《06 Writing a paper》.ppt

Scientific Communication CITS7200 Lecture 6 Writing a Paper Writing is part of the process of research. If you don’t publish it, you haven’t done it! “There are three necessary steps in useful research; the first to begin it, the second to end it, and the third to publish it.” Michael Faraday But… No one wants to read your paper. Concise and relevant title Inviting abstract Good visual organisation Organisation Target your audience Choose appropriate language and notation Rank your contributions Determine the length Aim to be concise Avoid repetition Achieve general results that give special cases Science vs. fiction In both cases, all necessary info is given But… In fiction, clues are hidden In scientific writing, clues are up-front Hiding clues State your facts in a way that seems clearly to be doing so for another purpose He was proud of his old college associations, and wore his college tie and gold tie-pin to all formal events. (The victim was stabbed with a small sharp object) Place your clue somewhere is a long list of irrelevant facts Rely on stock responses Placement of clues If observers are asked to watch out for something, they seldom remember what immediately preceded or followed that something In the autopsy report, what followed the pin-prick mark on the neck? In scientific writing, clues must be presented clearly, together, up front, and in a way that makes the deduction that is drawn from them completely obvious. Abstraction hierarchy of a paper Title Abstract Introduction Conclusion Other Chapters Title Single most important part of paper Directly determines the number of readers Most readers don’t get past the title The title is at the highest level of abstraction It is a concise description of the paper It captures the content in one phrase It must attract the attention of the casual browser Linear Scheduling is Nearly Optimal Learning the Unlearnable An application of the multiedit-condensing technique to the refer