How to write a great research paper
Simon Peyton Jones Microsoft Research, Cambridge

Why bother?
Fallacy we write papers and give talks mainly to impress others, gain recognition, and get promoted

Good papers and talks are a fundamental part of research excellence

Papers communicate ideas
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Your goal: to infect the mind of your reader with your idea, like a virus Papers are far more durable than programs (think Mozart)

The greatest ideas are (literally) worthless if you keep them to yourself

Writing papers: model 1
Idea Do research W rite paper

Writing papers: model 2
Idea Do research W rite paper

Idea
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W rite paper

Do research

Forces us to be clear, focused Crystallises what we don’t understand Opens the way to dialogue with others: reality check, critique, and collaboration

Do not be intimidated
Fallacy You need to have a fantastic idea before you can write a paper or give a talk. (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

Do not be intimidated
Write a paper, and give a talk, about any idea, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you

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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

The purpose of your paper

The purpose of your paper is...

To convey your idea
...from your head to your reader’s head Everything serves this single goal

The purpose of your paper is not...

To describe the WizWoz system
 Your reader does not have a WizWoz  She is primarily interested in re-usable brain-stuff, not executable artefacts

Conveying the idea
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I wish I knew how to solve that!

Here is a problem It’s an interesting problem I see how It’s an unsolved problem that works. Ingenious! Here is my idea My idea works (details, data) Here’s how my idea compares to other people’s approaches

Structure
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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)

The abstract
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1. 2. 3. 4.

I usually write the abstract last Used by program committee members to decide which papers to read Four sentences [Kent Beck]
State the problem Say why it’s an interesting problem Say what your solution achieves Say what follows from your solution

Example
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Many papers are badly written and hard to understand This is a pity, because their good ideas may go unappreciated Following simple guidelines can dramatically improve the quality of your papers Your work will be used more, and the feedback you get from others will in turn improve your research

Structure
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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)

The introduction (1 page)
Describe the problem 2. State your contributions ...and that is all
1.

Describe the problem
Use an example to introduce the problem

State your contributions
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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”

State your contributions
Bulleted list of contributions

Do not leave the reader to guess what your contributions are!

Contributions should be refutable
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 prove that the type system is sound, and that type checking is decidable (Section 4) 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.

We study its properties

We have used WizWoz in practice

No “rest of this paper is...”
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Not:

“The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the problem. Section 3 ... Finally, Section 8 concludes”.

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Instead, use forward references from the narrative in the introduction. The introduction (including the contributions) should survey the whole paper, and therefore forward reference every important part.

Structure
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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)

No related work yet!

Related work
Your reader Your idea

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].

No related work yet
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Problem 1: describing alternative approaches gets between the reader and your idea Problem 2: the reader knows nothing about the problem yet; so your (carefully trimmed) description of various technical tradeoffs is absolutely incomprehensible

I feel tired

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I feel stupid

Instead...
Concentrate single-mindedly on a narrative that
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Describes the problem, and why it is interesting Describes your idea Defends your idea, showing how it solves the problem, and filling out the details

On the way, cite relevant work in passing, but defer discussion to the end

The payload of your paper
Consider a bufircuated 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

The payload of your paper
Introduce the problem, and your idea, using

EXAMPLES and only then present the general case

Using examples

The Simon PJ question: is there any typewriter font?

Example right away

Conveying the idea
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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

Evidence
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Your introduction makes claims The body of the paper provides evidence to support each claim Check each claim in the introduction, identify the evidence, and forward-reference it from the claim Evidence can be: analysis and comparison, theorems, measurements, case studies

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Structure
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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)

Related work
Fallacy To make my work look good, I have to make other people’s work look bad

The truth: credit is not like money 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

Credit is not like money Failing to give credit to others can kill your paper
If you imply that an idea is yours, and the referee knows it is not, then either  You don’t know that it’s an old idea (bad)  You do know, but are pretending it’s yours (very bad)

Making sure related work is accurate
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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 likely to be your referees anyway, so getting their comments up front is jolly good.

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The process
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Start early. Very early.
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Hastily-written papers get rejected. Papers are like wine: they need time to mature

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Collaborate Use CVS to support collaboration

Getting help
Get your paper read by as many friendly guinea pigs as possible
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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 “wibble is mis-spelt”.)

Listening to your reviewers
Every review is 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 important

Listening to your reviewers
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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.

Language and style

Basic stuff
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Submit by the deadline Keep to the length restrictions
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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

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Always use a spell checker

Visual structure
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Give strong visual structure to your paper using
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sections and sub-sections bullets italics laid-out code

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Find out how to draw pictures, and use them

Visual structure

Use the active voice
The passive voice is “respectable” but it DEADENS your paper. Avoid it at all costs.
“We” = you and the reader

NO
It can be seen that... 34 tests were run These properties were thought desirable It might be thought that this would be a type error
“You” = the reader

YES
We can see that... We ran 34 tests We wanted to retain these properties You might think this would be a type error
“We” = the authors

Use simple, direct language NO
The object under study was displaced horizontally On an annual basis

YES
The ball moved sideways 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

Summary
If you remember nothing else:  Identify your key idea  Make your contributions explicit  Use examples
A good starting point: “Advice on Research and Writing” http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/ mleone/web/how-to.html