Presenting Your Research: Papers, Presentations, and People

1
Presenting Your ResearchPapers, Presentations,
and People

• Marie desJardins
• (mariedj_at_cs.umbc.edu)
• CMSC 691B
• April 24, 2006

Thanks to Rob Holte for permission to use some
slides
2
Research Isnt Just Research

• Who cares what you do, if you never tell them?
• Youll need to present your ideas in various
  forms and venues
• PEOPLE Networking with colleagues at your
  institution and elsewhere
• PAPERS Writing and submitting papers to
  workshops, conferences, and journals
• PRESENTATIONS Giving talks at workshops,
  conferences, and other institutions
• (You should also put together a website that
  highlights your interests and research
  activities)
• oh, and these things also provide useful
  experience for job interviews, not to mention
  valuable job skills

3
People
4
Networking

• Meet people! It helps to have an objective
• Find out what research theyre currently working
  on
• Tell them what youre currently working on
• Find an area of common interest
• Learn what their visions/future directions are
• Suggest a new direction for research or topic for
  a class
• Whats in this interaction for you?
• Whats in it for them?
• If you know two friends, and they know two
  friends, and they know two friends Pretty soon
  you know everybody!

5
Be Prepared

• You need to be prepared to summarize your
  research
• For a thesis topic, you should have a 1-minute,
  5-minute, and 15-minute presentation already
  thought through
• The same goes for other projects youve been
  working on
• Be able to distinguish between your original
  contributions, your advisors contributions, and
  ideas drawn from previous research
• Practice with other students!

6
Publishing
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Writing and Submitting Papers

• For a masters thesis, you should aim to have at
  least one good conference paper by the time you
  graduate
• For a doctoral dissertation, you should aim for a
  couple of good conference papers and a journal
  paper
• Writing these papers is great practice for the
  thesis itself (and you can reuse the material!)
• Where to submit?
• Look at publication lists of people doing
  research related to yours, and see where they
  publish
• Publish at the conferences that have the most
  interesting papers

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Paper Writing Strategies

• First, decide where you plan to submit the paper
• You may not finish in time, but having a deadline
  is always helpful
• Two to four months away is a good planning
  horizon
• Next, decide what you will say
• What are the key ideas? Have you developed them
  yet?
• What are the key results? Have you designed and
  run the experiments yet? Have you analyzed the
  data?
• What is the key related work? Have you read the
  relevant background material? Can you give a
  good summary of it?
• Now get started on the work you need to do to
  fill in the missing holes!
• Write early and often You can (and should) write
  in parallel with finishing the work!

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Paper Writing Design

• Abstract summarizes the research contributions,
  not the paper (i.e., it shouldnt be an outline
  of the paper)
• Introduction/motivation what youve done and
  why the reader should care, plus an outline of
  the paper
• Technical sections one or more sections
  summarizing the research ideas youve developed
• Experiments/results/analysis one or more
  sections presenting experimental results and/or
  supporting proofs
• Future work summary of where youre headed next
  and open questions still to be answered
• Related work sometimes comes after
  introduction, sometimes before conclusions
  (depends to some extent on whether youre
  building on previous research, or dismissing it
  as irrelevant)
• Conclusions reminder of what youve said and
  why its important

10
Paper Writing Tactics

• Top-down design (outline) is very helpful
• Bulleted lists can help you get past writers
  block
• Unless youre a really talented/experienced
  writer, you should use these tools before you
  start writing prose
• Neatness counts! Check spelling, grammar,
  consistency of fonts and notation before showing
  it to anyone for review
• If theyre concentrating on your typos, they
  might miss whats interesting about the content.
  (More about the reviewers perspective
  later...)
• Leave time for reviews!
• Fellow students, collaborators, advisors,
• A paper is only done when its submitted... and
  usually not even then.

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Authorship

• Who should be an author?
• Anyone who contributed significantly to the
  conceptual development or writing of the paper
• Not necessarily people who provided feedback,
  implemented code, or ran experiments
• What order should the authors be listed in?
• If some authors contributed more of the
  conceptual development and/or did most/all of
  the writing, they should be listed first
• If the contribution was equal or the authors
  worked as a team, the authors should be listed in
  alphabetical order
• Sometimes the note The authors are listed in
  alphabetical order is explicitly included

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The Review Process
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Conference Reviewing

• Program committees
• Selection process
• Senior vs. area chair vs. regular members
• Paper assignments
• Keyword-based
• Self-selection
• All for one and one for all
• Decisions
• Reaching a consensus
• Final decisions
• Conditional accepts (rare)
• Acceptance rates (20 in good
  conferences/journals)

14
Journal Reviewing

• Executive editor ? Area editor ? Board members or
  reviewers
• Longer decision cycle
• Typically higher quality, longer, and deeper
  reviews
• Decision options
• Accept as is
• Accept with minor changes
• Accept with major changes (subject to re-review)
• Reject with encouragement to resubmit
• Reject out of hand

15
Where to Publish

• Workshops vs. conferences vs. journals
• Length of decision cycle
• Quantity vs. quality
• Aim high! (or at least appropriately)
• Acceptance rate vs. time to prepare/publish

16
Purpose of a Review

• Evaluate the papers scientific merit
• Check the validity of the papers claims and
  evidence
• Judge the papers relevance and significance
• Provide constructive feedback to the author

17
Typical Conference Review Form

• 1. How RELEVANT is this paper?
• 2. How SIGNIFICANT is this paper?
• 3. How ORIGINAL is this paper?
• 4. Is this paper technically SOUND?
• 5. How well is this paper PRESENTED?
• Additional comments for the author(s)

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Knowing Your AudienceA Reviewers Perspective

• First, I read the title is it in my area?
  (self-selection)
• Next, I read the abstract is it interesting?
  (self-selection)
• Next, I skim the introduction and form my
  opinion about the paper
• Next, I read the rest of the paper looking for
  evidence to support my view
• ? By the time I get to Section 2, I already have
  a very strong opinion about whether to accept or
  reject.
• Your job is to give me the evidence I need in the
  title and abstract to select your paper for
  review, and in the introduction to result in the
  right opinion!

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Good Reviews Are...

• Polite
• Fair
• Concise
• Clear
• Constructive
• Specific
• Well-documented
• Represent the scientific community
• ... but you get what you get!
• Bad, unfair review that missed the point? Fix
  your paper anyway!

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Ethical Issues

• Multiple submissions
• Journal versions of conference papers
• Authors and author order
• Listing papers in your CV

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Rejected!! ? Now What?

• Fix the paper!
• Read the reviews, rail and complain, berate the
  reviewer
• Calm down
• Read them again with an open mind
• Do more experiments, revise the paper,
• Go back to the reviews again have you addressed
  all the points?
• Have people read the revision critically
• Do more experiments, revise the paper,
• Repeat until the next deadline ?

22
Presentations
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Know How Long You Have

• How long is the talk? Are questions included?
• A good heuristic is 2-3 minutes per slide
• If you have too many slides, youll skip some
  orworserush desperately to finish. Avoid this
  temptation!!
• Almost by definition, you never have time to say
  everything about your topic, so dont worry about
  skipping some things!
• Unless youre very experienced giving talks, you
  should practice your timing
• A couple of times on your own to get the general
  flow
• At least one dry run to work out the kinks
• A run-through on your own the night before the
  talk

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Know Your Audience

• Dont waste time on basics if youre talking to
  an audience in your field
• Even for these people, you need to be sure youre
  explaining each new concept clearly
• On the other hand, youll lose people in a
  general audience if you dont give the necessary
  background
• In any case, the most important thing is to
  emphasize what youve done and why they should
  care!

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Know What You Want to Say

• Just giving a project summary is not interesting
  to most people
• You should give enough detail to get your
  interesting ideas across (and to show that youve
  actually solved, but not enough to lose your
  audience
• They want to hear what you did that was cool and
  why they should care
• Preferably, theyll hear the above two points at
  the beginning of the talk, over the course of the
  talk, and at the end of the talk
• If theyre intrigued, theyll ask questions or
  read your paper
• Whatever you do, dont just read your slides!

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Preparing slides

• Dont just read your slides!
• Use the minimum amount of text necessary
• Use examples
• Use a readable, simple, yet elegant format
• Use color to emphasize important points, but
  avoid the excessive use of color
• Hiding bullets like this is annoying (but
  sometimes effective), but
• Dont fidget, and
• Dont just read your slides!

Abuse
of
animation
is
a
cardinal
sin!
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How to Give a Bad TalkAdvice from Dave
Patterson, summarized by Mark Hill

1. Thou shalt not be neat
2. Thou shalt not waste space
3. Thou shalt not covet brevity
4. Thou shalt cover thy naked slides
5. Thou shalt not write large
6. Thou shalt not use color
7. Thou shalt not illustrate
8. Thou shalt not make eye contact
9. Thou shalt not skip slides in a long talk
10. Thou shalt not practice

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Some Useful Resources
Any Questions?

• Some useful resources
• Writing
• Lynn DuPre, Bugs in Writing
• Strunk White, Elements of Style
• Giving talks
• Mark Hill, Oral presentation advice
• Patrick Winston, Some lecturing heuristics
• Simon L. Peyton Jones et al., How to give a good
  research talk
• Dave Patterson, How to have a bad career in
  research/academia
• These slides
• http//www.cs.umbc.edu/mariedj/talks/presenting-r
  esearch-dc-jul05.ppt