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How to Read Research Papers?

Xiao QinDepartment of Computer Science and

Software Engineering

Auburn Universityhttp://www.eng.auburn.edu/~xqin

xqin@auburn.edu

Some slides are adapted from notes by Nitin H. Vaidya at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Three Steps in a Research Project

Identify a Problem

Solve the Problem: a solution

Present the solution

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Why read papers?• To know what’s happening

• Avoid reinventing the wheel – does happen commonly,

too many wheels already

• Find interesting research topics

• Write a good “related work” section

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Why not to read papers?

• Cannot read everything

• Should not read everything

• Can suppress innovation– once you see solutions using a

particular theme, often hard to think differently

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Read or not to read,that is the question

• Read, of course

• Know what’s important

• Know what can be ignored without significant loss of information

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Where to search? • When I was a Master’s student…

• When I was a doctoral student…

• Now…

‹#›

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Where to search papers? (1) • IEEEXplore

• ACM Digital Library

‹#›

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Where to search papers? (2) • Google Scholar

• Personal Web Pages

‹#›

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Where to search papers? (3) • Top Conference Proceedings

AREA: System Technology Premium: SOSP: ACM SIGOPS Symp on OS Principles

OSDI: Usenix Symp. OS Design and Implementation Leading: ICPP: Intl Conf on Parallel Processing ICDCS: IEEE Intl Conf. Distr. Comp Systems Reputable:

GLOBECOM: Global Comm ICCC: Intl Conf on Comp Communication

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Where to search papers? (4) • Top Journals

AREA: System Technology Premium: Jnl of Parallel and Distributed Computing

IEEE Trans on Parallel and Distributed Systems Distributed Computing Leading:

Jnl of Network and Computer Applications Parallel Computing Reputable:

ACM Mobile Computing and Communicatons Review Intl Jnl of High Speed Computing

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What to read? • Major conferences

– Journals are a few years behind, but still can be useful

• Tech reports from active research groups– need to know which groups to look up

• Survey / overview papers– ACM Computing Surveys– CACM, IEEE Computer, Spectrum– more technical - IEEE Personal

Communications, …– newsletters - ACM SIGCOMM, ACM

SIGMOBILE, ...

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Manage References

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References Management SoftwareBiblioExpress   

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References Management Software

• EndNote• EndNote Web• Zotero• RefWorks• Reference Manager• Mendeley• See Comparison at:http://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/library/Public/Reference_management_software_comparison.pdf

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What’s in a paper [see also how to write papers:

http://www.auburn.edu/~xzq0001/WritePapers-Part 1.ppt]

• Abstract• Introduction• Motivation• Problem description• Solution• ...• Performance Analysis• Conclusions• Future Work

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How to read a paper? Three levelsKnow why you want to read the paper• To know what’s going on (e.g., scanning

proceedings)– title, authors, abstract

• Papers in your broad research area– introduction, motivation, solution description,

summary, conclusions– sometimes reading more details useful, but

not always

• Papers you may want to improve on– read entire paper carefully

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What to note?

• Authors and research group– Need to know where to look for a paper on

particular topic• Theme of the solution

– Should be able to go back to the paper if you need more info

• Approach to performance evaluation• Note any shortcomings

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So this paper is in print ...

• Be skeptical

• If it sounds too good to be true, it often is ……

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More Advice …

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Three phases to reading

• Determine if there is anything interesting at all in the paper.

• Determine which portion of the paper contains the interesting stuff.

• Should I read the whole paper?– Read the whole paper if necessary.

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Is there anything interesting?

• Ideally, the abstract should tell you this, but frequently it does not.

• Need to jump about– Read conclusion– Read introduction– Look at the bibliography– Glance at the TOC – Table of Content (if any)

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Which portion contains interesting stuff?

• A paper typically outlines its organization at the end of the introduction. – Use this to determine which portion contains

the exciting stuff.

• Quickly scan the titles of each sections in the paper.

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Read the whole paper

• Read with the following questions in mind– How can I use this stuff?– Does this really do what the author claims to

do?– What if the assumptions and choices that the

author made are discarded (or made invalid)?– Is source code available?– More questions ……

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Context and problem statement

• What problems are the author trying to solve or trying to convince you of?

• Are they important problems?– Why?– Why not?

• What is the author’s thesis?

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Related work evaluation

• Does the author describe other work in the field?

• If so, how does this research differ from the other work?

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New idea

• What new idea is the author proposing?– Architecture– Algorithm– Mechanism– Methodology– Perspective

• Is the idea useful and practical?

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What to evaluate?

• What need to be evaluated to confirm the worthiness of the new idea?– Runtime– Throughput– Resource utilization– Model validation

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How to evaluate?

• How did the author go about conducting the evaluation?– Formalize and prove theorems– Run simulations– Artifact design and construction– Collect traces from existing systems

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Was the evaluation correct and adequate?

• How was the data collection done?• Do you agree with the analysis of data?• Do you agree with the conclusions about

the data?• Do you have any new interpretation of the

data?• Can you suggest new ways to evaluate

the data?

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Assumptions, drawbacks and extensions

• Can you think of other aspects of the idea that need to be evaluated?

• Can you think of extensions or modifications to the idea to improve it?

• How would you evaluate your improvement?

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Assumptions, drawbacks and extensions

• Can you apply the idea or method of evaluation to your own project?

• Do the authors make any assumptions that are not valid or realistic?

• Can you come up with a more general solution that does not rely on one or more of the assumptions?

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Future work

• Does the author indicate how the work should be followed up on?

• Does the paper generate new ideas?• Does the paper implicitly or explicitly

provide a new way of doing other things or of thinking about problems?

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SummaryIf you remember nothing else:• Where to search papers• Scan papers• Read papers with questions in mind

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Download the presentation slideshttp://www.slideshare.net/xqin74

Google: slideshare Xiao Qin

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Further Researchhttp://www.eng.auburn.edu/~xqin

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My webpagehttp://www.eng.auburn.edu/~xqin

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Download Slides at slidesharehttp://www.slideshare.net/xqin74

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Questions