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Scientific Writing

Chapter 2: Getting Started

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Prepared by:

  • Sowida Nezami
  • Lalma Mohammadi

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Contents

  • Beginnings
  • Shaping a Research Project
  • Choosing Topic & Advisor
  • Research Planning
  • Students and Advisors
  • Successful Research Students

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Getting Started

  • There are many ways in which a research project can begin, for example; a conversation with a colleague suggested interesting questions to pursue, or that enrolment in a research degree forced you to identify a problem to work on. The topic of this chapter is about getting started: finding a question, working with an advisor, and planning the research. As a working scientist: What kinds of stages and events does a researcher have to manage in order to produce an interesting, valid piece of work?
  • This chapter concerns the first steps involved in doing a research project, which are:
  • Formation of a precise question, the answer to which will satisfy the aim of the research.
  • Development of a detailed understanding, through reading and critical analysis of scientific literature and other resources.

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Getting Started (continued)

3. Gathering of evidence that relates to the question, through experiment, analysis, or theory. These are intended to support—or disprove—the hypothesis underlying the question.

4. Linking of the question and evidence with an argument, that is, a chain of reasoning.

5. Description of the work in a publication.

  • In computer science many research students see experimentation as a form of software development, and undertake a research write-up as if they were assembling an essay or software documentation. Part of learning to be a scientist is recognition of how the aims of research differ from those of coursework.

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Getting Started (continued)

  • A perspective on research is that it is the process that leads to papers and theses, because these represent our store of accepted scientific knowledge. Another perspective is that it is about having impact; by creating new knowledge, successful research changes the practices and understandings of other scientists. Our work must be adopted in some way by others if it is to be of value.

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Beginnings

  • Starts from insights
  • From lectures, seminars, tea-room arguments
  • Is the idea unworkable?
  • At the beginnings, it isn’t possible to know whether work is novel or will lead to valuable results; otherwise there would be no scope for research
  • Some students have the clear picture of what to do; Others, look for topic and supervisor
  • Some talk to several alternative advisors before choosing a topic of their interest

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Shaping a Research Project

  • Short term goals like initial research paper
  • Long term goals like thesis
  • Tow key questions:
    • First, what is the broad problem to be investigated?
    • Second, what are the specific initial activities to undertake and outcomes to pursue?

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Choosing Topic & Advisor

  • Is this the most interesting topic on offer?
    • Trends might change by the time of your graduation
    • Will the topic be relevant, consistently?
  • Is this advisor right for me?
    • Not just as a respected researcher but also as an individual
  • In research:
    • Student does most of the effort
    • Intellectual input is shared
  • Technical level of topic and student to match
    • Mathematical skills; programming skills; system skills

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Choosing Topic & Advisor (continued)

  • Know the prerequisites for the specific topic
  • Are there enough expertise available?
  • Are there enough codebase experience available?
  • One area with different skills and backgrounds
  • Statistical. Identify properties of Web pages that are useful in determining whether they are good answers to queries.
  • Mathematical. Prove that the efficiency of index construction has reached a lower bound in terms of asymptotic cost.

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Choosing Topic & Advisor (continued)

  • Algorithmic. Develop and demonstrate the benefit of a new index structure.
  • Representational. Propose and evaluate a formal language for capturing properties of image, video, or audio to be used in search.
  • Social. Link changes in search technology to changes in queries and user demographics.
  • A principle is to pursue the smallest question that is interesting. If these outcomes are reached early on, it should be straightforward, in a well-designed project, to move on to more challenging goals

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Research Planning

  • Courses have different deadlines
  • Research has only one deadline: Completion
    • Intermediate milestones like progress report or project outline or papers, keep a check on progress
  • Plan your research from outcome
    • Thesis/ Paper/ Report Experiment
    • Background review of previous work or experiments, experiment description, analysis of outcomes

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Research Planning (continued)

  • Experimentation
    • How to conduct? Hypothesis?
    • Data, code and platform
  • Without experimentation
    • Fresh analysis of data
    • Case study qualitative interpretation
  • Steps of research: literature, design, analysis or implement, test or evaluate
  • Is the research work enough?
    • A written thesis can show the amount of work accomplished.

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Students and Advisors

  • Some students see their advisor twice: once to choose a topic and once to submit
  • Advisor can:
    • Identify research questions through attempt to confirm someone else’s results, by downloading code or by developing a fresh implementation
    • Advise or give on activities towards publications

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Students and Advisors (continued)

  • Initially: Supervisor specifies each small step like running experiment, find source of data, search literature, writing parts of the paper, etc…
  • When student matures: Student works independently; anticipates what the supervisor will ask and works
  • Are you working alone or in a research group?
    • This has its own impact

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Successful Research Students

  • Read widely and explore broadly, not just specific topic
  • Enthusiastic to develop interest in an area
  • Detailed and grueling study in a specific facet of a large topic
  • Initiate what needs to be done; take responsibility in his/her research
  • Systematic and organized (understand the need for rigour, discipline, stringency, quality, and high standards)
  • Work on their shortcomings or limitations or knowledge gaps Arguments are reasonable
  • Able to take failures or unsuccessful activity as building blocks of success

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