1. On Writing High Quality Technical Papers VLDB Database School (China) Suzhou University, October 3, 2002 Lu Hongjun Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Email: luhj@cs.ust.hk URL: http://www.cs.ust.hk/~luhj

2. 2 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Assessing the Quality of Papers  The most common measure today is its suitability for publication in the best journals or conferences in its area.  The top conferences  ACM SIGMOD/PODS, VLDB, ICDE, SIGKDD  Regional database conference  EDBT (Europe, even years), DASFAA  For specific areas  ACM CIKM, ICDT SSD, COOPIS, PAKDD, DOOD, ER, DEXA, WAIM, WISE ….  National database conferences  ADC (Australia), COMAD (India), …

3. 3 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Acceptance Rate of VLDB Year Number submitted Number accepted Percentage 20024316916% 20013075919% 20003515315% 19993905715% 19983275216% 19973355115% 19963404814% 19952975218% 19942935418%

4. 4 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Acceptance Rate of ICDE Year Number submitted Number accepted Percentage 200337851 13% 2002 2001 20002874114% 19992724215% 19982525622% 19972404519% 19962646023% 19952335624%

5. 5 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Acceptance Rate of SIGMOD Year Number submitted Number accepte d Percentage 20002484217% 19992054220% 19982464217% 19972024221% 19962904716% 19952083617% 19942794014% 19932353917%

6. 6 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Acceptance Rate of CIKM Year Number submitted Number accepted Percentage 200230074 25% 19982105325% 1996993535% 19952245123%

7. 7 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Difficulties in Writing High Quality Papers  High quality papers come from high quality research work. However, writing style matters a lot also.  The intense competition in computer science, especially in DB related areas, has set high­quality standards that we must follow The acceptance rate for good conferences < 20%  Junior researchers and Ph. D. students with high-quality work may fail to produce high-quality papers  poor English skills  lack of proper training  lack of method.

8. 8 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Possible Solutions  A quick and easy solution  produce a first draft, find a researcher with good writing skills to improve or entirely rewrite the paper  can produce an excellent paper that you may not recognize  you will not learn how to produce the paper yourself  Find a good advisor  Learn to write yourself  Practice makes it perfect

9. 9 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 The Life Cycle  Starting  Make sure you have a real, significant contribution before going to the next step.  Planning.  Produce a detailed outline of the entire paper as a good basis for discussion and improvement before writing.  Writing.  Starting with the abstract and introduction to fix the motivation and structure of the paper  Writing the other sections  Finishing with the conclusion  Building the bibliography in parallel with writing.

10. 10 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 The Life Cycle (Cont’d)  Checking  Use standard tools (speller, dictionaries, cross­referencing checker, etc.) to correct all mistakes. Failing to do this will be interpreted as unprofessional  Rewriting  Circulate the paper internally to get rapid feed­back. Then revise and rewrite according to suggestions  Submitting the paper  Choose the right place to submit  Receiving the review reports  To have a party

11. 11 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Choosing A Right Topic  High quality papers come from high quality research work. The most important thing is to choose a right research topic  As a student,  There are research issues in implementation  Quite a lot of good papers are generated from system implementation  Define your scope appropriately  Decompose a topic into phases

12. 12 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Design Your Paper  Design a scheme for the paper that best conveys the idea  Planning the main elements of the content (formalism, algorithms, examples, etc.) for overall consistency  Appropriate formalism  at the suitable level of abstraction to avoid being too close to your environment or prototype implementation  algorithms must be described in a suitable way,  with pseudo­code or graphics, depending on their complexity avoid low­level languages or over­detailed graphics unless absolutely necessary.  Planning a common example to be used consistently throughout the paper

13. 13 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Writing with Good Style  Brevity  avoiding unnecessary words and ideas  more precise.  Precise  Contents: defining all concepts and terms of interest the first time they appear and referring to them with the same word  Citations and claims: do not over-stating the contributions  simple  American people prefer simple sentences: avoid complex sentences by breaking them into simpler, connected ones  People do not like complex formalisms unless absolutely necessary, especially DB people: Do not make simple concept difficult to understand

14. 14 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Paper Organization Abstract  summarize the paper, and clearly stating the context, the contribution, and the main results of the paper 1. Introduction 2. Contents 3. ………….. 4. Conclusions  summarize the paper contribution and emphasize the main result  can also address application of the result and open issues  give future research directions Acknowledgement References

15. 15 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Introduction  Convince the reader that the paper is worth reading,  Identify the selling points  A good paper should addresses an important problem  A good paper should provides an exciting, solid solution  It is usually structured as:  context of the paper,  precise problem definition,  limitations of existing solutions (if any),  goal of the paper,  key ideas  a short outline

16. 16 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Contents  The content provides the substance of the paper  develop the key idea and results  Organize them in a good ay so that the reader is convinced of its significance and validity.  The key idea must be clearly stated and identified  Trying to convey too many ideas, even related, may obscure the main idea and confuse the reader.  Fixing a size limit for the paper, e.g., 20 double­space pages, is a good way to encourage focus  Ease the task of the reader (understanding the contribution) with good organization, brevity and illustration.  Plan appropriate number of sections, subsections and paragraphs.  They must be self­contained and consistent, i.e., avoid forward and backward references that make reading unpleasant.

17. 17 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Algorithm Descriptions  Algorithm description is not your C++/Java program  Algorithm description should neither be too simple, (2-3 lines), nor too complex (50 lines)  Decompose complex algorithm in a number of functions  No need to give the details for simple, well-known functions  Explain algorithms in English words  State clearly data structures used in your algorithm  Using diagrams and examples to help readers to understand your algorithm

18. 18 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Demonstrate the Result  formal paper,  theorems with their proofs are necessary.  But proofs should be understandable and not too long, 0.5-2 pages  system­oriented paper presenting a new technique  simulation or implementation results are more convincing than analytical models.  Performance study/Experiments

19. 19 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Experiment Design & Result Presentation  Experiment design is critical part of research  Environment: machine, OS, language  The objective of your experiment  The sets of experiments conducted and parameter setting  Result presentation is an art  Choose right form: table, chats  Ensure good format

20. 20 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 References  It is important part. Appropriate citations show that you know exactly what you are doing  Cite important papers that addressed the related problem  Do not cite unrelated, or remotely related papers  Do not cite too many of your own papers  Do not cite inaccessible papers  Formatting the references carefully  Using the standard format, e.g. name abbreviations, conference venues, page numbers  Make sure what cited is correct

21. 21 H. Lu/HKUST NDBC2001 Conclusions  High quality papers come from high quality research  Paying attention to your paper writing can help you maximize your research result  It is more difficult to teach how to write good papers than to learn how to write good papers  Only way to learn is to write more