Suggestions Regarding Writing Research Papers (in CSC200, but also in General)
Suggestions Regarding Writing Research Papers (in CSC200, but also in General)
After Project
1, Adam, Ty, and I
gathered our suggestions as to things
that might help people regarding writing their Project 2 papers (and
research papers in general). I've edited it down to a single
list (and in doing so, in some cases nontrivially
merged/changed things, so if there are typos/errors/etc. here, the blame is
on me, not Adam or Ty), and you can find it below.
We did this right after Project 1, and so indeed some (or most) of
these things are what came to out mind due to things we saw on a few
or some or many of the Project 1 papers. However, the list below is
trying give generic feedback that will be helpful regarding future
papers (and is trying to avoid avoiding referring to individual papers
or to Project-specific topics that might single out one or two papers;
as to whether the things on this list are relevant to your specific
Project 1 paper, simply look at the comments written on your Project 1
paper, to see if they may mention some of these types of items; but
whether or not they do, these points are valuable general points.)
So... on to the list we go (the list is in alphabetical order):
- CLARITY: Lack of detailed explanation/lack of clarity: It is
important in papers to provide detailed explanations of the paper's
concepts/proofs/etc. Often helpful regarding this can be including
more diagrams, examples, etc. More generally, a paper has to convince
the reader of the correctness of its claims. Clarity is utterly
essential in a research paper.
- FOCUS/CONTEXT: Focus and context: Sometimes papers will go into a lot of
depth on topics that may not be central to the paper. That is not a
crime, but certainly each paper for each topic it covers should make
clear how that topic connects to the paper's goals and themes---and if
something is a bit distant from the core theme but is put in because
it is of interest in and of itself, then be clear and up front and say
that, and say WHY you believe it is of interest.
- GOAL/DIRECTION: Clear goal/direction of paper, well conveyed:
Sometimes papers seem to jump around a lot in topic or style, perhaps
because they were written by separate team members without much
proofreading by the other members. At times, it can almost seem
sometimes that two (or more) different papers have been sewn
together. Clearly stated goals and explanations for "why" a topic
appears in the paper in terms of these goals would fix this (this is
of course in overlap with the "focus and context" item in this
list). More generally, a good paper tells something of a story, at
least sometimes. It has an arc, and sometimes, even some drama and
excitement, but the arc (or at least where it will go and what it will
do, at least as to its biggest accomplishments) should be well spelled
out in the abstract, and the introduction typically adds to that an
overview of the paper and even of what techniques it will use (in
broad terms---to be fleshed out in the rest of the paper).
- PLOTS: Extra care should be taken on plots (often called graphs,
although not in the sense of actual graphs of course): It is
remarkably easy to end up having unhelpful or missing titles and/or
axes labels, so be careful regarding those. Also, in many settings,
it is appropriate and valuable to use an overlap (putting multiple
bunches of data into the same plot, using for example color and a
legend, to make clear which is which). A good plot with well-labeled
title, axes, and legend, with appropriate overlays, is capable of
conveying much information very succinctly and clearly.
- PROOFREADING: Lack of proofreading/checking: It is extremely
important that papers be carefully proofread. One should never hand
in papers that have obvious editing errors that would have been
instantly spotted had each group member proofread the paper---missing
spaces, unresolved references, missing words, duplicated paragraphs,
vestigial text fragments left by an editing error, etc., etc. And
that is simply about copyediting, and is a special case of a more
general suggestion, which is to leave enough time for your entire
group to proofread each paper---doing so will help not just with
copyediting, but will surely also help with content.
- RELATED WORK/LITERATURE SEARCH: Lack of sufficient literature
search: An essential tool of research is saving time and effort by
building off of what was already done. Many insights are gleaned from
successes on similar problems, or from approaches that were already
tried. A "Related Work" section that does this is a typical and
important part of a research paper. Such a section will often, for
related work, mention not just why it is related but also how it
differs (e.g., "George Washington (1790), in a recently rediscovered
letter, proved NP-hardness for the weighted case. However,
NP-hardness for the unweighted case was not obtained until the work of
the present paper"). In fact, such sections will often mention work
that people might THINK is related, and explain why one can't simply
use that seemingly related work to resolve the paper's case. Of
course, when discussing earlier work, you must clearly
credit/attribute the source; never, ever present earlier work so as to
leave the reader with the impression that it is your work.
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