Writing a
research
paper
1
연구 개발의 의미
• 연구
– 硏: 갈고 닦는다는 뜻
究: 궁리한다는 뜻
– 어떤 일에 대하여 깊이 생각하고 사리를 따지어
보는 일
• Research
– Search again
– Scientific investigation
• 개발
– 開: 새로운 길, 방법을 연다 發: 꽃을 피운다
– 새로운 것을 고안해 내어 실용화함 (교학사 국어사전)
• Development
– To bring, grow, or evolve to a more
complete, complex, or desirable state
(American Heritage Dictionary)
2
연구 개발이란 무엇인가?
• “When you steal ideas from many
people, it is called research. When
you steal ideas from one person, it is
called plagiarism.”
• Research = re-search
– 즉 다른 사람이 해 놓은 일을 다시 조사하는
데서 또는 새로운 각도에서 조명하는 데서
연구개발이 시작된다 => 硏究員은 곧
調査員!!
3
R&D 분야의 세계적 추세
• Outsourcing
• Licensing
• Strategic alliance (적과의 동침)
• Grand alliance (세계적 표준 전략)
• Contract research
• M&A
• Concurrent Engineering vs Sequential
Engineering
• R&D 초기 단계부터 여러 부서(특히 마키팅 부서)
가 공동참여
4
Matrix Management &
Dual Ladder
• Matrix management
– 기본조직과 프로젝트 조직의 2원화
• 기본조직: 수직적 구조 (계장, 과장, 부장, 이사…)
• 프로젝트 조직: 수평적 구조 (project manager,
project leader, team leader….)
• Dual ladder
– Scientist 나 engineer 가 기본조직을 통하지 않고
연구에만 전념하여도 직급승진과 보수를 많이 받을 수
있는 제도
• Research and Engineering Fellow: 미국
• 연구위원: 한국의 대기업 연구소에서 채택한 제도
5
R&D skill vs. People skill
• 연구원은 연구를 함으로 과학, 공학적인 지식을
얼만큼 갖고 있느냐 하는 것만 중요하다.
• 과학 공학적 지식만큼, people skill,
leadership skill, speaking and writing
skills도 아주 중요하다. 특히 writing,
speaking skill은 project에 아주 중요한
역할을 한다.
6
How to write a
research paper
Simon Peyton Jones
Microsoft Research, Cambridge
7
• “The best way to understand
something really big, is to reduce it
to something meaningful.” Alex
Beam, Boston Globe
8
Writing papers
Idea
Write paper
Do research
• Crystallises what we don’t
understand
• Opens the way to dialogue with
others: reality check, critique, and
collaboration
9
Do not be intimidated
Fallacy
You need to have a fantastic idea
before you can write a paper.
(Everyone else seems to.)
Write a paper,
and give a talk, about
any idea,
no matter how weedy and
insignificant it may seem to you
10
Papers communicate ideas


Writing the paper is how you develop
the idea in the first place
It usually turns out to be more interesting
and challenging that it seemed at first
11
Your narrative flow
• 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
12
Structure
(conference paper)
• Title (1000 readers)
• Abstract (4 sentences, 100 readers)
• Introduction (1 page, 100 readers)
• The problem (1 page, 10 readers)
• My idea (2 pages, 10 readers)
• The details (5 pages, 3 readers)
• Related work (1-2 pages, 10 readers)
• Conclusions and further work (0.5
pages)
13
The abstract
• I usually write the abstract last
• Used by program committee
members to decide which papers to
read
• Four sentences [Kent Beck]
1.
2.
3.
4.
State the problem
Say why it’s an interesting problem
Say what your solution achieves
Say what follows from your solution
14
Structure
• Abstract (4 sentences)
• Introduction (1 page)
• The problem (1 page)
• My idea (2 pages)
• The details (5 pages)
• Related work (1-2 pages)
• Conclusions and further work (0.5
pages)
15
The introduction
(1 page)
1. Describe the problem
2. State your contributions
...and that is all
16
Describe the problem
Use an
example
to
introduce
the
problem
17
State your
contributions
• Write the list of contributions first
• The list of contributions drives the
entire paper: the paper
substantiates the claims you have
made
• Reader thinks “gosh, if they can
really deliver this, that’s be
exciting; I’d better read on”
18
State your contributions
Bulleted list
of
contributions
Do not leave the
reader to guess what
your contributions are!
19
Contributions should be
refutable
NO!
YES!
We describe the WizWoz
system. It is really cool.
We give the syntax and semantics
of a language that supports
concurrent processes (Section 3).
Its innovative features are...
We study its properties
We prove that the type system is
sound, and that type checking is
decidable (Section 4)
We have used WizWoz in
practice
We have built a GUI toolkit in
WizWoz, and used it to implement
a text editor (Section 5). The
result is half the length of the Java
version.
20
Structure
• Abstract (4 sentences)
• Introduction (1 page)
•Related work
• The problem (1 page)
• My idea (2 pages)
• The details (5 pages)
• Related work (1-2 pages)
• Conclusions and further work (0.5
pages)
21
No related work yet!
We adopt the notion of transaction from Brown
[1], as modified for distributed systems by White
[2], using the four-phase interpolation algorithm
of Green [3]. Our work differs from White in our
advanced revocation protocol, which deals with the
case of priority inversion as described by Yellow
[4].
The reader knows nothing about the problem yet;
so your (carefully trimmed) description of various
technical tradeoffs is absolutely incomprehensible
22
Structure
• Abstract (4 sentences)
• Introduction (1 page)
• The problem (1 page)
• My idea (2 pages)
• The details (5 pages)
• Related work (1-2 pages)
• Conclusions and further work (0.5
pages)
23
Presenting the idea
3. The idea
Consider a bifircuated semi-lattice D, over a
hyper-modulated signature S. Suppose pi is an
element of D. Then we know for every such pi
there is an epi-modulus j, such that pj < pi.
 Sounds impressive...but
 Sends readers to sleep
 In a paper you MUST provide the details,
but FIRST convey the idea
24
Presenting the idea
• Explain it as if you were speaking to
someone using a whiteboard
• Conveying the intuition is
primary, not secondary
• Once your reader has the intuition,
she can follow the details (but not
vice versa)
• Even if she skips the details, she still
takes away something valuable
25
Using examples
Introduce the problem, and
your idea, using
EXAMPLES
and only then present the
general case
26
Using examples
Example
right
away
27
The details: evidence
• Your introduction makes claims
• The body of the paper provides
evidence to support each claim
• Check each claim in the introduction,
identify the evidence
• Evidence can be: analysis and
comparison, theorems,
measurements, case studies
28
Structure
• Abstract (4 sentences)
• Introduction (1 page)
• The problem (1 page)
• My idea (2 pages)
• The details (5 pages)
• Related work (1-2 pages)
• Conclusions and further work (0.5
pages)
29
Related work
Giving credit to others does not diminish
the credit you get from your paper
 Warmly acknowledge people who have
helped you
 Be generous to the competition. “In his
inspiring paper [Foo98] Foogle shows....
We develop his foundation in the following
ways...”
 Acknowledge weaknesses in your
approach
30
Structure
• Abstract (4 sentences)
• Introduction (1 page)
• The problem (1 page)
• My idea (2 pages)
• The details (5 pages)
• Related work (1-2 pages)
• Conclusions and further work (0.5
pages)
31
Conclusions and further
work
• Be brief.
32
The process
• Start early. Very early.
– Hastily-written papers get rejected.
– Papers are like wine: they need time to
mature
• Collaborate
33
Getting help
• Experts are good
• Non-experts are also very good
• Each reader can only read your paper for
the first time once! So use them carefully
• Explain carefully what you want (“I got
lost here” is much more important than
“Jarva is mis-spelt”.)
34
Getting expert help
• A good plan: when you think you are
done, send the draft to the competition
saying “could you help me ensure that I
describe your work fairly?”.
• Often they will respond with helpful
critique (they are interested in the
area)
• They are likely to be your referees
anyway, so getting their comments or
criticism up front is Jolly Good.
35
Listening to your reviewers
Treat every review like gold dust
Be (truly) grateful for criticism as
well as praise
This is really, really, really hard
But it’s
really, really, really, really, really,
really, really, really, really, really
important
36
Listening to your reviewers
• Read every criticism as a positive
suggestion for something you could
explain more clearly
• DO NOT respond “you stupid person,
I meant X”. Fix the paper so that X
is apparent even to the stupidest
reader.
• Thank them warmly. They have
given up their time for you.
37
Basic stuff
• Submit by the deadline
• Keep to the length restrictions
– Do not narrow the margins
– Do not use 6pt font
– On occasion, supply supporting
evidence (e.g. experimental data, or a
written-out proof) in an appendix
• Always use a spell checker
38
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
39
Visual structure
40
Use the active voice
The passive voice is “respectable” but it DEADENS
your paper. Avoid it at all costs.
NO
YES
It can be seen that...
We can see that...
34 tests were run
We ran 34 tests
These properties were
thought desirable
We wanted to retain these
properties
It might be thought that
this would be a type error
You might think this
would be a type error
“You” = the
reader
“We” = you
and the
reader
“We” = the
authors
41
Use simple, direct language
NO
YES
The object under study was
displaced horizontally
The ball moved sideways
On an annual basis
Yearly
Endeavour to ascertain
Find out
It could be considered that
the speed of storage
reclamation left something to
be desired
The garbage collector was
really slow
42
Figures
• Graphs
– not more than two curves on a
diagram
• up to four if well separated
– show points only if scatter is
important
• points should be visible
– abstractions with respect to text
43
Figures
• Numerical tables are difficult to
read
– – use a diagram, istogram, pie chart,
…
– if you need to use a table, no more
than 6-8 rows and 3-4 colums
44
Dave Patterson's Writing
Advice
45
Active voice
• For example, use "Figure X
shows ..." rather than "... as
shown in Figure X." Also, it is
much better to mention a
Figure that summarizes a lot
of information early in a
paragraph rather than go into
details and mention the figure
at the end, as early mention
gives the reader a framework
to refer to while reading the
text.
46
Ambiguous use of pronoun
• Put a noun after "This" to make
it clear what you are referring to.
47
"While" instead of "and", "but",
"although".
• In general while should be used
only in the strict sense of
"during the time
48
A single numbered subsection
• Why do you need to number it if
there is only one? Either
eliminate the single subsection,
or change the part that precedes
the subsection into a second
subsection
49
Refering to Chapters, Figures
• Capitalized when used to refer to
a specifuc number. So its Chapter
1, Table 3.1, Figure 1.2.
50
Numbers spelled out vs.
numerical
. The general rule of thumb is to spell
out one to ten and use numbers for
numbers for 11 and up.
For example, " The eight-processor
case (model 370) needs only four
computers to hold 32 processors.
(8*4=32) instead of words
(eight*four=32).
51
References
• Frederick Crews and Sandra Schor, "The
Borzoi Handbook for Writers (2nd edition)",
Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1989.
• Linda Flower, "Problem Solving Strategies
for Writing (3rd edition)", Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1989.
• “Advice on Research and Writing”
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/
mleone/web/how-to.html
52