Presenting Your Research:Papers, Presentations, and People

Dr Rojnath Pande

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Research Isn’t Just Research

Who cares what you do, if you never tell them? You’ll 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…

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Writing and Submitting Papers

For a master’s 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 shouldn’t be an outline of the paper)

Introduction/motivation – what you’ve donewhat you’ve done and why the reader should carewhy the reader should care, plus an outline of the paper

Technical sections – one or more sections summarizing the research ideas you’ve developed

Experiments/results/analysis – one or more sections presenting experimental results and/or supporting proofs

Future work – summary of where you’re headed next and open questions still to be answered

Related work – sometimes comes after introduction, sometimes before conclusions (depends to some extent on whether you’re building on previous research, or dismissing it as irrelevant)

Conclusions – reminder of what you’ve said and why it’s important

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Paper Writing: Tactics

Top-down design (outline) is very helpful Bulleted lists can help you get past writer’s block

Unless you’re 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 they’re concentrating on your typos, they

might miss what’s interesting about the content. (More about the reviewer’s perspective later...)

Leave time for reviews! Fellow students, collaborators, advisors, … A paper is only done when it’s submitted... and usually not even

then.

The Review Process

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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

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Purpose of a Review

Evaluate the paper’s scientific merit Check the validity of the paper’s claims and evidence Judge the paper’s relevance and significance

Provide constructive feedback to the author

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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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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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Knowing Your Audience:A Reviewer’s 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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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

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, you’ll skip some or—worse—

rush desperately to finish. Avoid this temptation!! Almost by definition, you never have time to say everything

about your topic, so don’t worry about skipping some things!

Unless you’re 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

Don’t waste time on basics if you’re talking to an audience in your field

Even for these people, you need to be sure you’re explaining each new concept clearly

On the other hand, you’ll lose people in a general audience if you don’t give the necessary background

In any case, the most important thing is to emphasize what you’ve 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 you’ve 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, they’ll 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 they’re intrigued, they’ll ask questions or read your paper Whatever you do, don’t just read your slides!

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Preparing slides

Don’t 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…

Don’t fidget, and… Don’t 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: Writing:

Lynn DuPre, Bugs in WritingStrunk & 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”