Presenting Your Research:

Papers, Presentations, and People

Marie desJardins
University of Maryland Baltimore County
(mariedj@cs.umbc.edu)
2005 AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium
July 10, 2005
Thanks to Rob Holte for
permission to use some slides

Research Isnt Just Research

Who cares what you do, if you never tell them?
Youll need to present your ideas in various forms and
venues:
PEOPLE: Networking with colleagues at your institution and
elsewhere
PAPERS: Writing and submitting papers to workshops,
conferences, and journals
PRESENTATIONS: Giving talks at workshops, conferences,
and other institutions
(You should also put together a website that highlights
your interests and research activities)

oh, and these things also provide useful experience for

job interviews, not to mention valuable job skills
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Marie desJardins -- Gett

People

Networking
Meet people! It helps to have an objective:

Find out what research theyre currently working on

Tell them what youre currently working on
Find an area of common interest
Learn what their visions/future directions are
Suggest a new direction for research or topic for a class

Whats in this interaction for you?

Whats in it for them?
If you know two friends, and they know two friends, and
they know two friends Pretty soon you know everybody!

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

Be Prepared

You need to be prepared to summarize your research

For a thesis topic, you should have a 1-minute, 5-minute, and 15minute presentation already thought through
The same goes for other projects youve been working on
Be able to distinguish between your original contributions, your
advisors contributions, and ideas drawn from previous research
Practice with other students!

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

Publishing

Writing and Submitting Papers

For a masters thesis, you should aim to have at least one

good conference paper by the time you graduate
For a doctoral dissertation, you should aim for a couple of
good conference papers and a journal paper
Writing these papers is great practice for the thesis itself
(and you can reuse the material!)
Where to submit?
Look at publication lists of people doing research related to yours,
and see where they publish
Publish at the conferences that have the most interesting papers

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

Paper Writing: Strategies

First, decide where you plan to submit the paper
You may not finish in time, but having a deadline is always helpful
Two to four months away is a good planning horizon

Next, decide what you will say

What are the key ideas? Have you developed them yet?
What are the key results? Have you designed and run the
experiments yet? Have you analyzed the data?
What is the key related work? Have you read the relevant
background material? Can you give a good summary of it?

Now get started on the work you need to do to fill in the

missing holes!
Write early and often: You can (and should) write in parallel with
finishing the work!

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

Paper Writing: Design

Abstract summarizes the research contributions, not
the paper (i.e., it shouldnt be an outline of the paper)
Introduction/motivation what youve done and
why the reader should care,
care plus an outline of the paper
Technical sections one or more sections summarizing
the research ideas youve developed
Experiments/results/analysis one or more sections presenting
experimental results and/or supporting proofs
Future work summary of where youre headed next and open
questions still to be answered
Related work sometimes comes after introduction, sometimes before
conclusions (depends to some extent on whether youre building on
previous research, or dismissing it as irrelevant)
Conclusions reminder of what youve said and why its important

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

Paper Writing: Tactics

Top-down design (outline) is very helpful
Bulleted lists can help you get past writers block
Unless youre a really talented/experienced writer, you should use
these tools before you start writing prose

Neatness counts! Check spelling, grammar, consistency of

fonts and notation before showing it to anyone for review
If theyre concentrating on your typos, they
might miss whats interesting about the content.
(More about the reviewers perspective later...)

Leave time for reviews!

Fellow students, collaborators, advisors,
A paper is only done when its submitted... and usually not even
then.

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Authorship
Who should be an author?
Anyone who contributed significantly to the conceptual development
or writing of the paper
Not necessarily people who provided feedback,
implemented code, or ran experiments

What order should the authors be listed in?

If some authors contributed more of the
conceptual development and/or did most/all of the writing, they
should be listed first
If the contribution was equal or the authors worked as a team, the
authors should be listed in alphabetical order
Sometimes the note The authors are listed in alphabetical order is
explicitly included

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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The Review Process

Conference Reviewing
Program committees
Selection process
Senior vs. area chair vs. regular members

Paper assignments
Keyword-based
Self-selection
All for one and one for all

Decisions

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Reaching a consensus
Final decisions
Conditional accepts (rare)
Acceptance rates (~~~20% in good conferences/journals)

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Journal Reviewing
Executive editor Area editor Board members or
reviewers
Longer decision cycle
Typically higher quality, longer, and deeper reviews
Decision options:

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Accept as is
Accept with minor changes
Accept with major changes (subject to re-review)
Reject with encouragement to resubmit
Reject out of hand

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Where to Publish
Workshops vs. conferences vs. journals

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Length of decision cycle

Quantity vs. quality
Aim high! (or at least appropriately)
Acceptance rate vs. time to prepare/publish

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Purpose of a Review
Evaluate the papers scientific merit
Check the validity of the papers claims and evidence
Judge the papers relevance and significance

Provide constructive feedback to the author

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Typical Conference Review Form

1. How RELEVANT is this paper?
2. How SIGNIFICANT is this paper?
3. How ORIGINAL is this paper?
4. Is this paper technically SOUND?
5. How well is this paper PRESENTED?

Additional comments for the author(s)

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Good Reviews Are...

Polite
Fair
Concise
Clear
Constructive
Specific
Well-documented
Represent the scientific community

... but you get what you get!

Bad, unfair review that missed the point?
Fix your paper anyway!

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Knowing Your Audience:

A Reviewers Perspective
First, I read the title: is it in my area? (self-selection)
Next, I read the abstract: is it interesting?
(self-selection)
Next, I skim the introduction and form
my opinion about the paper
Next, I read the rest of the paper
looking for evidence to support my view
By the time I get to Section 2, I already have a very
strong opinion about whether to accept or reject.
Your job is to give me the evidence I need in the title
and abstract to select your paper for review, and in
the introduction to result in the right opinion!

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Ethical Issues

Multiple submissions
Journal versions of conference papers
Authors and author order
Listing papers in your CV

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Rejected!! Now What?

Fix the paper!

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Read the reviews, rail and complain, berate the reviewer

Calm down
Read them again with an open mind
Do more experiments, revise the paper,
Go back to the reviews again have you addressed all the points?
Have people read the revision critically
Do more experiments, revise the paper,
Repeat until the next deadline

Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Presentations

Know How Long You Have

How long is the talk? Are questions included?
A good heuristic is 2-3 minutes per slide
If you have too many slides, youll skip some orworse
rush desperately to finish. Avoid this temptation!!
Almost by definition, you never have time to say everything
about your topic, so dont worry about skipping some
things!
Unless youre very experienced giving talks, you should
practice your timing:
A couple of times on your own to get the general flow
At least one dry run to work out the kinks
A run-through on your own the night before the talk

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Know Your Audience

Dont waste time on basics if youre talking to an audience
in your field
Even for these people, you need to be sure youre
explaining each new concept clearly
On the other hand, youll lose people in a general audience
if you dont give the necessary background
In any case, the most important thing is to emphasize what
youve done and why they should care!

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Know What You Want to Say

Just giving a project summary is not interesting to most
people
You should give enough detail to get your interesting ideas
across (and to show that youve actually solved, but not
enough to lose your audience
They want to hear what you did that was cool and why
they should care
Preferably, theyll hear the above two points at the
beginning of the talk, over the course of the talk, and at the
end of the talk
If theyre intrigued, theyll ask questions or read your paper
Whatever you do, dont just read your slides!
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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Preparing slides

Dont just read your slides!

Use the minimum amount of text necessary
Use examples
Use a readable, simple, yet elegant format
Use color to emphasize important points, but avoid the
excessive use of color
Hiding bullets like this is annoying (but sometimes
effective), but
Abuse

of

animation

is

cardinal

sin!

Dont fidget, and

Dont just read your slides!

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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How to Give a Bad Talk

Advice from Dave Patterson, summarized by Mark Hill

1. Thou shalt not be neat

2. Thou shalt not waste space
3. Thou shalt not covet brevity
4. Thou shalt cover thy naked slides
5. Thou shalt not write large
6. Thou shalt not use color
7. Thou shalt not illustrate
8. Thou shalt not make eye contact
9. Thou shalt not skip slides in a long talk
10. Thou shalt not practice

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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Some Useful Resources

Some useful resources:

Writing:
Lynn DuPre, Bugs in Writing
Strunk & White, Elements of Style
Giving talks:
Mark Hill, Oral presentation advice
Patrick Winston, Some lecturing heuristics
Simon L. Peyton Jones et al., How to give a good research talk
Dave Patterson, How to have a bad career in
research/academia

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Marie desJardins -- Gett

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