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Publications I: Your Way to Worldwide Recognition
Mohamed Zahran [email protected]
http://www.mzahran.com
ES Series on Scientific Research
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ES Series on Scientific Research 2
When to publish? What to publish?
What to do to enhance your writing skills?
Type of publications
When to start writing?
Getting your paper noticed
Dealing with rejections
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Why publish?
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source: http://awisblog.wordpress.com/awis-in-action/2013-2/june-2013/publish-or-perish/
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Why publish?
• Person A is an idiot
• Person A is smart but does research like idiots
• Person A is smart, does research brilliantly, but writes like idiots
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To the outside world, they will all look the same!!
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ES Series on Scientific Research
When to publish?
• As soon as you have an answer, backed by data, send your paper
• Have a roadmap: milestones
– Can be aligned with conference deadlines
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ES Series on Scientific Research
What to publish?
• Avoid least-publishable unit (LPU)
– May look nice from the outside
– But will give you bad reputation
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Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21552574
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ES Series on Scientific Research
When to start writing?
As soon as you start doing research!!
• Helps you focus
• Editing is easier afterwards
• Acts as your research notebook
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Be Careful: The way you explain your thoughts and experiments in the
submitted paper may be different than the reality!
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Where to send your work?
• In your field: are journals stronger or conferences? – In most fields journals are stronger, but in some fields (like
computer architecture) conferences are way stronger.
• If journals – What is the journal impact factor? – What is the turnaround time? – Is it indexed?
• If conferences: – What are the strongest 6 conferences in your field? – Arrange them by strength – Do not overestimate or underestimate your work when
choosing the venue.
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Type of Publications
• Extended abstract – pitch
• Workshop paper – work-in-progress
• Conference paper
• Journal paper
• Grant proposal – I want money, here is why
• Report – This is what I did with the money/time/duty given to me
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Again … Type of publications
• Review paper
• Incremental improvement
• Negative contribution
• New idea
• Breakthrough (really!)
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0-step ahead … 1-step ahead … 10-step ahead
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ES Series on Scientific Research
The ROADMAP
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• Double-blind • Single-blind • None
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ES Series on Scientific Research
When you submit a paper and get reviews back:
– Accept • Rare decision, nearly every manuscript may need some work
– Accept with minor Revision • Authors need to address queries and criticisms, will generally be
accepted
– Accept with major Revision • Authors MUST address certain major key issues
– Reject Request Resubmission • Not suitable now, and may not ever be, but could be worth a
second look
– Reject • Poor science, report without value, redundant or duplicate
publication, “me too” reports, clear bias, or good/great paper but wrong audience
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ES Series on Scientific Research
How to deal with Rejection?
• Be angry … if you want … but not for long!
• DO NOT argue with the editor
• Read carefully the reviews
– Make a TODO list and plan “to do” it.
– Decide: shall I send it to another journal or this one?
– Act quickly!
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Acceptance is NOT the end!
• Market your work
– Put it on your website (yes … you need to have one)
– Put slides to summarize the work
– Give talks
– If somebody is doing related work, you may email him/her discussing how your work is related and whether you can collaborate
– LinkedIn, twitter, facebook, researchgate
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Assess yourself: h-index
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• The higher the better index • Measures productivity and impact of a researcher
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Assess yourself: citations
• Eliminate self-citations
• Keep an eye on google scholar + Dbases of your field
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ES Series on Scientific Research
How to enhance your technical writing skills
• Your grammar … If your paper is full of typos and grammatical errors, it will be rejected … Hands-down!
• How to sell
• Smoothness
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ES Series on Scientific Research
How to enhance your technical writing skills
• Read a paper every week … at least • Keep aside the best 3 papers in terms of writing • Ask yourself: Why they are the best in terms of
writing? • Do the following … once a month
– Pick one of these model papers – Read a section – Put it aside – Write down, in your language, that section. – Compare your writing with the original: which is better?
why? what to do to enhance yours? – Move to the following section
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Some Links
• Thomson Reuters (Web of Knowledge)
http://wokinfo.com/
• Google scholar
http://scholar.google.com/
• Scopus: http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/scopus
• Digital Libraries: – ACM: http://dl.acm.org/
– IEEE: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp
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• Do your research and write at the same time. • How does writing help your thinking?
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• The classic book for writing. • Even for native English speakers • Read it once a year!
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• How to select a venue? • How to revise? • How to handle rejections? • How to market your paper?
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• Writing grant proposals • The book targets NSF and NIH but the framework proposed is general enough.
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• Nice compilation of tips words and rules • Generic enough to be used for papers, reports, proposals, … .
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ES Series on Scientific Research
Conclusions
• If you do research publish
• Writing skill is not an afterthought … It is essential
– Need to train intensively
• Depending on your field, have a clear answer to:
– What to publish
– Where to publish
– When to publish
– How to market yourself
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Have questions? [email protected]
http://www.mzahran.com