A Brief Note on Academic Writing

Chin-Shiuh Shieh

2013-02-26

• General Issues

• Common Pitfalls

Title

• A title should be a noun phrase stating the problem you addressed, the approach you adopted, and the result you had achieved. For instance, “Performance enhancement for IEEE 802.11e networks by adaptive adjustment of the HCCA/EDCA ratio”, “ 基於無線訊號強度與信號平均值之區域定位系統” , or “ 以手持式移動設備為標的之車道線偏移偵測系統” .

Author List and Affiliation

• Have names of you, all your advisors, and who has directly contribution to your work included in the author list.

• The affiliation should be “Department of Electronic Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Taiwan,” or “ 國立高雄應用科技大學 電子工程系” .

Structure

• A typical paper/thesis consists of the following sections/chapters:– Abstract– Introduction– Related works/literature review– Proposed approach– Performance analysis– Simulation/implementation– Conclusion– Acknowledgment– Reference list

Abstract

• An abstract is a summarization of your work, a condensed version of the entire article, stating the problem you addressed, the approach you adopted, and the result you had achieved.

• It is by no means the first part of your introduction.

Introduction

• An introduction gives common background knowledge of the problem domain, the issue you believe need to be or can be improved, and how you are going to resolve the issue.

• In other words, you are persuading your reviewers and examiners that you are working on a valuable topic.

Related Works/Literature Review

• Related works/literature review lists and reviews previous works related to your study.

• A lengthy and up-to-date list is an indication that you had conducted a comprehensive survey.

• Works directly related to your study demand more discussion, including similarity and difference, pros and cons.

• Avoid strong wording in judging others’ works. They could be your reviewers.

Proposed Approach

• The proposed approach part is the core of your contribution.

• Be clearly and precisely to let your readers appreciate what you are doing.

• Have an illustration for the architecture of your framework.

• Explain the functionality of each component.• List each step of your algorithm, clarifying what to do and

the purpose of why to do so in each step.• Use flow chart or signaling chart to help clarifying your

explanation.

Theoretical/Math Analysis

• Manage to have theoretical/math analysis for your work. It is for two reasons.

• Firstly, an equation worth a thousand words. Theoretical analysis offers your study solid support.

• Secondly, to scare the reviewers.

Experiment

• Comparative study is essential. With it, reviewers can easily recognize your contribution. It is alright to have scenarios favoring your approach, but don’t do that too much.

• Metrics of general concern to the problem you intended should be included. Data/measurements should be collected from a number of runs with different random seeds or different topologies, rather than a single run on a particular case.

Experiment (cont)

• Present your data/measurements using average, variance, and charts. Referring to your results, it is essential to explain why your proposal outperforms, which mechanism in your approach contributes to the improvement. Do not simply put your results there and saying that it is indeed better.

Implementation

• For implementation-oriented work, in the explanation of your system, please pay attention to the balance between system abstraction and implementation details from the perspectives of readers.

• Highlight the technical challenges you had faced and how you cope with them. Operational data should be collected, analyzed, and presented, not just saying that it works.

Acknowledgement

• For paper, acknowledge lists third party having contribution to this work. Generally, we have NSC project grant numbers included. For thesis, you may have thanks to anyone you want to thank.

References

• Reference list partly reflect the quality of your survey work.

• Be certain to have a style compliant to the template. An ill-prepared reference list gives reviewers a very bad first impression.

• In addition, it is polite to cite papers from the journal you intended.

English Academic Writing

• Improve your proficiency in English academic writing.

• Please refer to the following link for a fake paper generator: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen. The contents it generated is of nonsense, but the English writing is quite good. You are strongly suggested to learn your technical writing from it.

Academic Ethic

• Be certain the work is your own (or at least you are part of it) and never be publicly published elsewhere. It is the most fundamental academic ethic.

Common Pitfalls

• Use template offered by journals/conferences in the preparation of your manuscript.

• Academic writing is certainly formal writing. Those wording used in your communication with your buddy is prohibited.

Common Pitfalls (cont)

• References are listed but not cited. Cite references in due places in the main text.

• Illustrations are in poor quality and hard to perceive. Redraw illustrations using vector graphic tools, not simply copy a bitmap image.

• Use Equation Editor for equations. Equations should be numbered.

Common Pitfalls (cont)

• Avoid the mixture of Chinese and English in your writing. For the first occurrence of a terminology, give the full Chinese, English, and its acronym. For instance, 電力維運監控系統 (Power Operation Supervisory System, POSS). After that you may use POSS in your text.

Common Pitfalls (cont)

• Even for common background knowledge, do not simply copy-and-paste from the Internet or literatures. Rephrase the concept using your own words.

• Outdating reference list is an indication that your work is outdating.

Common Pitfalls (cont)

• Table captions are in general placed above the table. Figure captions are generally placed below the figures.

• Check section/sub-suction numbering to see if there are miss or duplication.