1 / 9

Presenting Your Research: Papers, Presentations, and People

Learn how to effectively present your research through papers, presentations, and interactions with people. Gain valuable skills for job interviews and enhance your research activities with these comprehensive tactics and design strategies. Understand the importance of knowing your audience and handling reviews. Discover useful resources to improve your writing and speaking skills.

rcavanaugh
Download Presentation

Presenting Your Research: Papers, Presentations, and People

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Presenting Your Research:Papers, Presentations, and People Marie desJardins (mariedj@cs.umbc.edu) CMSC 691B April 24, 2006 Thanks to Rob Holte for permission to use some slides

  2. Research Isn’t Just Research • Who cares what you do, if you never tell them? • You’ll 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… Marie desJardins -- Presenting Your Research

  3. 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! Marie desJardins -- Presenting Your Research

  4. Paper Writing: Design • Abstract –summarizes the research contributions, not the paper (i.e., it shouldn’t be an outline of the paper) • Introduction/motivation – what you’ve done and why the reader should care, plus an outline of the paper • Technical sections – one or more sections summarizing the research ideas you’ve developed • Experiments/results/analysis – one or more sections presenting experimental results and/or supporting proofs • Future work – summary of where you’re headed next and open questions still to be answered • Related work – sometimes comes after introduction, sometimes before conclusions (depends to some extent on whether you’re building on previous research, or dismissing it as irrelevant) • Conclusions – reminder of what you’ve said and why it’s important Marie desJardins -- Presenting Your Research

  5. Paper Writing: Tactics • Top-down design (outline) is very helpful • Bulleted lists can help you get past writer’s block • Unless you’re 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 they’re concentrating on your typos, they might miss what’s interesting about the content. (More about the reviewer’s perspective later...) • Leave time for reviews! • Fellow students, collaborators, advisors, … • A paper is only done when it’s submitted... and usually not even then. Marie desJardins -- Presenting Your Research

  6. Knowing Your Audience:A Reviewer’s 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 paperlooking 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! Marie desJardins -- Presenting Your Research

  7. 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! Marie desJardins -- Presenting Your Research

  8. Rejected!!  Now What? • Fix the paper! • 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 -- Presenting Your Research

  9. Some Useful Resources Any Questions? • 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” • These slides: • http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~mariedj/talks/presenting-research-dc-jul05.ppt Marie desJardins -- Presenting Your Research

More Related