DR SORAB SADRI

Professor of Management Sciences

Director S B C and S H M
Manipal University Jaipur

Why this ?
This presentation is mainly meant for

Assistant and Associate Professors who

need to publish papers as a part of their
job requirement. (In the first instance)
Doctoral Degree scholars who are ipso
facto entering the world of academia
would need to have an idea of how to
begin their journey. (in the second
instance)
Final Year Undergraduates (in the third
instance)

Why
bother?
Fallacy

we write papers and

give talks mainly to
impress others, gain
recognition, and get
Promoted

Papers Maketh A Professor

Publish or Perish
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.
If you are afraid to share your work
something is wrong with you.

 Papers communicate ideas. In academics you

either publish or you perish. No matter how

senior you are administratively if you do not
publish you are not taken seriously by the
fraternity.
Do not for a moment believe that getting
Patents to your name, (often on the basis of
work done by those under you), is a
replacement for published work.

Use Any Of The Two

Approaches That Suit You:I
now
usepapers:
Modelmodel
1 1
* Writing
Idea - Do research - Write paper
* Writing papers: model 2
Idea - Write paper - Do research

PUTTING PEN TO PAPER

OR FINGER TO KEYBOARD
Forces us to be clear, focused
Crystallizes what we dont

understand
Opens the way to dialogue with
others: reality check, critique, and
collaboration

Do not be intimidated
Fallacy You need to have a fantastic

idea before you can write a paper or

give a talk.
(Everyone else seems to.)
Write a paper, and give a talk, about
any idea, no matter how weedy and
insignificant it may seem to you

 Writing the paper is all about how you

develop the idea in the first place

It usually turns out to be more

interesting and challenging that it

seemed at first.
If your thought process changes

midway do not fret. It is quite

common.

The purpose of your

paper is
To convey your idea
...from your head to your readers head

Everything serves this single goal

HENCE BE CLEAR AND BE

FOCUSED

The purpose of your paper

is not...
To describe the WizWoz system
Your reader does not have a WizWoz
She/ he is primarily interested in re-

usable brain-stuff, not executable

artifacts
SO MAKE CLARITY AND LOGIC YOUR

INSTRUMENTS FOR COMMUNICATION

IMPORTANT POINT
An abstruse argument and

abstract logic are needlessly used

by pseudo academics to give the
impression of profundity. This is
sad and must be avoided at all
cost. Abstraction does not
automatically imply that the
thought is profound. It is more
often quite the reverse.

GOOD COMMUNICATION
While some amount of abstraction is

unavoidable in subjects like

mathematics (which is the highest
form of philosophy) and even in
literature the motto should be to
KISS [keep it simple, stupid].
Being simple does not mean being
simplistic and that is a hard lesson to
imbibe.

WOFFLE
Many speakers and writers

communicate from a position of

absolute authority but in fact they
are operating from a level of relative
ignorance. To hide this fact they
woffle and take on an air of (false)
superiority. Sooner or later their
game is up. Please watch out for this
in your work!

Conveying the idea:

simply
Here is a problem
Its an interesting problem
Its an unsolved problem
Here is my idea
My idea works (details, data)
Heres how my idea compares to

other peoples approaches

Structure

Abstract ( 4-6 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)

The abstract
I usually write the abstract last
Abstract is used by editorial committee

members to decide which papers to

refer to a referee for publication and for
the scholar to decide which to read
Four sentences are enough usually.

1.
2.
3.
4.

State the problem

Say why its an interesting problem
Say what your solution achieves
Say what follows from your solution

Example
1. Many papers are badly written and
hard to understand
2. This is a pity, because their good ideas
may go unappreciated
3. Following simple guidelines can
dramatically improve the quality of your papers
4. Your work will be used more, and the feedback
you get from others will in turn improve your
research
5. Publishing costs money so a shorter paper that
is compact is more likely to be accepted for
publication.

The introduction (1
page)
1. Describe the problem
2. State your contributions
...and that is all

Describe the problem

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, thats be exciting; Id
better read on
WET THE APETITE

State your contributions

Contributions should be
refutable
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 We have built a GUI toolkit in

WizWoz, and used it to
practice

implement a text editor (Section

5). The result is half the length
of the Java version.

Do Not Say rest of this

paper is...
The rest of this paper is structured as follows.
Section 2 introduces the problem.
Section 3 ... Finally, Section 8 concludes
This is archaic and no longer accepted by journals

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.
This is the more preferred style.

No related work yet: this is

the danger zone and so be
sure.
Problem 1: describing alternative

approaches gets between the reader

and your idea.
Problem 2: the reader knows nothing

about the problem yet; so your

(carefully trimmed) description of
various technical trade-offs is absolutely
incomprehensible

Instead...
Concentrate single-mindedly on a
narrative that
Describes the problem, and why it is

interesting
Describes your idea
Defends your idea, showing how it solves the
problem, and filling out the details . [Along
the way, cite relevant work in passing, but
defer discussion till the end.]
It may help to say how the study can be
taken further.

The payload of your

paper

Consider a bufircuated semi-lattice D, over a

hypermodulated 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. The reader must fairly

know what she/he is to expecting later on.

The payload of your

paper
Introduce the problem, and
your idea, using
EXAMPLES
and only then present the
general case

Using examples

Conveying 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/ he can follow the details (but
not vice versa)
Even if she/ he skips the details,
she / he still takes away something
valuable

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

Related work
Fallacy : To make my work look good, I

have to make other peoples work look bad.

This is wrong and must never be resorted to.
Instead, giving respect begets respect it is
reciprocal.
Praising or complementing others does not
make your work inferior !
Stating that no work in the field has been
done and then finding out that you are
wrong is fatal.

The truth: credit is not

like money
Giving credit to others does not
diminish the credit you get from
your paper
Warmly acknowledge people who have

helped you
Be generous to the competition. In his
inspiring paper [Foo98] or Foogle shows....
We develop his foundation in the following
ways...
Acknowledge weaknesses in your approach

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 dont know that its an old idea (bad)
You do know, but are pretending its
yours (very bad)

Making sure related work

is accurate
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 likely to be your referees
anyway, so getting their comments up
front is jolly good.

The process
Start early. Very early.
Hastily-written papers get rejected.
Papers are like wine: they need time to mature

Collaborate
Use CVS to support collaboration

Share your work. Anybody who is

secretive is usually academically

insecure or not a scholar at all.

What is CVS?
TheConcurrent Versions System(CVS), also

known as theConcurrent Versioning System,

is a client-serverfreesoftwarerevision control
system in the field ofsoftware development. A
version control system keeps track of all work
and all changes in a set of files, and allows
several developers (potentially widely separated
in space and time) tocollaborate.

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
wibble is mis-spelt.)

Listening to your
reviewers
Every review is gold dust
Be (truly) grateful for criticism
as well as praise
This is really, really, really hard
But its really, really, really, really, really,
really important
LET NOT YOUR EGO KILL THE PAPER

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.
This is true even after you have
delivered an expert lecture !!!

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

Conform to the style of the journal

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
But avoid jingoism and bad grammar.42
42

Visual structure

Use the active voice

The passive voice is respectable but it

DEADENS your paper. Avoid it at all costs.

No

Yes

It can be seen that...

34 tests were run

We can see that

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

Use simple, direct

language
No

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

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

DO NOT SEEK
Advice on Research and Writing
JUST GET ON WITH THE DAMN THING

REMEMBER NOT TO COMMIT

The fallacy of composition [what is

true of a part cannot necessarily be

true of the whole as the latter has its
own identity]
The fallacy of accident [what is true

of the whole is not necessarily true of

the part as the former is but a subset]

Try Never To Forget

Correlation does not mean Causation
Post hoc sed non proctor hoc [an

occurrence after the event does not

mean it was so because of the
event].
Be clear about your message.

The Paper Is YOU

Your intellect, your character and

your belief system are reflected

through your paper.
Hence you are going to show-cause

yourself and have your ideas

accepted by the readership.
That is your sole aim.

REJECTION
Do not expect every paper you write to

be accepted. If it happens that all your

papers are accepted then either you
are a born genius (that I doubt) or you
are choosing a low level journal (which I
suspect).
It is common to have a paper go though

2-3 revisions after submission in the

first few years of your writing.

A Golden Idea For

Scholars
Divide your thesis into discrete

chapters.
Write and publish one paper per

chapter.
Then expand the logic, link the

chapters and you have the first draft

of your thesis.

A Golden Idea For

Teachers
You do not want to be seen either as a

Jack of all Trades or as a journalistic

writer.
You need to be seen as a serious and

scholarly writer who is a specalist.

Hence do not publish more than 4 - 5

papers a year in a refereed journal and

narrow the focus of your inquiry.

The End
This presentation was my idea. You

need not accept it fully. But take only

what appeals to you.
Whatever you do write and publish in

a refereed journal in your discipline.

Thank you