1. Preparing and writing a “State of the Art” review
Perfecto Herrera

2. Outline Purposes of the review Getting the information
Organizing the information
Writing the document

3. Rationale of the review
nanos gigantum humeris insidentes
Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants

4. Purposes of the review The state of the art is a means to an end
It is an ongoing/organic document:
Do not wait until some deadline to start working on it (work-write-write-work-write)
Do not consider it is closed once you have started to write another chapter
Do not wait until it is finished to start other activities/chapters

5. Purposes of the review
To convey to the reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic and what are the strengths and weaknesses. 
To collect and examine the state of current knowledge in a field by examining the work of scholars and researchers whose work has been recognized as valuable.
To organize knowledge (for you, and for other people / from you, and from other people)
A well researched and written literature review accomplishes three goals:
Establishes context for your work by showing what has been done in the area
Exposes the gap in current knowledge
Provides you a map of important, secondary and unimportant issues

6. Do the review BEFORE other tasks
Good reasons for beginning a literature review before starting a research paper:
To see what has and has not been investigated.
To develop general explanation for observed phenomena.
To identify potential relationships between concepts and to identify researchable hypotheses.
To learn how others have defined and measured key concepts.
To identify data sources, algorithms, or methods that other researches have used.
To develop alternative research projects.
To avoid reinventing the wheel
To avoid working on uninteresting, trivial or too complex, untractable problems

7. The s.o.t.a. and your dissertation
Take the dissertation as a literary plot
(“exposition, climax, resolution”)
Case:
Problem
Relevance of problem
Results/Evaluation
/Appraisal
Proposal/Solution
The state of the art sets the scenario, rules, characters, motivations, constraints that justify your work (what and how)
The state of the art makes possible the appraisal of your solution

8. The s.o.t.a. and your dissertation
De Waard, A. “From Proteins to Fairytales: Directions in Semantic Publishing”,
IEEE Intelligent Systems, vol. 25, no. 2, pp , March/April, 2010.

9. The s.o.t.a. and your dissertation
In the introduction, the scene is set, “creating a research space,”.The main research question is introduced, and fulfills the role of the protagonist in a story.
In the methods and results, various approaches for pursuing the answer to this research question are presented, and these correspond to the episodes of a narrative.
In the conclusion or discussion, resolution is obtained, the research question is readdressed in light of the experimental results, and a core claim (the moral of the story) is given.
Nice parallel between the number of episodes that a fairytale generally has and the number of experiments described in the average paper: three to five (It seems that, for the average person, two is just too few, and six is simply too much.)

10. The s.o.t.a. and your dissertation
People write things for a reason. The primary goal of a scientific paper is to persuade (the thesis committee, the reviewers of a journal/conference), and a secondary goal is perhaps to inform and educate.
The format is therefore honed to please referees, who in turn have become trained to only accept papers that are persuasive in a very specific way (provide new information, based on trustworthy measurements, and so on). In different scientific fields this has led to different criteria for success.

11. Getting the information: defining and refining the topic
Defining the topic
What is the purpose of your work? 
What do you already know about the topic?  What is the scope and approach? 
Do you need everything ever written in English on this topic, or just the last ten years?
Which are the key words? 
Are there other words which could be used, such as synonyms, variations in spelling? 
Compiling a list of keywords

12. Getting the information: Keywords
To search for additional documents, to find synonyms and equivalent expressions
To build a conceptual map and rank the importance of subtopics
To help your work to be indexed by search engines
To “conform” to the vocabulary of the target community
Use a Thesaurus
IEEE keywords:
ACM keywords:

13. Getting the information: Bibliographic databases
Through the UPF library:
ACM Digital Library
Annual Reviews
IEEE Explore
JSTOR (social sciences, arts & humanities)
Science Direct
Springer Link
Wiley InterScience
SCOPUS
Encyclopedia Britannica (cite this one instead of Wikipedia whenever possible)
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Dissertations Abstracts International (see also

14. Getting the information: Journals to be watched
Most of them accessible through the UPF library:
Computer Music Journal
Journal of New Music Research
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing
EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech and Music Processing
Organised Sound

15. Getting the information: Journals to be watched
Sometimes you will find interesting papers here too:
Machine Learning
Music Perception
Psychology of Music
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence
IEEE Transactions on Multimedia

16. Getting the information: Conferences
Int. Computer Music Conference (ICMC)
Int. Conf. On Digital Audio Effects (DaFX)
Int. Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR)
IEEE Int. Conf. On Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
Computer-Human Interaction (CHI)
New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference (NIME)
ACM-Multimedia
Sound and Music Computing
Be careful with papers from obscure or
very local conferences:
quality standards can be too low

17. Getting the information: Patent databases
Pablo García will tell you why/what/how soon!
US Patent Office (granted):
US Patent Applications (pre-granted):
European Patent Office Search:
Google's Patent Search:

18. Getting the information: Books
Roads, C. (1996). The Computer Music Tutorial. MIT Press.
Klapuri,A., Davy,M. (2006). Signal processing methods for music transcription. Springer.
Zölzer, U. (2002). DaFX: Digital Audio Effects. John Wiley & Sons.
Wang, D. & Brown, G. (2006). Computational Auditory Scene Analysis: Principles, Algorithms and Applications. New York: Wiley.
Beauchamp, J.W. (2007) Analysis, Synthesis, and Perception of Musical Sounds: Sound of Music. Springer, N. Y
Baeza-Yates,R., Ribeiro-Neto,B. (1999). Modern information retrieval. ACM Press
Witten, I., Frank, E. (2005). Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Second Edition). Morgan Kaufmann.
Ras, Z., Wieczorkowska, A. (2010). Advances in Music Information Retrieval. New York: Springer
Müller, M. (2007). Information Retrieval for music and motion. New York: Springer
Not up-to-date information. Good to start-up and step-by-step learning, and for side-issues not dealt in more technical and concise sources

19. Getting the information: Centres to be watched
IRCAM
Queen Mary University of London
Tampere Technical University & Helsinki Univ. Of Technology
Johannes Kepler University
MIT
Columbia University (Lab Rosa)
CCRMA – Stanford University
CCRMIT - McGill University
Fraunhofer
AIST (Japan)
Companies with strong research teams:
Microsoft
Mitshubishi
Philips
Sun
Yahoo
Sony
Google

20. Is there any Thesis
or Review Paper
on the same
or very similar topic?

21. YES! Did you like it? Why? (Imitate) Why not? (Do it differently)
Is it very recent? -> If not, one of your contributions will be updating it
Is it clear? -> If not, one of your goals is to make the topic more clear
Is it comprehensive? -> If not, you can criticize it in your own review, and one of your contributions will be that one
Is it challenging, amazing, pushing you to follow a similar path? -> If not, maybe you should rethink on the chosen topic (maybe it is too difficult, too easy, too typical, etc)

22. YES! Take the existing review as a map for your work: Get the papers
Read them
Digest them
Organize your references library and keep it up-to-date

23. Is there any Thesis
or Review Paper
on the same
or very similar topic?

24. NO! Then you have to work harder:
Before thinking about how “original” and “innovative” is your proposal consider:
Your topic is not well defined (i.e., it is not a proper research problem)
You are not using the proper words, keywords or technical expressions to define it and to search for that
It is an old problem that was abandoned before the digital age –you can only find printed references but not online references-
Searching for equivalent or related topics in other disciplines (e.g., video processing, text processing, genetics, biomechanics, cognition…)
Otherwise, consider the option of having hit a goldmine (new and original topic)
BUT if you perseverate on the topic you will not be given the option of “walking on the shoulders of giants”
Ask other senior researchers (your supervisor could have turned crazy)

25. Getting the information: Keeping up-to-date
[Music-DSP]
[Auditory]
[Music-IR]
[Weka]
[Semantic Web]
[SMC]

26. Organizing the information
By source
It allows you to develop how one researcher or group of researchers has contributed to the field (paperwise structure: Smith (1999), then Smith et al. (2000), then Smith (2001) –one paragraph per researcher-)
By topic
It allows you to cover all of the contributions, by different researchers to one topic, problem or key area of knowledge (conceptwise structure: you build a map of the subtopics included in your topic and flesh the map mixing dates and authors)
By method/technique/algorithm/approach
Chronologically

27. Organizing: grouping your sources (I)

28. Organizing: grouping your sources (II)

29. Organizing: Summarizing
Try to determine which variables or dimensions make papers similar or different
Build tables summarizing information
Draw flowcharts

30. Organizing: asessing the rigour of your sources

31. Organizing: asessing the rigour of your sources
Asessing the impact of authors, journals, articles:
You can get or track authors’s impact indexes and more relevant info using
Publish or perish (
Scimago (
Arnetminer (
Google Scholar (
Science Citation Index (several entry points – Library, for example)

32. Organizing: Evaluating the work done
You need to assess the work done in order to establish:
What are the significant points of agreement between articles?
Where the research disagrees, is one researcher more conclusive than another?
How previous work has left a gap, because of either inadequate assumptions, inconclusive findings, poor methodology, unclear presentation of results, unavailability of recent technologies, etc;
How previous research will be applied in a new context;
How general disagreement or different methods, results or approaches create a need for a solution.
How can you fit the articles together to build a logical argument that furthers your purpose.

33. Organizing the information
Breadth / Depth tradeoff
From the review, you should be able to spot on:
The “core” papers (to be read and summarized)
The “interesting” papers (to be succintly summarized in one or 2 paragraphs)
The garbage papers (the do exist!): to be omitted or, better, criticised

34. Writing the document
Be aware about formatting requirements (by the UPF, by the potential publisher)
Which is the style for your MSc Thesis? (see the section: template)
Get familiar with IEEE, ACM, and APA citation styles
Use a bibliography manager:
Zotero
JabRef
Mendeley
See for comparison tables:

35. Writing the document Start with an outline,
then flesh it up with a summary for each section
then start adding the main content to each section
after some writing your outline should be redone, indeed!
Write, write, write but write for a reader (not for yourself)
Don’t waste time looking at an empty page
Don’t stare at the ceiling
Don’t wait to feel inspired
Don’t procrastinate
Get some help from productivity analysis tools (e.g., RescueTime)
Don’t be critical with your own writing until a draft is finished
Re-read, correct, delete, rephrase (minimum 8000 words should be used) in order to make it understandable

36. Writing the document
Be sensitive to writing style issues (yes, engineers are not poets, but have to communicate ideas in the most efficient way -> Style is for that: exposing, connecting, convincing)
Give your first draft to your supervisor or office mate
Give it at the proper time, not too early (ununderstandable, unconnected) but not too late (when you have committed and fallen in love with your view and text)
Do English and proofreading on your own devices (you don’t want your supervisor waste her precious time on that! –She neither does!)

37. Writing the document Use evidence
Your statements have to refer to several sources when making your point (this gives them credibility, validity). Select those sources giving you the most credibility (e.g. a solid author is preferred over Wikipedia entries, a journal article is preferred over a MSc Thesis).
Be selective
Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. Exhaustivity is not needed in a MSc thesis but it is in a PhD thesis.
Use quotes sparingly
Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Keep quotation for certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study.

38. Writing the document Summarize and synthesize
Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. Connect the findings to your own goals, use them to backup your position.
Keep your own voice
While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice (the writer's) should remain front and center. Use the sources to support what you want to present. If you fail on that, then you can probably be “building Castles in Spain”, or selling “vapourware”.
Use caution when paraphrasing
When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Double-check that the ideas you present as “original” cannot be traced back to any of your sources.

39. A simple example
The last paragraph is not typical in a s.o.t.a. unless you are ending it and presenting your work in summary

40. Add value to your state of the art
It can provide a needed update (if the topic has not been summarized in the last 3 years)
It can provide a tutorial or introductory reading to other students
It can glue or link different pieces of knowledge, disciplines, techniques, etc.
It can be valuable as a “stand-alone” article for a journal
Convince a “big name” in your topic area to participate in the article (it increases the quality and the chance to get published)

41. Some examples
Journal of New Music Research Volume 32, Issue 1, 2003 contains several state-of-the-art reviews (by Emilia, Fabien Gouyon, or Perfe)

42. Please, send me additional useful pointers, missing info, suggestions, etc. to improve the ppt for future editions!!!
Thanks!!