1. How to write a great research paper
Simon Peyton Jones
Microsoft Research, Cambridge
with amendments/additions by
Mike Hicks, U. Maryland

2. Writing papers is a skill
Many papers are badly written
Good writing is a skill you can learn
It’s a skill that is worth learning:
You will get more brownie points (more papers accepted etc)
Your ideas will have more impact
You will have better ideas
Increasing importance

3. Writing papers: model 1
Idea
Do research
Write paper

4. Writing papers: (provocative) model 2
Idea
Do research
Write paper
Idea
Write paper
Do research
Forces us to be clear, focused
Crystallises what we don’t understand
Opens the way to dialogue with others: reality check, critique, and collaboration

5. Do not be intimidated
Fallacy You need to have a fantastic idea before you can start to write a paper.
Write a paper, and give a talk, about any idea, no matter how weedy and insignificant it may seem to you
Amended by mwh, 11/21/07

6. Do not be intimidated
Writing the paper is how you develop the idea in the first place
It usually turns out to be more interesting and challenging that it seemed at first
Writing about it also helps you understand the problem space better
Better to solve a real problem than to design a solution looking for one
Amended by mwh, 11/21/07

7. The purpose of your paper

8. Good papers and talks are a fundamental part of research excellence
Why bother?
Good papers and talks are a fundamental part of research excellence
Fallacy
we write papers and give talks mainly to impress others, gain recognition, and get promoted

9. Papers communicate ideas
Your goal: to infect the mind of your reader with your idea, like a virus
Papers are far more durable than programs (think Mozart)
The greatest ideas are (literally) worthless if you keep them to yourself

10. Paper writing is teaching
It is useful to think that you are teaching your reader your idea
What you did
Why it’s important
How it works
Well-written papers contribute more than just their described results
Readers understand the topic better
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

11. The Idea Idea A re-usable insight, useful to the reader
Figure out what your idea is
Make certain that the reader is in no doubt what the idea is. Be 100% explicit:
“The main idea of this paper is....”
“In this section we present the main contributions of the paper.”
Many papers contain good ideas, but do not distil what they are.

12. Thanks to Joe Touch for “one ping”
Your paper should have just one “ping”: one clear, sharp idea
Read your paper again: can you hear the “ping”?
You may not know exactly what the ping is when you start writing; but you must know when you finish
If you have lots of ideas, write lots of papers (but beware of producing LPU’s)
Thanks to Joe Touch for “one ping”

13. The purpose of your paper is not...
To describe the WizWoz system
Your reader does not have a WizWoz
She is primarily interested in re-usable brain-stuff, not executable artefacts

14. Your narrative flow Here is a problem It’s an interesting problem
I wish I knew how to solve that!
Here is a problem
It’s an interesting problem
It’s an unsolved problem
Here is my idea
My idea works (details, data)
Here’s how my idea compares to other people’s approaches
I see how that works. Ingenious!

15. Characterizing your reader
What do you assume of your reader?
Technical knowledge
Preconceptions/attitude
Interests
As a proxy, consider the intended venue
Who is on the PC? What work do they do?
What are the topics and assumptions of papers previously published here?
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

16. Structure (conference paper)
Title (1000 readers)
Abstract (4 sentences, 100 readers)
Introduction (1 page, 100 readers)
The problem (1 page, 10 readers)
My idea (2 pages, 10 readers)
The details (5 pages, 3 readers)
Related work (1-2 pages, 10 readers)
Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

17. The abstract
Should be brief, not assume too much, and highlight items of importance
Four sentences [Kent Beck]
State the problem
Say why it’s an interesting problem
Say what your solution achieves
Say what follows from your solution
I usually write the abstract last
Amended by mwh, 11/21/07

18. Example Many papers are badly written and hard to understand
This is a pity, because their good ideas may go unappreciated
Following simple guidelines can dramatically improve the quality of your papers
Your work will be used more, and the feedback you get from others will in turn improve your research

19. Deviating from the ideal
The abstract can be longer if there is a assumed reader-specific purpose
Expand on the problem context
Brief recap of prior results
Indicate several results (e.g., one sentence per result)
Remember, the goal is to get the reader to read the introduction …
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

20. Structure Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page)
The problem (1 page)
My idea (2 pages)
The details (5 pages)
Related work (1-2 pages)
Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

21. The introduction (1 page)
Describe the problem
What is the broader context?
What is the particular problem?
- Why is it interesting?
State your contributions
What is new? (novelty)
Why is it useful? (features of your solution)
How do you know? (evaluation)
Assume reader is general attendee of target conference
Two
paragraphs
Amended by mwh, 11/21/07

22. Use an example to introduce the problem
Describe the problem
Use an example to introduce the problem

23. State your contributions
Write the list of contributions first
The list of contributions drives the entire paper: the paper substantiates the claims you have made
Reader thinks “gosh, if they can really deliver this, that’d be exciting. I’d better read on”
Follows style of claim then evidence
More on this later
Amended by mwh, 11/21/07

24. State your contributions
Bulleted list of contributions
Do not leave the reader to guess what your contributions are!

25. Contributions should be refutable
NO!
YES!
We describe the WizWoz system. It is really cool.
We give the syntax and semantics of a language that supports concurrent processes (Section 3). Its innovative features are...
We study its properties
We prove that the type system is sound, and that type checking is decidable (Section 4)
We have used WizWoz in practice
We have built a GUI toolkit in WizWoz, and used it to implement a text editor (Section 5). The result is half the length of the Java version.

26. No “rest of this paper is...”
Not:
Instead, use forward references from the narrative in the introduction. The introduction (including the contributions) should survey the whole paper, and therefore forward reference every important part.
“The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the problem. Section Finally, Section 8 concludes”.

27. Lengthening the introduction
The introduction can be viewed a capsule of the entire paper
The context, the problem, your idea, and its evaluation
You could shorten or avoid the problem and idea sections and have a longer intro
E.g., they are subsections of the intro
But beware of taking too long to get to the point; reader will get frustrated
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

28. Related work Structure Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page)
The problem (1 page)
My idea (2 pages)
The details (5 pages)
Related work (1-2 pages)
Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

29. No related work yet! Related work Your reader Your idea
We adopt the notion of transaction from Brown [1], as modified for distributed systems by White [2], using the four-phase interpolation algorithm of Green [3]. Our work differs from White in our advanced revocation protocol, which deals with the case of priority inversion as described by Yellow [4].

30. No related work yet
I feel stupid
Problem 1: the reader knows nothing about the problem yet; so your (carefully trimmed) description of various technical tradeoffs is absolutely incomprehensible
Problem 2: describing alternative approaches gets between the reader and your idea
I feel tired

31. What if the problem is well-known?
Your idea could be derailed by a reader’s preconception that the problem is
Solved
Impossible
Just like someone else’s approach they know about
Presenting related work after the introduction can mitigate this problem
So refute these points with a forward reference the related work section
People expect you to compare to related work, so they will give you the benefit of the doubt
Added by mwh, 11/27/06

32. Structure Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page)
The problem (1 page)
My idea (2 pages)
The details (5 pages)
Related work (1-2 pages)
Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

33. Presenting the idea Sounds impressive...but Sends readers to sleep
Consider a bifircuated semi-lattice D, over a hyper-modulated signature S. Suppose pi is an element of D. Then we know for every such pi there is an epi-modulus j, such that pj < pi.
Sounds impressive...but
Sends readers to sleep
In a paper you MUST provide the details, but FIRST convey the idea

34. Presenting the idea
Explain it as if you were speaking to someone using a whiteboard
Conveying the intuition is primary, not secondary
Once your reader has the intuition, she can follow the details (but not vice versa)
Even if she skips the details, she still takes away something valuable

35. Putting the reader first
Do not recapitulate your personal journey of discovery. This route may be soaked with your blood, but that is not interesting to the reader.
Instead, choose the most direct route to the idea.

36. The payload of your paper
Introduce the problem, and your idea, using
EXAMPLES
and only then present the general case

37. The Simon PJ question: is there any typewriter font?
Using examples
The Simon PJ question: is there any typewriter font?
Example right away

38. The Running Example [Stone]
Understanding an example is an intellectual investment
Make your examples simple enough to understand but still convincing
Aim for reuse
Ideal
First concept
Example of first concept
Next concept
Example embellished
Next concept followed by more embellishment …
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

39. Simplest: correct usage
First Example
Simplest: correct usage
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

40. Extending to show incorrect usage
Second Example
Extending to show incorrect usage
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

41. Further complication from the preprocessor
Third Example
Further complication from the preprocessor
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

42. Non-ideal approaches to examples
First concept
Next concept
Example of first concept
Example embellished
More embellishment
Leaves reader unsure between concepts
First concept
Example of concept
Next concept
Different example
Yet another example
Extra effort to understand each example
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

43. The details: evidence Your introduction makes claims
The body of the paper provides evidence to support each claim
Check each claim in the introduction, identify the evidence, and forward-reference it from the claim
Evidence can be: analysis and comparison, theorems, measurements, case studies

44. Twice told, different ways [Stone]
Clarify tricky concepts by describing them twice
Picture with text
Text with equation
Methodology with example
f(x) = i w(i)  B(i)
That is, f(x) is a weighted sum of Bs.
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

45. General idea: Claim then Evidence
The claim/evidence structure should occur throughout the paper
Top-down, as opposed to bottom-up, organization
Each section should begin with a claim and/or summary
“This section proves that the boobaz approach is sound. To do this …”
“This section shows that boobaz performs well under a typical workload. We gathered …”
“Boobaz is distinct from other approaches to X primarily in that …”
Same with subsections, even paragraphs
Added by mwh, 11/27/06

46. Wrong: Facts then Conclusions
Temptation: present facts, then assess them
Like a mystery story: learn the facts of the crime, and then discover who did it!
The problem: you don’t want the reader to guess, you want to tell her what’s important! Readers get frustrated without direction
Strive to create “mental boxes” by foreshadowing your argument. Will fill in these boxes as you go [Harold Stone]
Added by mwh, 11/27/06

47. A general substrate interface
Creating Mental Boxes
Box:
A general substrate interface
Sub-box 1:
primitives
Sub-box 2:
callbacks
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

48. Structure Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page)
The problem (1 page)
My idea (2 pages)
The details (5 pages)
Related work (1-2 pages)
Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

49. Related work
Fallacy To make my work look good, I have to make other people’s work look bad

50. The truth: credit is not like money
Giving credit to others does not diminish the credit you get from your paper
Warmly acknowledge those who helped you
Be generous to the competition. “In his inspiring paper [Foo98] Foogle shows.... We develop his foundation in the following ways...”
Be fair to your own work, too - acknowledge limitations and justify your contributions

51. Credit is not like money
Failing to give credit to others can kill your paper
If you imply that an idea is yours, and the referee knows it is not, then either
You don’t know that it’s an old idea (bad)
You do know, but are pretending it’s yours (very bad)

52. Big picture: advancing knowledge
Strive to be precise in your comparisons
Best: use terminology you have used to explain your approach to explain related approaches. Crystallize the differences.
Helps readers, helps you
Poor: focus on superficial differences between yours and related approaches
Inhibits knowledge of the true state of the art
Discussion of related work should be a contribution in its own right
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

53. Structure Abstract (4 sentences) Introduction (1 page)
The problem (1 page)
My idea (2 pages)
The details (5 pages)
Related work (1-2 pages)
Conclusions and further work (0.5 pages)

54. Conclusions and further work
Be brief.

55. The process of writing

56. The process Start early. Very early. Collaborate
Hastily-written papers get rejected.
Papers are like wine: they need time to mature
Collaborate
Use CVS (SVN) to support collaboration

57. Get your paper read by as many friendly guinea pigs as possible
Getting help
Get your paper read by as many friendly guinea pigs as possible
Experts are good
Non-experts are also very good
Each reader can only read your paper for the first time once! So use them carefully
Explain carefully what you want (“I got lost here” is much more important than “Jarva is mis-spelt”.)

58. Getting expert help
A good plan: when you think you are done, send the draft to the competition saying “could you help me ensure that I describe your work fairly?”.
Often they will respond with helpful critique (they are interested in the area)
They are likely to be your referees anyway, so getting their comments or criticism up front is Jolly Good.

59. Listening to your reviewers
Treat every review like gold dust
Be (truly) grateful for criticism as well as praise
This is really, really, really hard
But it’s really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really important

60. Listening to your reviewers
Read every criticism as a positive suggestion for something you could explain more clearly
DO NOT respond “you stupid person, I meant X”. Fix the paper so that X is apparent even to the stupidest reader.
Thank them warmly. They have given up their time for you.

61. Language and style

62. Basic stuff Submit by the deadline Keep to the length restrictions
Do not narrow the margins
Do not use 6pt font
On occasion, supply supporting evidence (e.g. experimental data, or a written-out proof) in an appendix
Always use a spell checker

63. Visual structure Give strong visual structure to your paper using
sections and sub-sections
bullets
italics
laid-out code
Find out how to draw pictures, and use them

64. Visual structure

65. The Body of a Section [Stone]
What happens here
How this fits (optional)
The results
Transition
In this section …
This section continues the derivation by …
Thus far, the discussion has … Here, …
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

66. Use the active voice NO YES
The passive voice is “respectable” but it DEADENS your paper. Avoid it at all costs.
“We” = you and the reader NO
YES
It can be seen that...
We can see that...
34 tests were run
We ran 34 tests
These properties were thought desirable
We wanted to retain these properties
It might be thought that this would be a type error
You might think this would be a type error
“We” = the authors
“You” = the reader

67. Use simple, direct languageNO
YES
The object under study was displaced horizontally
The ball moved sideways
On an annual basis
Yearly
Endeavour to ascertain
Find out
It could be considered that the speed of storage reclamation left something to be desired
The garbage collector was really slow

68. References References are annotations, not nouns
Sentence should still make sense if you remove the references
Castelli and Brown [3] showed that …
Not [3] showed that …
Some prior systems are unsound [3,4].
Not The systems presented in [3,4] are unsound.
Added by mwh, 11/21/07

69. Summary If you remember nothing else: Identify your key idea
Make your contributions explicit
Use examples

70. Further Reading Much general advice:
Mechanics and style
Chaps. 9,10: organization
Chaps 1-8: mechanics, style
Much general advice:
Added by mwh, 11/21/07