Introducci a la Recerca

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Introducció a la Recerca

• Tema 3. Writing articles

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Scientific writing

• Their goal is to describe processes which take
  place when doing research
• Article
• Presents advances on a certain field, contains
  specific parts that allow to understand all the
  scientific process described
• There also surveys, which include an overview on
  a certain topic
• Report
• Preliminar and longer version of an article.
  Contains parts that, if published as paper, are
  supressed
• Their target is so specific, or their content has
  a lack of importance, so they are not considered
  for being published
• Letters
• Very short papers
• Critiques to other papers or improvements
• Theses, books, etc.

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Scientific writing

• Despite being conceptually different, they
  present a common
• Introduction
• Development and results
• Conclusions
• References
• Writing style
• No ambiguities
• Concreteness, clarity and briefness
• Polite language
• arent, wed, cannot be used
• Self-contained
• Write for the others, not for you

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The scientific paper

• Some questions to ask to ourselves
• Why do we write the paper?
• Target?
• What do we want to explain? Is it important?
• How shall we explain it?
• Is there already many information about it?
• Can I prove I am right?
• Is it all worth it?

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The scientific paper

• Parts of the paper
• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Description
• Results
• Conclusions
• References (bibliography)

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The scientific paper

• The title
• Must describe the content in a clear, exact and
  concise form
• In the subtitle, there is the author information
  with their affiliation
• Alphabetical order, importance of their
  contribution, etc.

A secure identification protocol
A secure and efficient identification protocol
for RFID tags
A secure identification protocol for RFID tags
Improving the efficiency of Hash-locks
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The scientific paper

• The abstract
• Between 50 and 300 words (usually specified in
  the Call for Papers)
• Must include the content and the result of the
  paper
• Summarize the aim of our work
• Describe the methodology
• Summarize the results
• No references!
• It can be published on its own

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The scientific paper

• The abstract
• Summarize the aim of our work (1)
• Describe the methodology (2)
• Summarize the results (3)

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The scientific paper

• Introduction
• Motivation of the work
• What do we want to solve / improve?
• Its interest for the scientific / technical world
• Previous work / existing proposals, and which
  aspects we improve or come up with
• Describe the structure of the rest of the paper

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The scientific paper

• Description
• To describe our contribution
• Algorithm
• Protocol
• Design
• Method
• Architecture
• etc.
• Lemma, theorem, corollary, etc.
• Figures, tables, etc.

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The scientific paper

• Results
• To describe what have we done so as to prove that
  what we previously described...
• ... Is right
• ... Accomplishes our goals
• Comparison with other methods!
• Tools
• Experiments
• Simulations
• Formal validations
• Lemma, theorem, corollary, etc.
• Figures and tables

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The scientific paper

• Conclusions
• A very important part!
• It must summarize what we have presented
• Written in past tense (the abstract is written in
  present)
• Usually more detailed than the abstract
• Can include an enumeration of items for going on
  with this work (future work)

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The scientific paper

• References/Bibliography
• Up-to-date references
• Citation styles
• Author-date (Ferrer 2005), Ferrer 2005b
• Author-date summarized Ferr06, Sol94
• Numerical 5
• Inserted references P. Ferrer (Models matemàtics
  amb llenguatge C. Columna, Barcelona, 1995)

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The scientific paper

• References/Bibliography
• Bibliography styles
• Numerical
• Alphabetical
• Alphabetical summarized
• Chicago

1 Michael Laszlo and Sumitra Mukherjee. Minimum
spanning tree partitioning algorithm for
microaggregation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge
and Data Engineering, 17(7)902911, 2005.
LM05 Michael Laszlo and Sumitra Mukherjee.
Minimum spanning tree partitioning algorithm for
microaggregation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge
and Data Engineering, 17(7)902911, 2005.
LM05 M. Laszlo and S. Mukherjee. Minimum
spanning tree partitioning algorithm for
microaggregation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge
and Data Engineering, 17(7)902911, 2005.
Laszlo, M. and Mukherjee, S. (2005) Minimum
spanning tree partitioning algorithm for
microaggregation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge
and Data Engineering, 17(7)902911.
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The scientific paper

• Other parts
• Appendices
• Contain tables, figures, proofs, etc. which are
  not essentials for the paper to be
  self-contained, but interesting for the reader
• Acknowledgements
• Research funding
• Peers or reviewers who helped to improve the paper

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The scientific paper

• To take into account...
• Style, neatness, exactness
• Cannot be written in a few hours
• Read and read again
• Well-structured
• Sections, subsections
• Elements numbered and with captions
• Tables, figures, equations, etc.
• Servei Lingüístic!

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The scientific paper

• Language
• Do not use synonymy
• Client, customer, user, client, user, ...
• User, user, user, user, ...
• No ambiguity
• Els estudiants que perden classes freqüentment
  suspenen
• She could not explain why she wanted to get
  married to her mother
• Impersonal / passive voice
• (mandatory in some cases!)
• The protocol has been implemented using C
  language
• We have implemented the protocol using C language

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The scientific paper

• Language
• Parallelism
• Sha implementat lalgorisme amb C i es va
  comprovar que era més eficient
• Sha implementat lalgorisme amb C i sha
  comprovat que és més eficient
• Short and well-build sentences
• La millora en el protocol ve donada per la
  supressió del pas 7 i sha implementat un nou
  sistema que el substitueix i la millora és
  important
• La important millora del protocol ve donada per
  la substitució del pas 7 per un de nou

Read, read, read, read... And write, write, ....
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The scientific paper

• Showing data
• Table?

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The scientific paper

• Plots