how not to get your paper rejected

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How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected Mainak Chaudhuri Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

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How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected. Mainak Chaudhuri Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Prolog: Why. Publishing is important Must tell your ideas to others Improves the chance of converging to a better idea (hundreds of brains working vs. tens) - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Mainak ChaudhuriIndian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Page 2: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Prolog: Why• Publishing is important–Must tell your ideas to others– Improves the chance of converging to a

better idea (hundreds of brains working vs. tens)

– Helps the community to push the frontline in the right direction

– Inspire others to think smart by showing them how to think smart

– Let the coming generation(s) remember you for what you accomplished

– Caveat: publishing is often overhyped (this is where the counting game takes over)

Page 3: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Searching for Ideas• Selling a good idea is far easier than

selling a not so good idea– Truth be told, there aren’t too many good

ideas out there– Read a lot of papers to stay abreast with

what people around the globe are thinking– Identify the top conferences and journals in

your area and browse the proceedings and periodicals in regular intervals• Reserve time for this from your weekly/monthly

plan• Summary: reading good papers holds the

key to writing good papers

Page 4: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Idea-Execution Cycle• The cycle of idea-(execute-improve)+

continues until the results are satisfactory or further gains are marginal– Understand what is satisfactory by the

publishing standards– Depending on the standard of results, decide

where to publish– Top tier conferences and journals usually

demand high standard ideas and results• These are usually medium to highly influential ideas

– Be realistic and decide how good your idea is– Sending a not-so-good result to a top

conference/journal is a non-starter

Page 5: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Draw up an Outline• Think about a good story to tell– Draw up the sections and subsections– At every step put yourself in the position of a

reader and ask if the story plot is interesting– Put enough time to write a good abstract and

introduction• First impression is the final impression• Motivate the problem and summarize your

solutions in introduction• If your contribution is building on top of several

other prior work, include a related work subsection at the end of introduction; otherwise move the related work section to the end of the paper

Page 6: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Give Credit to Others• Not acknowledging closely related

studies is the biggest sin in research– Know the related work well and review

them generously– Importantly, point out how your idea

improves previous state-of-the-art– In the evaluation section, compare your

proposal quantitatively with a few best known prior arts• Implement them in your infra-structure and

evaluate impartially

Page 7: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Mid-game (1/3)• The middle of the paper goes in

explaining your contribution– Crux of the matter– Polish the writing well and make sure that

you highlight the major contributions– Usually, this part is easy to write because

this is your work–Make sure to show how you got to your

end-design step by step• Motivate every addition to your design and tell

a good story

Page 8: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Mid-game (2/3)• Once you have talked about the central

ideas, it is time for quantitative evaluation– Furnish enough information about your

simulation/evaluation infra-structure so that others can reproduce the results• Very important for the contribution to be useful

– Provide exact values of the important parameters that you have used

– If you are using some non-conventional/new methodology for evaluating your idea, justify why it makes sense

– Use publicly available benchmark suites and furnish enough details about them

Page 9: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Mid-game (3/3)• Once the infra-structure is conveyed,

proceed to present your results– Explain the results carefully highlighting your

contributions– Spend time to explain any outliers

• This opens up further trains of research– Compare your proposal with a few closely

related studies• Explain why you are better• Explain any outliers with more care

– Overall, the evaluation should make a convincing story and tell readers that you have spent time to carefully design your experiments

Page 10: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Read-Think-Update• Read the complete manuscript several

times (not back-to-back)– Reserve at least seven days for final polishing– Challenge yourself with hard questions that a

reader may ask; see if you have answers to them in the paper

–While reading imagine that you know nothing about the work; see if you can follow the train of thoughts described in the paper

– Come up with a list of negatives about your paper which may lead to rejection• Address them carefully

– Ask colleagues to read and give feedback

Page 11: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Typical Outline• Abstract• Introduction, Motivation, Related Work• Background• Your Design Proposal• Evaluation Methodology• Results and Analysis• Summary• References• Appendices (if any)

Page 12: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Epilog: Rejection Can Help• The world is highly competitive– Too many smart people out there– Probability of getting rejected is fairly high

(top tier CS conferences have one in ten to one in five acceptance rates)

– If your paper is rejected, take the reviews seriously and try to address the concerns• Most reviews are usually good if you tried a top

tier conference/journal• Some reviews may be unreasonably critical;

don’t get dejected– Revise well and try again

Page 13: How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected

Thank youMainak Chaudhuri

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur