Presenting Your Research:
Papers, Presentations, and People
Marie desJardins
(mariedj@cs.umbc.edu)
CMSC 601
April 21, 2009
Thanks to Rob Holte for
permission to use some slides
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…
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People
Networking
 Meet people! It helps to have an objective:
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Find out what research they’re currently working on
Tell them what you’re 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
 What’s in this interaction for you?
 What’s 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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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 you’ve been working on
 Be able to distinguish between your original contributions, your
advisor’s contributions, and ideas drawn from previous research
 Practice with other students!
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Publishing
Writing and Submitting Papers
 For a master’s 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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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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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
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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.
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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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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 paper’s scientific merit
 Check the validity of the paper’s claims and evidence
 Judge the paper’s 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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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 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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Good Reviews Are...
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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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Ethical Issues
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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 
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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, you’ll skip some or—worse—
rush desperately to finish. Avoid this temptation!!
 Almost by definition, you never have time to say everything
about your topic, so don’t worry about skipping some
things!
 Unless you’re 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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Know Your Audience
 Don’t waste time on basics if you’re talking to an audience
in your field
 Even for these people, you need to be sure you’re
explaining each new concept clearly
 On the other hand, you’ll lose people in a general audience
if you don’t give the necessary background
 In any case, the most important thing is to emphasize what
you’ve done and why they should care!
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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 you’ve 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, they’ll 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 they’re intrigued, they’ll ask questions or read your paper
 Whatever you do, don’t just read your slides!
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Preparing slides
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Don’t 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
a
cardinal
sin!
 Don’t fidget, and…
 Don’t just read your slides!
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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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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”
 (An earlier, longer version of) these slides:
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~mariedj/talks/presenting-research-dc-jul05.ppt
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