Research Skills Theme DayIMA RESEARCH GROUP

Dr. Julie Greensmith

Today’s Timetable1000-1045: Reading and Writing

1045-1115: Impact

1115-1230: Posters!

1230-1300: Lunch

1300-1500: Presentations!

Reading Academic Literature

Dr. Julie Greensmith

Reading papers efficiently is essential

Structured reading leads to faster reading and better information retention

But I know how to read!The average PhD student in science will read in excess of 250 papers throughout the duration of their project

Reading papers which are not exactly on topic or from a different domain/field and can be boring!

lots of acronyms and jargon

Bulk of reading performed in first six months

Feeling Confused?Familiarisation with new literature can be very daunting

It can range from frightening to completely bewildering

Lose all confidence in your abilities

Look at what all these really clever people are saying, they are so smart it must be all correct

“I’ll just skip the paper and read the abstract”

It takes time, patience and practice to get right

Reasons for reading a stack of literature

You have to become mini-experts in your field

make an original contribution

have to know who has done what, when and with whom

The recall of this information becomes ‘viva critical’

“have you read the paper of Dr. Xyz et al on your very topic??”

A lot of papers which you download will be irrelevant

its confusing as to what you ignore and what you need to keep

Reading high volumesTry and read everything about your topic?

since “google scholar” et al, there is almost too much information!

Be selective about what you read?

start with review papers, but be careful (why?)

focus on the major publications, but you could miss something....

Only read the papers your supervisor suggests?

who’s to say your supervisor is some kind of research god?

Develop a strategy or process for systematically reading papers

A paper != a textbookI avoided this more by accident than by design!

I didn’t want to read all the papers all the way through as I got bored

Linear: start reading a paper at the abstract and don’t stop until you hit the acknowledgements section

Passively reading papers in this style

Complete read of a paper would take a graduate student 3/4 hours

3 * 50 = 150 hours on reading alone

without doing anything else which is unrealistic

Adaptable strategies depending on purpose

Initial familiarisation with a field

requires examination of the background sections of papers

chase down the citations and then the citations in the citation etc

quick look at the conclusions and future work

Looking for specific pieces of information

don’t print it out, this makes it very tempting to read the whole thing

make use of the fact that electronic documents are easily searchable

These are slightly more unusual cases, so what about the general purpose paper read?

Paper reading order?introduction

results

methods/algorithms/tools

results (again)

conclusions

background

the rest

What this meansNever judge a paper by its title

the key to a paper is usually in the introduction not the title or abstract

last paragraph of introduction always states the contents of the paper

Leave the maths until the second read through

unless you are from maths that is

Skip next to the results section (if its an experimental paper)

what have they done and what was the outcome

Check their methods which can make more sense if you know the outcome

What this meansTake a second look at the results and make assessment

do they match what is given in the introduction and methods?

in bad papers none of this stuff will match up properly

hard to see if you’re just passively reading

See what they conclude

do you agree? You don't have to, especially if there is no proof!

Use the background section to find out more information or to clarify unfamiliar terms

Writing

When we read papers is it recommended to do so in a linear fashion?

When we write papers do we do this in a linear fashion?

The Blank PageStarting a large document can be intimidating

Do not write in presentation order

Start with what you have done e.g. the methods and results first; introduction and abstract come last

Then you know what material you need to support the work you are presenting

Plan Initial StructureGetting the structure right is the cornerstone of technical writing

Sketch out what you want to say

Best practice to never go beyond 3 levels of subsections

2.3.1.4.1.5 ❌

2.3.1 ✅

Large Documents Are Fractal

Large documents need strong narrative

Introductions and Conclusions for the whole document

Within each section write and introduction and a conclusion

Within each subsection do the same etc.

This creates signpostingWithout narrative the document becomes very difficult for the reader to manage

Repeating what you are doing and where in the document aids navigation

Provides signposts so that the reader knows what they have read and what they are going to read shortly

Remember: You are not writing crime novels, always give your readers the full picture and avoid SUSPENSE….

Making Chapters Self Contained

Good narrative and signposting can mean that any given thesis chapter can be read independently

Minimise the amount of back and forward referencing

Skipping about while you are reading a document disrupts the flow, and can be hard to do in digital formats

Think about proximity and how reading can be a very ‘tactile process’

Getting started within a chapter

Again, avoid the blank page if you can

Flesh out what paragraphs will go in what section using bullet points

Should be able to see the overall construction of a thesis at this point and be able to read it through as a summary

Use Paragraphs Appropriately!

This seems to be very simple, but is a common mistake for MSc Students

Reader’s attention is held only for the first few sentences of each paragraph- put the most important information at the top of the paragraph

One paragraph, one subject

Check you have done this effectively by reading through your chapter based on looking at the first line of each paragraph only

Spot the differenceBecause of the work performed by Pearson et al. (2002) where cells were discovered to have high levels of communicative connectivity, we can abstract a model of cell-cell communication which adhere to small world principles

We can abstract a model of cell-cell communication which adheres to small world principles, based on the findings presented in Pearson et al. (2002) where cells were shown to have high levels of communicative connectivity

Using ‘power sentences’Transform the impact an individual sentence has by writing it so the most important part of the sentence comes first

The reader pays more attention to the first few words of a sentence

Helps you to focus your sentences and write more convincingly

Often I write out a sentence as I would say it, which does not necessarily make it either clear or concise

Hypotaxis vs Parataxis

Parataxis is a literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favours short, simple sentences, with the use of coordinating rather than subordinating conjunctions. It contrasts with syntaxis and hypotaxis. [Wikipedia]

Parataxis One sentence, one subject, one object

“Robots within a swarm must be able to cooperate. Their communication devices are tailored to their particular morphology and functionality. Therefore communication across different robotic platforms is difficult”

Very concise and understandable, but is very turgid if this is written for a long time

HypotaxisLong, multiple clause, (frequently) long winded sentences), with multiple parentheses and punctuation which are not necessarily conducive to providing the clearest conveyance of the true meaning of a sentence; although can be used sparingly to break up the turgidity of constant parataxis.

If your sentence has multiple objects and topics, and is more than two lines long, it probably needs to be decomposed

This takes quite a lot of practice to achieve the correct balance between parataxis and hypotaxis

Hypotaxis can confuse“The decentralized decision-making mechanisms found in the above examples, and others in the natural world, offer an insight on how to design distributed algorithms that solve complex problems related to diverse fields, such as optimization, multi-agent decision making, and collective robotics.”

How can we re-write this to be a power sentence with some elements of parataxis?

Using formal language, fam.

The ‘tone’ of scientific papers is technical and formal

Write out contractions in full

Don’t -> Does not, Haven't -> have not

Avoid slang innit bro

Think from the perspective of your reader about the clarity of your sentence to remove ambiguity

“Eats, shoots and leaves”

Common mistakesPlurality: its it’s, data datum, sheep 🐑

Use vs utilise (did you really?)

Methodology vs method, effect vs affect

Raise vs rise, that or which, principle vs principal

[The worst one] Could of vs Could have

Latin horrorsWhen you want to cite multiple paper authors, for more than three authors we use et al. Note its in italics and no stop after the et

Confusion over e.g. and i.e.

e.g. Greensmith et al. (2008)

Using maths appropriately

Introduce all notation with definitions either before or directly after their usage

a = |b - c| * (c + d), where a is the measured response, b is a constant, c is the contraction magnitude and d is the contraction rate

Numbering equations is useful if you refer to them at a later point

Simple expressions in line with the text, more complex expressions should be centred like a table or figure

Communicating with figures

Select the appropriate visualisation technique

Never, never, ever, use a pie chart

Label all axes and provide legends (if line)

Assume the figure will be printed in black and white

For each figure write an appropriate figure legend

Figure legendsA figure should also be a self contained object

You should not have to look at the text to understand what is happening in a figure

Figure 2: Shows the speed-up of network traffic comparing the standard technique with the novel peer-to-peer implementation, based on measurements taken at 0.5Hz on the JSim network simulator (Version 5.4)

No interpretation, but a clear description of what is in the figure

The results sectionAll results must be described and stated in the results section (they don't belong anywhere else)

Statistical analysis is presented in the results section

Do not repeat results, pick to either put into a graph or into a table - no extraneous graphs

Keep methods/implementations out of this section

Tables like figures need a self contained legend and are best referenced also like figures

Drawing conclusionsYou should not introduce any new results in the conclusions, all results go in the results section

Draw meaningful comparisons

“Our new technique X is better” - better than what, my cat’s dinner?

“We show that technique X is better than technique Y. We believe this is because…..”

Write down 1/3rd of your conclusions as “Future work”

The conclusion must come to some ‘conclusion’ and not just be a summary of the paper. The summary is the ABSTRACT

Writing an abstractThis is a summary of the whole paper

The majority of people who download your paper/thesis will only ever read this

A concise and comprehensive summary of the work - avoiding abbreviations!

Include a summary of results and a conclusion in the abstract

Proof reading strategiesFactor in time for proof reading - and not just checking for typos

Check your sentences, figures are complete, perhaps read the first sentence of paragraphs

Check all reference information is present and correct

I used speech to text to ‘listen’ to my theses while I was reading them (also my Dad proofread them)

Further Reading and Videos

Writing for Computer Science (Justin Zobel): I loved it so much I bought 2 copies

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Computer-Science-Justin-Zobel-ebook/dp/B00TEYLNBI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1487352524&sr=8-2&keywords=Justin+ZObel

Write now: http://www.harold.thimbleby.net/teaching/Writing.pdf

Simon Peyton Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA

Elements of Eloquence: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Eloquence-Perfect-English-Phrase-x/dp/1785781723/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487352598&sr=8-1&keywords=Elements+of+eloquence