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. 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 PresentationTRANSCRIPT
How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected
Mainak ChaudhuriIndian 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)
– 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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Typical Outline• Abstract• Introduction, Motivation, Related Work• Background• Your Design Proposal• Evaluation Methodology• Results and Analysis• Summary• References• Appendices (if any)
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
How Not to Get Your Paper Rejected
Thank youMainak Chaudhuri
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur