1. Writing academic papers
Wishnu Prasetya

3. What is academic writing?
Simple answer: writing produced by scholars for other scholars as the target public.
Characteristics1:
it should make an attemp to be reliable: supported by knowledge on the subject area, providing supports for its arguments (e.g. by evidence or by others’ work).
Coherent: expressing thought in a logical and consistent way.
Formal in tone and style: uses appropriate language, clear, concise and balanced.
“writings” = written work 1)

4. Different sorts of academic writing
Research paper, industrial experience paper, work- in-progress paper
Position paper
Academic essay
Thesis
Paper assignment for course X
“academic essay” aims to persuade readers by reasoned discourse (written or spoken communication or debate.)

5. General Structure conclusion introduction abstract body introduction

6. Abstract & Introduction
A summary of the whole paper. This is what people first see when they search for articles.
Make sure that it is self-contain: no citation!
Try to write an abstract that intrigues people.
You can start with a rough version, and polish it at the end.
Introduction
To orient/position your readers : what is the paper about
What can the readers expect from the paper.
How are you going to present the paper.

7. Paper’s Body Often it is built in two parts:
Foundation part: introducing the needed support concepts, notations, theories etc towards the main part.
Main part: presenting the focus of the paper, along with its needed argumentation.

8. Conclusion
Come back to the questions you started with (e.g. “how far can MMORPG scale up?”), and present your final conclusion towards that question.
Do not add new information!

9. General Structure of a paper
Title & authors
Abstract : a summary of the whole paper
Optionally for INFONW paper, also add a table of content.
Introduction : general introduction of what this paper about
Body
Related works: discussing about results by others that are connected to the main part, and how they are connected.
Conclusion: presenting you final conclusion
Future work: mentioning recommendations where to explore next.
References: listing the sources that you cite.
Appendix : list individual contribution.
Mandatory for you (INFONW)

10. Decide your target audience
Research papers target experts in respective fields.
which journal / conference ?
what kind of paper ? (research paper, short paper, position paper, etc)
Master theses target fellow graduate students and lecturers.
INFONW papers target fellow under-graduate students with INFONW background.
Avoid explaining things which “should be” obvious to your audience.

11. Present good argumentations
At every level (the whole paper, towards your main part, and at every sentence). Be well structured and convincing in your arguments.
Back up your claims, e.g. with your own results or else with citations to other works.
Nothing comes “out of the blue”, except when expressing things like hypotheses, opinions, and speculations; but be explicit about them: “we speculate that search-based testing techniques will become a standard in IDEs within 10 years from now”

12. Write effectively You don’t like to be told about “obvious” things.
You don’t like excessive repetitions of the same point.
Try to be efficient in your wordings. If you can convey they same message with the same clarity, but with less words, you help me saving my time.
Avoid using slangs and other informals; but there is no point in exaggerate formality either, if that does not improve clarity

13. As an academic you have the responsibility to maintain integrity.
Do not fake results.
Do not claim results, nor lines of texts, that are not yours. Cite your sources You can always quote lines, but give the proper credit to their authors (with citation).

14. Write a credible paper Back up your paper with credible sources.
A paper that is based mostly on blogs and Wikipedia as sources is not very credible.
Check the credibility of your sources.

15. Write a beatiful paper!
Your paper should be neat, produced with high quality text editting software like Words and LaTeX (delivering a plain ASCII paper is not acceptable!).
Pay attention to grammar correctness.
These show that you care ! If you don’t care about your own academic paper, why should I ?

16. INFONW paper Each team has chosen its theme (e.g. Crytocurrency)
We expect a technical exposition of the theme and its applications.
Can I present the theme from e.g. a psychological or social point of view ?
No. We specifically want a technical perspective to the theme.
If you really want to have e.g. social perspective, you can mention it e.g. in the context of your Related Work section.

17. Where to get information?
Utrecht University library
the physical library; you can search its catalogue online
the University also subscribes to many scientific journals and proceedings; nowadays most are available online.
check out entry over “online toegang” to get you access to online articles (otherwise they may be pay-to-view services), e.g. by installing the UU-easy-access app.
Google Scholar
Non-peer-reviewed Internet sources (e.g. websites, Wikipedia)
Be careful and critical when building up your arguments based on them
Always cite your sources.

18. Citation and reference list
Many “common” styles, depending on the discipline, publisher, or even the used text editor software:
APA (American Psychology Association), ACM (Association of Computing Machinery), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), LaTeX alpha
Common in Computer Science: ACM and IEEE format ; for thesis people also like LaTeX alpha
Chose one of these, but be consistent.

19. Citation
ACM style Fraser and Arcuri demonstrated the success of evolutionary algorithm for automated unit testing [10,11].
IEEE style Fraser and Arcuri demonstrated the success of evolutionary algorithm for automated unit testing [10][11].
Latex alpha style Fraser and Arcuri demonstrated the success of evolutionary algorithm for automated unit testing [FA11,FA15].
How to mention multiple authors? You can use “et al” as in Vos et al discussed the challanges of future Internet testing in the cloud [2]
For the first time you cite, mention 1st ... 5th authors, you can replace the rest with “et al” (or “et al.”)
Next time you cite you can do 1st-author et al
Do keep in mind that “et al” means “and others”, so it should represent at least two more authors.

20. Items in the reference list
ACM style [10] G. Fraser and A. Arcuri. Evosuite: automatic test suite generation for object-oriented software. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium and the 13th European Conference on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), pages 416–419, 2011.
IEEE style [10] G. Fraser and A. Arcuri, “Evosuite: automatic test suite generation for object-oriented software,” in Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGSOFT symposium and the 13th European conference on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2011 , pp. 416–419.
Latex alpha style [FA11] G. Fraser and A. Arcuri. Evosuite: automatic test suite generation for object-oriented software. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium and the 13th European Conference on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), pages 416–419, 2011.
Use “and” only to connect the last author. The rest are seprated by commas,

21. How to write in a team Week 0 – 1
Appoint a team leader to drum-beat your progress.
Start with a literature research : split the load evenly over your team.
During your literature research: make notes!
Aim for about 15 references.
At the end of week 1 :
Have a team meeting
let everyone summarize his part of research
define your paper’s main statement
decide the division of the paper into sections and subsections
split the work

22. How to write in a team ? Week 1 – 2 Write a draft version
Build your “body” first, then the rest (Abstract, Intro, Concl etc)
Use a collaborative infrastructure (easiest for you is to use Google Doc)
Week 2 – 2.5
Have a second meeting to review your work. Transfer it to e.g. Words or LaTeX for final formatting. Then polish it to make a perfect whole.

23. Some administrative details
12-15 pages (10 – 12 if your team consists of 3 members), not counting your table of content, reference list, and appendix.
Counts for 15% of your end grade.
In English or Dutch
Split the work. Add a small Appendix at the end, listing who write which parts.
It is a collective work: every team member should be familiar with the whole paper.
Deadline: Monday, 29th Oct 2018, 17.00
Deliver a physical print to Wishnu Prasetya (BBG 5.66), or put it in his mail box in the Coffee Room next to the elevators of the 5th floor of BBG.

24. You can get preliminary feedback
You can show your draft to get some feedback from us: Thursday 22nd – 23rd Oct
Mail your draft to your reviewer, no later than Wednesday 17th Oct. He will instruct you for the appointment on the 22nd or 23rd.
Your reviewer is the same as the one you chosed in the reservation page for the “nabespreking van de paper”
J = Jordi Vermeulen
H = Lennart Herlaar
W = Wishnu Prasetya

25. Paper evaluation session
20 minutes evalutation sessions at the end of the block
Your reviewer will ask you questions
Your part is to defend your paper ; any member of the group should be able to defend every sentence of your paper.
All group members should be there!
Reserve your date/time through INFONW’s reservation page

26. Grading Duidelijkheid Technische diepgang Toepassing Volledigheid
Taalgebruik
Structuur & layout
Referenties
Nabespreking
“Toepassing”  that you cover the application of the main theory/concepts covered by the paper. “References”  the quality of your references + whether the references are listed properly and cited properly.

27. Tips and directives
J. Fokker, Scripties over informatica schrijven. Linked from INFONW’s paper page.
Pete Carr’s video “How to Write a Paper in a Weekend”
Murray’s “Skillful writing of an awful research paper” (google it).