Writing a scientific paper Maxine Eskenazi Meeting 1 - Overall Structure and Content of a Paper

IMPORTANT NOTE  We will talk about conference papers, not journal papers  WE WILL USE PUBLISHED PAPERS IN THIS COURSE AS EXAMPLES  NEVER NEVER NEVER COPY THE CONTENTS OF A PUBLISHED PAPER  NEVER NEVER NEVER REWORD THE CONTENTS OF A PUBLISHED PAPER  If you want to cite someone for background Cite the main idea in less than a sentence then “(Name et al, 2008)” Or “Name et al (2008) states that …”

Session 1 – the paper, overall  What is its goal?  Why is it interesting?  What is in it?/What isn’t in it?  Where are you giving it?  What is its structure?

What’s in a paper? – THE GOAL  What is the goal of the paper?  How to find the goal: Take a step back  Go from specific to more general What is your technique? – How does that fit into a bigger picture?  Why did you do this?  How does this fit in the project that pays you?  Imagine you were from another lab, reading this…  What do you want to prove?  What do you want folks to take away?  What don’t you want folks to take away?

Why is it interesting? Important?  Is this new work?  Does this extend something?  Does this use a new technique from another field?  Can it be generalized to something else?  Can it be replicated?  Can you think of 2 other labs who would be interested in these results – would use them, replicate them, build on them?

Contents: what’s in it, what’s not in it?  Make the paper general enough to be relevant to many readers  Choose only one topic, not many  Completely explore the topic you have chosen Discuss things you thought about but could not do Compare your work to similar work by others.  Credit others who have published on it – not just those in your lab  Respect the page limit!  Respect the formatting!  Get a native speaker to read it over

Where are you giving it?  Is this a conference, a workshop, etc?  Who will be there? Experts in the field? Grad students only? Folks from other fields  Choose the venue that best matches its content  OR – make the paper match the venue

What is the structure of a paper?

 Title, authors, affiliation  Abstract  Introduction  Background  What you did that is innovative  How you proved it worked – study/assessment  Presentation of results  Discussion of results  Conclusions  Acknowledgements  References

Title, Authors, Affiliation  Who did the work?  Who advised? Who had the idea?  Who consulted? Who helped?  Be inclusive If there was a contribution from someone, either:  Make them a coauthor  OR thank them in the acknowledgements  Best: ask them what they are comfortable with  Ordering the authors… Different faculty have different ordering… First author will be use when article is cited…  Our affiliation is the Language Technologies Institute. You must use this. You can add School of Computer Science.

Assignment for next time  For the next paper you plan to write (or a paper you recently wrote): What is the goal and the scope of the paper?  Be prepared to defend it! Why will others be interested in your paper? What is the novelty? Why is it appropriate for the venue?