How to Start a Research Work in Computer Science:

A Framework For Beginners

Somdip Dey
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester
Manchester, United Kingdom.
[email protected]; [email protected]

ABSTRACT give the readers the idea of preliminaries to start a

Research is one of the key factors behind the research work. Then in section four we will review the
improvement and evolution of any subject in the world. limitations and experience of using this framework and in
However, the skills to perform the research are rarely section five, some related work.
taught in the school or during the undergraduate courses.
This paper provides a practical and efficient framework or
2. MOTIVATION
The skills, which are needed to pursue a research, are
method called ‘Eight-Step Approach to Research’, which
generally taught during postgraduate study, either at the
will guide you to learn ‘how to start doing research’ in a
end of master’s level before starting the master’s
particular area of computer science. Although this paper is
dissertation or at the beginning of Ph.D./M.Phil. study.
meant for students and researchers in computer science
But computer science is one of the widely evolving and
but it should be kept in mind that this methodology can be
fast paced subjects in the world because of its
applied to any research area in any field of study.
applications. This demands for more skillful programmers
Categories and Subject Descriptors and researchers in this subject. But most of the schools
A.1 [Introductory and Survey] and undergraduate study centers fail to teach students the
basic necessity to learn about the skills to start research
General Terms work.
Documentation.
In the year 2012, a survey, which was performed on 235
Keywords students (of undergraduate and master’s level study) of the
Research, Computer Science, Brainstorming, Hints Computer Science Department of St. Xavier’s College
(Autonomous), India, to check how many students are
1. INTRODUCTION comfortable in participating in a technical writing/poster
After being a researcher, one has to read several research competition. But to the surprise of the survey conductor,
papers in order to serve many purposes such as reviewing one of the most common questions that was asked in
them for a conference or a journal or a class, to remain contrary opposing to the survey by the students was
updated in the that field of study, or for a literature survey “Where and How to start a Research Work?”. Thus, 198
of a new field or to contribute a brick to the wall of students out of 235 students had the same query.
knowledge n that research area. This was actually
mentioned properly in an article published by S. Keshav The same survey was performed in the year 2013 on 594
[1] regarding “How to Read a Paper”. Although there are students of the School of Computer Science of the
very good articles on the methodical ways to read a University of Manchester, comprising of students from
research papers but most of the articles fail to teach undergraduate and master’s taught study. Out of 594
students the primary need to start a research work. students, 419 had the same query as before regarding
where and how to start research. Hence the survey
In order to read and write technical or non-technical statistics provide that 84.26% of computer science
research work, one have to understand and learn about the students at the St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), India,
skills by which they can start doing research in a and 70.54% of computer science students of the
particular topic or an area. For this reason the sole purpose University of Manchester, had no clue or vague idea
of this paper is to teach new students and researchers in regarding how to start a research work.
the field of computer science regarding how they can start
a research work. The skills to perform research are generally taught during
postgraduate studies by the respective supervisors or
In the next section we will first discuss about the tutors or mentors of the students, but these skills are not
motivation of the idea that ultimately made me write well taught during the school or during undergraduate
about this paper and in section three we will learn about studies. Now a days, technology is developing very fast
the simple “Eight-Step Approach to Research”, which will
and most of the children are also learning of the different For this reason, it is advisable to search for the key-terms
uses of technology, but teaching the essentials skills to or ‘something’ related to scholarly articles or papers on
performing a research is even more crucial. Scholarly search engines or databases or in archiving
systems. Since this paper is mainly focused for computer
3. THE EIGHT-STEP APPROACH TO science study, the most relevant research articles/papers’
RESEARCH databases are ACM Digital Library [7], IEEEXplore
In this section we will learn the simple eight-step Digital Library [8], INSPEC IET Digital Library [9],
approach that we can use to start a research work or DBLP [10], Elsevier Publishing Facilities [11], Scopus
perform research. [12], ScienceDirect [13], Springer Publishing Facilities
[14], etc. Note that the list of databases provided are not
The methodology is shown in the block-diagram format in
exhaustive in nature, but some of the popular choices that
figure 1.
most computer scientist or industry practitioners publish
their work in. The search option can also be performed on
Google Scholar Search Engine [15] or on Microsoft
Academic Search [16] or on ArXiv Archiving facilities
[17] or on SAO/NASA Astrophysics Database [18], etc. If
a search is performed on Google Scholar, Microsoft
Academic Search, ArXiv, NASA ADS, then you might
get search results, which are not only restricted to the
fields of computer science.
3.3 Step 3: Sort Scholarly Articles and
Research Papers
When I say sort articles or research papers, I do not mean
that you should start sorting the articles or the papers
using sorting algorithms such as quick sort or merge sort.
This step is rather tricky than it sounds and actually needs
human intervention rather than computer sorting.
But before explaining this step, first you need to
Figure 1: Block Diagram of “Eight-Step Approach to Research” understand the types of research papers or scholarly
The steps that are provided in the figure 1 is to make the articles. In general research papers can be either of two
readers at ease because they might feel right at home types [2]: Argumentative Research Paper Or Analytical
Research Paper.
while looking at the block diagram which portrays the
algorithmic ‘Step’ approach of the methodology, but it Argumentative research paper consists of arguments that
can also be understood by any reader in any filed of study the author will either take a stance for or against. In this
if they follow the explanation of the methodology in the kind of paper the author introduces an argument and
next paragraph. persuade the reader to believe in the provided argument
by providing logical evidences.
3.1 Step 1: Select a Subject Area that You
Like In case of Analytical Research Paper, the author basically
This first step can be tricky yet very enjoyable. When you analyses a topic or logic and provide his own views or
are studying any subject, which in this case is computer perspectives regarding that topic.
science and engineering, try to choose the areas or topics Now, after searching the databases for the list of scholarly
in the subject that you really enjoy to read and ponder articles and papers on your favorite topic, you need to
onto it. Once you selected or chosen the topics, write them select the articles or papers that suits your purpose and
down or scribble them onto a piece of paper. interest the most. But in order to do that, you need to read
the title and abstract of the research paper in order to get a
3.2 Step 2: Search Databases vague idea about what kind of research paper it might be
After performing the first step of selecting your favorite
(either an argumentative or analytical research paper).
topics, you should perform a search from databases. Now,
This may take some practice before you can become an
whenever people thinking of searching for something
expert in performing this step, but once you have got an
(except physical world), they always think of searching
idea about the type of the paper, it will be easier for you to
‘that’ on Google Search Engine or on Wikipedia online
decide whether the paper or the article is relevant for your
dictionary or Bing or Yahoo Search Engines. But, it
research work or not.
should be kept in mind that the search results that are
provided by those search engines are general in nature, Thus in this step, you need to select the research papers or
and those sources may also be not trust worthy. articles based on your interest and the type of research
paper that will suit your purpose.
3.4 Step 4: Read Articles/Papers “Why do I need to list the references?”. This can be seen
For this step it is recommendable that you read a paper as a future investment. Make a list of the references that
written by Keshav [1] regarding “How to Read a Paper”, are relevant to that research area and may aid you to
which basically proposes a three-way approach to read a understand the paper properly. Sometimes a research
paper effectively and efficiently so that you can paper may give you only one picture or perspective of a
understand the basic notion regarding the paper or the scenario, but in order to understand the complete scenario,
article. you may need to explore the ideas and arguments
provided in other papers or articles, those are cited by the
3.5 Step 5: Brainstorming and Innovate research paper that you are recently reading. After
When I say brainstorming, it does not mean that think generating the list, you can perform the step 2 using this
about what you have read in the paper or the article for list, so that you can read those papers to get a broader
few seconds or few minutes. For this you have to be very view in that research area.
analytical and critical about the paper. Do not take all the
logics and arguments provided in the article or paper for 3.7 Step 7: List all Relevant Keywords
granted and you should try to think both analytically and In this step, you need to do the same thing that you did in
critically about it. It might be difficult in the beginning but the previous step, but now instead of making a list of
as a head start to make you think critically ask the references, you need to make a list of keywords from the
following questions regarding the paper: research paper that you are reading. Select the relevant
keywords and use the list to perform step 2 in order to
• What is the problem addressed in the paper? discover relevant papers in that research area.
• What is the solution? 3.8 Step 8: Do While || END
• How are the solutions evaluated? This step is the last but final step, which can be seen as a
(Reproducibility, benchmarks used to evaluate concluding step to your research, i.e. this step should only
the solution, etc.) be performed when your research is complete in a
particular topic. Until then you should perform step 2 and
• What are the assumptions in the paper? follow up to step 7, and keep performing these steps till
• What are the limitations of the research in the you have reached the climax of your research.
paper? 4. Limitations and Experience of this
• What is the main prior work? Approach
It should be kept in mind that this is not a hard and first
• Can I/we improve it? Ideas for future work! rule to perform research but this provides a basic scientific
• What is the overall assessment of the paper? framework for beginners so that they can start doing
research at some point using this simple technique.
Once you have asked the aforementioned questions and
answered them then you would be able to produce your Although the method, proposed in this paper, is meant for
own views or logic or theories regarding the argument or beginners and computer science students, but this
analysis provided in the paper. And this is the moment approach can be used by any person in order to start a
when you innovate. But, at the same time it should be kept research on a particular topic. It should also be kept in
in mind that you may not be able to answer all the mind that some researchers or supervisor may have some
aforementioned questions. In that case, try to answer as different approach to research but this approach is one of
many as possible, share your views with your colleagues many approaches that is easy and logically sound enough
or friends, who are pursuing the same research, or take to perform.
some help from a person, who can provide his own I have started doing research in various fields of computer
perspective regarding that research. This step is the most science since first year of my undergraduate study. Since I
crucial, yet fun ridden part of pursuing research. So didn’t have a computer science background before
always keep in mind that after reading a paper or article, pursuing a college degree in this subject, it was very hard
do brainstorming and then innovate. for me to perform research in a topic without a supervisor.
Also keep in mind that networking is an essential part of But over the years I learned from my experience and
research. The more views you have regarding a particular others too, and devised this approach to help new students
topic, the more open minded you will be in your research and researchers to start research on their own. For last 4
and that will strengthen you not to be biased regarding years I have shared this approach with many students and
something in your research area. researchers and they have found this approach very
helpful.
3.6 Step 6: List all Relevant References
In this step, you actually need to make a list of the Although this paper may provide you an approach to start
citations that are provided in the reference section. The research but you need to always keep in mind that the key
important question you may have regarding this step is to every research is to network ideas and to ask ‘Why and
How’.
5. Related Work
Before you start applying this eight step approach to
research, it is advisable that you should better read the
article on “How to Read a Paper” by Keshav [1]. If you
need help in writing technical papers then it is worthwhile
to read the articles written by Schulzrinne [3] and
Whitesides [4]. And if you need to know is Research then
it is recommendable that you read the web article by
Johnson [5] or look at the presentation prepared by
Somers [6] regarding “What is Research?”
6. Acknowledgement
I would like to thank various students and researchers of
the School of Computer Science of the University of
Manchester who have helped me to pursue the research on
this topic. I would also like to thank Mr. Gary Harmson
and Dr. Mikel Lujan for providing their invaluable views
regarding this paper.
7. REFERENCES
[1]. Keshav, S., How to Read a Paper, ACM SIGCOMM, Online.
Available at http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p83-keshavA.pdf
[Retrieved on 06/01/2014]
[2]. Genre and the Research Paper, Purdue Online Writing Lab
(Purdue OWL). Available at
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/02/ [Retrieved on
08/01/2014]
[3]. Schulzrinne, H., Writing Technical Articles, Online. Available at
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-style.html
[Retrieved on 08/01/2014]
[4]. Whitesides, G. M., Whitesides’ Group: Writing a Paper, Online.
Available at http://www.che.iitm.ac.in/misc/dd/writepaper.pdf
[Retrieved on 08/01/2014]
[5]. Johnson, C., What is Research in Computer Science, Online.
Available at
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/teaching/research_skills/resear
ch.html [Retrieved on 08/01/2014]
[6]. Somers, H., What is Research, Online. Available at
personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/harold.somers/RPD/RPD2.p
pt [Retrieved on 08/01/2014]
[7]. ACM Digital Library, http://dl.acm.org
[8]. IEEEXplore Digital Library,
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp
[9]. INSPEC IET Digital Library,
http://www.theiet.org/resources/inspec/
[10]. DBLP Computer Science Bibliography,
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/
[11]. Elsevier Publishers, http://www.elsevier.com
[12]. Scopus, http://www.scopus.com/
[13]. ScienceDirect, http://www.sciencedirect.com
[14]. Springer Publisher, www.springer.com
[15]. Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.co.in
[16]. Microsoft Academic Search,
http://academic.research.microsoft.com
[17]. ArXiv, Cornell University Library, http://arxiv.org
[18]. SAO/NASA Astrophysics Database, Harvard University,
http://adswww.harvard.edu