How to Write Papers

Rui PENG
[email protected]
 Schedule
• Week 1: How to generate ideas?
• Week 2: Title and abstract
• Week 3: Write an impressive introduction
• Week 4: Develop a paper with analysis,
discussion, etc.
• Week 5: Conclusions & future works
 Schedule
• Week 6: Students present their topics
• Week 7: Students present how to develop
their works
• Week 8: Students present their finished
papers
 Score and requirements
• 20%Attendance +30%Presentation +
50%paper
• Attend all classes timely
• Close mobile phones
 Importance of Writing Skills
• Publishing papers is critical for researchers
• Publishing is hard
– Low acceptance rate
– Competing with good papers
– Reviewers are potential competitors
 What Makes a Good Paper
• Good paper = good content + writing skills
– Content and results: your job
• Writing skills: Structure, flow, argument, …
– Logical, clear, succinct, consistent, …
– English
• Standard must be high
– Your best efforts
– Compared with others, yours is good/best
– Don’t fool with the reviewers!
 A “Template” for Good Papers
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Review of Previous Work
• Our Work
• Experiments and Comparisons
• (Relation to Previous Work)
• Conclusions
• References
• Others (Appendix, footnotes, etc.)
 Template - Abstract
• Purpose: Summary of your work and
contributions
• Style
– What is the problem
– What is your solution and results
 Template - Introduction
• Purpose: Background, outline of your paper
• Style
– Problem X is important
Previous work A, B, … have been studied
A, B have certain weakness (be careful here)
– We propose D, features of D (how much)
Experiment with D, compared with A, B
D is better than A, B (in certain aspects)
– Outline of the paper;
 Template: Previous Work
• Purpose: draw the differences
• Style
– Previous work: may split to several classes
– Can review each work in one or several sentences
– Compare to yours (refer to later sections)
May also put it after sections about your work
– Things to note:
• Do not miss important ones. Proper use of “e.g.”
• Do not misinterpret; do not overly criticize
• Emphasize the differences
 Template: Our Work
• Purpose: describe our work – May split to
several sections
• Style
– Definition, notation (need motivation)
• In the shoes of your readers
– Algorithms: pseudo-code; diagram; explanations
– Answer potential questions from readers;
– Too much details (such as proof): appendix
– Exceptions: footnotes
 Template: Experiments
• Purpose: verifications
• Style:
– Experiment design
• Detailed enough: can others replicate your work
• Simplest is best: concise, clear
– Comparisons (Is it scientific? T-test?)
– Discussions (make sense of the results)
– Draw conclusions
 Template: Conclusions
• Purpose: summary, future work, closing
• Style
– Quick summary
– Future work
– Closing
 Template: References
• Purpose: supporting claims; know well all
previous work
• Style
– Citation in text: what needs to be referred?
• Universally true: no need; opinions: YES
• Other people’s work: Yes
– Consistent
 Template: Others
• Acknowledgements (example)
• Appendix
– Proofs: do not stop the flow
• Footnotes
– Hide details and exceptions

Chalres Ling
 Abstract, Introduction, Summary

• Similar in nature
• Differences (length; emphasis)
– Abstract: short; problem and your work
– Introduction: short or long; background, your
work, outline of the paper
– Summary: short/medium; your work, future
work

Chalres Ling
 How to generate ideas?
• Generating and refining ideas for
documents can be one of the most difficult
stages in the writing process.
• Many techniques are available to assist you
in generating and refining ideas for your
research papers.
 How to generate ideas?
• A relevant topic comes from:
• The literature;
• Empirical observations;
• Significance of the problem;
• An economic story.
 Background Reading or
Researching
• very useful for you if you are not familiar
with a topic
• Begin background reading by looking up a
subject idea in general reference works such
as encyclopedias, or textbooks.
 Background Reading or
Researching
• Your next step is to look through
periodicals, academic journals, and books.
• You may wish to take notes you can refer to
at this stage, and write down your major
ideas.
 Background Reading or
Researching
• At this stage, you don’t want your major
ideas to “get lost” or “bogged down” in
pages of factual notes. You may want to
write down the titles of works that were
helpful to you, so you can revisit them
when you
 Background Reading or
Researching
• Whenever you read technical material, or
listen to a research talk, ask yourself
these canonical questions:
• From where did the author seem to draw the
ideas?
• What exactly was accomplished by this
piece of work?
 Background Reading or
Researching
• How does it seem to relate to other work in
the field?
• What would be the reasonable next step to
build upon this work?
• What ideas from related fields might be
brought to bear upon this subject?
 Background Reading or
Researching
• Once you have identified a topic that looks
feasible, make sure you are aware of all of
the literature in the area.
• Keep reading and listening, and keep
distinct in your mind what is different
between your work and others.
 Brainstorming
• Basically, you begin by making a list of
ideas as you or others think of them.
• Don’t “reject” any idea in a brainstorming
session—write all ideas down, even if they
may seem silly or unrelated.
• go though the list, and consider the ideas--
arranging, organizing, adding, or eliminating
them.
Brainstorming
 Using journalist’s question
• What? the rise in sea level of Long Beach
Island
• Who? it affects the Long Beach Island
community (residents and officials) it
affects federal agencies
• Where? Long Beach Island, New Jersey
 Using journalist’s question
• When? both an immediate threat and long term
threat
• Why? rise in sea level comes from global
warming and green house effect
• How? Prevent by raising islands (pumping sand
onto beaches)
 Talking with others
• Talking with others is another technique
you can employ to help you generate and
refine ideas for your research paper.
• You may wish to have conversations with
friends, relatives, coworkers, librarians,
and instructors or with experts in the field.
• Casual conversations will not need to be
documented; however, formal interviews
and in depth conversations with experts
will need to be documented.
Talking with others
 Developing a Research Question

• It's absolutely essential to develop a

research question that you're interested in
or care about in order to focus your
research and your paper
• Choose the best question, one that is
neither too broad nor too narrow.
 Developing a Research Question
• For example, if you choose juvenile
delinquency, you might ask the following
questions:
• What is the 1994 rate of juvenile
delinquency in the U.S.?
• What can we do to reduce juvenile
delinquency in the U.S.?
• Does education play a role in reducing
juvenile delinquents' return to crime?
 Developing a Research Question
• Question "a" is too narrow, since it can be
answered with a simple statistic.
• Question "b" is too broad; it implies that
the researcher will cover many tactics for
reducing juvenile delinquency that could
be used throughout the country.
• Question "c," on the other hand, is focused
enough to research in some depth. 
 How to search literatures?
• A literature search is a comprehensive survey of
publications and information on a specific topic.
• The result produced at the end of a literature
search is usually a list of references.
• A literature search differs from a literature
review, which is the written section of your
research report that summarizes the iterature
you studied.)
 Choose your search words and
their synonyms
• Generate a list of synonyms and other words
that might be used in discussion of each
concept.
• An excellent source for choosing synonyms
and search terms is the Canadian Literacy
Thesaurus, available online or in print.
• (http://thesaurusalpha.org/thesaurus/index.ht
m)
 Choose your search words and
their synonyms
• What effect does health have on literacy
learners’ success?
• Concept 1:Learner success; Learning
outcome;Learner progress;Goal
achievement;Learner assessment
• Concept 2: Health;Wellbeing;Illness
• Sickness;Disease;Medical condition
 Choose the right place to
search
• You can search in subject specific databases,
on the Internet, or in library catalogues.
• Web search engines such as Google or
AllTheWeb.com, are usually most useful to
find general information of public interest.
• Web of science, engineering village, Social
Science Citation Index
 Keep Track of What You Find
• When you start finding useful resources, you’ll
want to keep a record of them.
• Be sure to record full bibliographic
information: title, author, year of publication,
journal title and volume number (if applicable).
• This is called a citation or reference.
• Keeping good records helps you to locate your
resources at a later date.
Thank You!