1. Three Goals to Accomplish by Writing Papers
Xiaodong Zhang
Ohio State University
This is the last talk before the lunch, I will be quick.
Since this is a PI meeting, I concentrate on the motivation, what we have done, and what we are dong, and what we plan to do next.
The theme of our NSF project is to balance the source supply and demand of CPU cycles, memory bandwidths, I/O bandwiths, memory capacity, disk capacity, and the latency time.

2. Purposes of Scientific Research
Discoveries
New understanding and creating new knowledge
Formulating new problems
Innovations
Solutions (algorithms, methodologies, models, et. al)
Open source software
Well documented papers for community and society
Easy to understand, clear information flow
Presentations (conferences/seminar), and discussions
“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life”. Immanuel Kant ( )
The major resources we are concerned in computer and distributed systems are:

3. How is Research Measured?
Research Production is Typically Measured by
Publications in refereed conferences and journals
Software and prototypes
Invited lectures
Patents
Research Awards and honors
Input of Research
Research proposal writing, and research project planning
Research grants
Recruiting and forming teams.
The major resources we are concerned in computer and distributed systems are:

4. Objective 1: Get Your Papers Read by Peers
Why publish in top venues?
Each field has its own flagship and leading conferences/journals defined by reputations
Most researchers only read papers there.
Conferences versus Journals
In certain fields, such as systems, architecture, networking, and databases, top conference papers are prestigious, highly visible, with 4-5 or more reviews in depth, and low acceptance rate.
SCI and EI should NOT be used as a guidance
An SCI/EI entry does not necessarily reflect its quality in the field
The quality should be judged by the peers in the field.
The impact factor sometimes is field-size dependent.
The major resources we are concerned in computer and distributed systems are:

5. Objective 2: Influencing the Field
Identifying significant problems and critical issues
Fundamental problems with large application scope.
Emerging areas demanding new solutions.
Conducting research on focused topics in depth
Making names behind some important results.
Citations to the paper is an indicator
Many follow-ups.
Examples of influential results from Ph.D. research:
“Small talk” for object-oriented programming (Ph.D.’69, Utah)
Co-scheduling in distributed systems (ICDCS’81)
Contention-free synchronization locks (ACM TOCS, 91)
The major resources we are concerned in computer and distributed systems are:

6. Objective 3: Transformation to the Society
Transferring to new technology
Results create new areas in industries
Adopted as critical components in products.
Significantly improve the quality of existing systems
Opening new business opportunities
Transferred technology is commercialized in market.
Examples of influential results from PhD. work:
RAID (SIGMOD’88): a $10+ billion storage market
A search engine prototype (WWW’98): Google
Results in systems papers adopted in Linux kernels
Results in arch. papers adopted in new processor designs
The major resources we are concerned in computer and distributed systems are: