu

2. Introduction • You have interesting results • You have learned to write correct English • Now • Your adviser tells you it is time to write a paper • You have to wrap up your term paper • What should you do?

3. What we will cover today • How to present your results • Cover the basic parts of a scientific paper • Focus on what to say in each of them • Review a few basic rules to follow

4. How to present your results • Your results should be interesting • Improve upon the state of the art • In a significant manner • It is your job to explain that to the reader

5. The twenty percent rule • To be significant, your contribution should be at least 20 percent better than state of the art solutions • Picking the right performance index is important • Increasing a cache it ration from 96 to 98 percent is less impressive than cutting in half its miss ratio!

6. Your future paper (I) • Five classical parts • Abstract • Introduction • Review of previous work • Your own contribution • Conclusion Followed by a list of references

7. Your future paper (II) • An alternative organization • Abstract • Introduction • Your own contribution • Review of previous work • Conclusion Followed by a list of references

8. Which one should you pick? • Pick the traditional organization if your paper builds upon previous work • If your own work addresses some issues that were not addressed by previous authors • Pick the alternative organization otherwise • Lets the reader go straight from the introduction to the section describing your own work

9. The abstract (I) • Not an introduction • A very brief summary of the results of the paper • Describe the problem • Sketch the approach • Present you best results • The idea is to entice the reader to read further

10. The abstract (II) • No need to explain why the results are important • Introduction is there for that! • Must be self-contained • No unexplained acronyms • No references! • Use very sparingly mathematical symbols • Write it last!

11. The introduction (I) • Should present the topic and the scope of your paper • Key objectives are • explaining what you will do (and not do) • making it sound interesting captatiobenevolentiae = getting the goodwill [of the reader]

12. The introduction (II) • Main difficulty • Must describe the problem and your results in very general terms • Must simplify things without being inaccurate • Some authors end the introduction by a roadmap of the paper • Section II of this paper reviews …

13. The review of previous work • Mention previous work that is relevant to your paper • The key word is “mention” • You should not describe in any detail any previous work unless it is necessary for the understanding of your own work • Do not sweat it!

14. Your own contribution (I) • Explain in a few lines its scope: • You will investigate an idea that you find interesting • You have a better idea that solves one of the problems other proposals did not solve • Then develop your ideas

15. Your own contribution (II) Unless you present the first known solution to a problem, you should compare the performance of your solution to that of previous solutions May require running experiments or simulations that evaluate these solutions Not always possible

16. Checklist (I) • Do not forget to mention the limitations of your approach • Markov models of disk arrays must assume that disk repair times follow an exponential distribution • Not true! • Necessary for having a tractable model

17. Checklist (II) • Be sure you present your results the best you can • Tables • Graphs • Do not forget to label the axes and the curves and to indicate the units

18. Checklist (III) • Use an equation editor for your equations • Avoid ax^2 + bx + c • All variables used in the text must be italicized • The number n of disks in the array

19. The conclusion • Should summarize the results of the paper • Overlaps with abstract • Often written in perfect tense • Research papers often include directions for future work • Many people read the conclusion first before deciding if the whole paper is worth their time • Should summarize your main results

20. The list of references (I) • Normally appears as an unnumbered section • Very important part of paper • Indication of good scholarship • Format obeys to strict conventions • Another indication of good scholarship • Take it very seriously

21. The list of references (II) • Always cite papers describing “pioneering work” • First paper on broadcasting for video-on-demand was by Viswanathan and Imielinski • Must be cited even though much better techniques have been devised • In case of doubt, cite the papers that other people cite

22. We almost forgot the title Should be descriptive Might be affected by the target audience

23. And the list of authors

24. In reality • Very poor taste not to mention as co-authors the names of the people supervising your work • Mentioning people without their permission is almost unforgivable • Jim Gray’s rule: •  "He who types the paper is first author." 

25. Theses and dissertations • Typically follow the classical organization: • Chapter I Introduction • Chapter II Previous Work • Chapter III to ?? Your own contributions • Chapter ??+1 Conclusion • Summary • Directions for Future Works • References

26. Writing the paper (I) • Avoid the passive voice • BAD:Three different block sizes were selected for our experiments • BETTER:We selected three different block sizes for our experiments

27. Writing the paper (II) • Use short sentences • Uses figures whenever it helps • You can borrow figures as long as you acknowledge your source Figure 9. A page table (from [9]) where [9] is a reference to a paper you cite

28. Tables and figures (I) • Tables have titles that are above the table

29. Tables and figures (II) • Figures have captionsbelow them • Make your table titles and figure captions as self-explanatory as possible • Many readers will look at the tables and figures before reading the text

30. Other rules to follow (I) • Spell numbers at the beginning of a sentence • BAD:52 % of the observations … • BETTER:Fifty-two percent of the observations…

31. Other rules to follow (II) • AWFUL:3 different block sizes were selected … • BAD:Three different block sizes were selected … • BETTER:We selected three different block sizes …

32. Other rules to follow (III) • Spell out percent everywhere in your text • BAD:We observed a 20% increase • BETTER:We observed a 20 percent increase

33. Other rules to follow (IV) • It’s is not a possessive • BAD:It’s main disadvantage • BETTER:Its main disadvantage • It’s is a contracted form of “ it is” • Most good writers avoid these forms in scientific papers and reports: • you’re, can’t

34. A last word • Good writing is a craft • You must exercise it to become better at it • Good writing takestime and effort • Will become more enjoyable as you progress