Transcript 2_5_14 - CS Community – Computer Science Department

Developing Your Project Proposal &
References and Citations
CSCI 6620
Spring 2014
Thesis Projects, Chapters 5 & 6
Project Proposal Outline
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Subject Area
Aim
Arguments
Objectives
Development Process
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Choose a subject area
Choose a problem
Assure quality of initial ideas
Write and submit proposal
Choosing a Subject Area
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Course Names
Titles of Textbooks
Keywords in Research Articles
Combinations of Areas
Identify Subject Area Sources
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Google
References
Books
Library
Online Research Portal
No Sources??
• Topic is too difficult for Master’s level
• Topic isn’t interesting to anyone
• Looking in the wrong place
How to Choose a Subject
Area
• Are you really interested in it?
• Do you have the appropriate skill set?
• Is there an available supervisor?
Choosing a Focus (Aim)
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What would you like to do?
Read the literature
Ask a potential supervisor
Ask a company representative
Develop arguments for why the problem
needs to be solved
• What kind of project are you interested in.
Types of Projects
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Descriptive
Theory
Applied
Comparison of Theory and Practice
Combination of the above
Descriptive Projects
• Describe the state-of-the art for the subject
 Categorize and compare previous work
 Gain an understanding of the current status
and identify important factors
Theory Projects
• Extending existing theoretical models
• Comparing existing theoretical models
• Without testing them in practice
Applied Projects
• Conduct Experiments
• Build proof-of-principle implementations
• Gather experiences
Comparison of Theory and
Practice
• Discuss the theory
• Discuss the actual practice
Assure Quality of Initial Ideas
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Talk to a potential supervisor
Talk to experts
Talk to peers
Evaluate if you are capable of doing the
work.
Write Project Proposal
• 1 - 2++ pages long
• Submit for quality control
Format of Project Proposal
• Title of Project
• Introduction
 To subject area
 To problem within the subject area
• Reasons why it is important to investigate the
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problem
Aim of Project (short description)
Objectives
Name and contact information
Proposal Checklist
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Proper language
Mandatory information
Quality assurance
Skills and resources
Time
Choosing a Supervisor
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Ask other students
Look at previous theses
Check for availability
Check for activity in research area
Talk to the potential supervisor
Sample Project Proposals
Errors
References and Citations
Why seek information?
• To find facts that can be used in the paper
• To evaluate and analyze previous work
Where to hunt for information
• Web - good start, but use with caution
• Bibliographic databases at library
• Use the web to validate the reliability of the
researcher/journal and possibly locate
other articles of theirs
Never ignore the text
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Is it coherent
Is the methodology sound
Is the analysis sound
Are the conclusions sound
Purpose of References
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Show how your work extends current knowledge
Show the originality of your work
Give credit to others
Support and Validate your arguments
Show that you are familiar with the area
Make your work reproducible
Help others learn about the material
Types of References
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Journals
Conference/Workshop Proceedings
Theses
Textbooks
Magazines
Web pages
Newspapers
Manuals, etc.
Oral Communication
Journals
• Very high quality articles
• Can be old
• Check to see when first submitted
Conference/Workshop
Proceedings
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Typically Very New Material
Check acceptance ratio
Try to identify good conferences
Make sure they were reviewed
Theses
• Usually well reviewed
• PhD will be higher quality than MS
Textbooks
• Good source for foundational material
• Typically very old material
Magazines
• May or may not be reviewed
• Usually simplified summaries
• Check the article’s references to find
original source
• Be aware of advertising in disguise
Web Pages
• Usually not reviewed
• Can disappear or change
• Check to see if appears in a conference or
journal and use that reference instead
Newspapers
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Good for examples
Not usually reviewed
Usually simplified summary
Frequently skewed
Check for names of researchers and look them up and try
to find their articles.
Manuals, etc
• Generally not reviewed
• May be advertising in disguise
• Frequently not good quality
Oral Communications
• Take written over oral any day
• Oral is not reviewed and cannot be rechecked
• Use if you contacted the researchers of a
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particular article that you reference and they give
you additional insight.
Use to describe real life situations, but here
again, these are not the primary sources.
Purpose of Citations
• Everything in your paper that does not
come with a citation will be assumed to be
your own work.
• Citations distinguish between your work
and the work of others.
Placement of Citations
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Before a punctuation mark.
At a logical place in a sentence
At a grammatically correct place in a sentence
Before a list of items
Following quotations
Just make it clear to the reader what exactly you
are referring to. :-)
Example Citation Placement
• The human brain contains approximately 50 billion
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neurons (Smith, 1994).
According to some researchers (Smith, 1994) there are
50 billion neurons in the human brain.
According to Smith (1994), there are 50 billion neurons in
the human brain.
Example Citation Placement
(Cont)
• There are five categories of users
(Anderson, 2008): (1) students, (2)
teachers, (3) professors, (4) technical staff,
(5) administrative staff.
Example Citation Placement
(Cont)
• “In the experiments it is shown that the human
brain has 50 billion neurons. Many of the types
of neurons have yet to be classified. We strongly
encourage other researchers to develop tools
and techniques that will assist the process of
categorising the neurons.” (Smith, 1994, p. 345)
Poor Placement of Citations
• Recent work has reported that the importance of computers
in industry cannot be overestimated. Several useful
services (such as booking train tickets) rely on computers.
However, the importance of using computers in our
everyday life has been questioned. It has been argued that
having too many computers in our everyday life causes
security problems, since people cannot protect their
computers from hackers and Internet viruses. The
researchers are still debating these hot topics. (Jones,
1993)
Poor Placement of Citations
• For a long time, the best stock market predictions
have been achieved by the Epsilon neural
network architecture (myers and Sang, 1997,
Niven, 1999)
Poor Placement of Citations
• For a long time, the best stock market predictions have been
achieved by the Epsilon neural network architecture (myers and
Sang, 1997, Niven, 1999).
• The Epsilon neural network architecture, proposed by Myers and
Sang (1997), has for a long time been the most accurate method for
stock market prediction (Niven, 1999).
Table and figures
• citations should be absolute references
such as “Figure 2 shows...” instead of “in
the figure below”
• See journal/conference rules about figure
Always check the rules for the
conference/journal/university and use those.
Managing References
Try to reference original sources
instead of references of references.
Title of list
• Bibliography or Selected Bibliography
• Works Cited, Literature Cited, References
Arrangement of the list
• Alphabetical
• Single author entry comes before an entry
with multiple authors having the same
starting author
• Works by same author sorted
chronologically
Harvard Style - book
• citation (Knuth, 1999)
• reference: Knuth, D. E. 1999. The Art of
Programming. 3rd edition, vol2, AddisonWesley, Reading, MA, USA.
Harvard Style - Conference
Paper
• citation: (Blaha et al., 1990)
• reference: Blaha, M. R., Premerlani, W. J.,
Bender, A. R., Salemme, R. M., Kornfein,
M. M., and Harkins, C. K. 1990. Bill-ofMaterial Configuration Generation. In
Proceedings of the Sixth International
Conference on Data Engineering, pp. 237244.
Harvard Style - Journal Article
• Citation: (Stankovic et al., 1999)
• Reference: Stankovic, J. A., Son, S. H.,
and Hansson, J., 1999. Misconceptions
About Real-Time Database Systems. IEEE
Computer, 32(6), June, pp. 29-36.
Harvard Style - Book Chapter
• citation: (Gatziu and Ditrich, 1999)
• reference: Gatziu, S. and Dittrich, K. R.
1999. SAMOS. In: N. W. Paton, editor.
Active Rules in Database Systems.
Springer-Verlag, New York, chapter 12, pp.
233-247.
Harvard Style - Web Page
• citation: (Davison and Kock, 2004)
• reference: Davison, R. and Kock, N.,
editors. 2004. Professional Ethics [online].
Available from:
http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/research/resourc
es/isworld/ethics/index.htm [Accessed 27
June 2007].
APA Style - book
• citation (Knuth, 1999)
• reference: Knuth, D. E. (1999). The Art of
Programming. 3rd edition, vol2. Reading,
MA, USA, Addison-Wesley.
APA Style - Conference Paper
• citation: (Blaha et al., 1990)
• reference: Blaha, M. R., Premerlani, W. J., Bender, A. R.,
Salemme, R. M., Kornfein, M. M., & Harkins, C. K.
(1990). Bill-of-Material Configuration Generation. In:
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on
Data Engineering, pp. 237 244.
APA Style - Journal Paper
• Citation: (Stankovic et al., 1999)
• Reference: Stankovic, J. A., Son, S. H.,
and Hansson, J. (1999). Misconceptions
About Real-Time Database Systems. IEEE
Computer, 32(6), pages 29-36, June.
APA Style - Book Chapter
• citation: (Gatziu & Ditrich, 1999)
• reference: Gatziu, S. & Dittrich, K. R.
1999. SAMOS. In: N. W. Paton (ed.),
Active Rules in Database Systems.
Chapter 12. Springer-Verlag, New York.
APA Style - Web Page
• citation: (Davison and Kock, 2004)
• reference: Davison, R. and Kock, N.,
editors (2004). Professional Ethics [online].
Available from:
http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/research/resourc
es/isworld/ethics/index.htm [Accessed 27
June 2007].
Vancouver Style - book
• citation [1]
• reference: [1] Knuth, DE. The Art of
Programming. 3rd edition, vol2, Reading,
MA, USA, Addison-Wesley; 1999.
Vancouver Style - Conference
Paper
• citation: [2]
• reference: [2] Blaha, M. R., Premerlani, W. J., Bender, A.
R., Salemme, R. M., Kornfein, M. M., and Harkins, C. K.
Bill-of-Material Configuration Generation. In: Proceedings
of the Sixth International Conference on Data
Engineering. pp. 237 244.
Vancouver Style - Journal
Article
• Citation: [3]
• Reference: [3] Stankovic, JA, Son, SH,
and Hansson, J. Misconceptions About
Real-Time Database Systems. IEEE
Computer, 1999; 32(6): 29-36.
Vancouver Style - Book
Chapter
• citation: [4]
• reference: [4] Gatziu, S. and Dittrich, K. R.
SAMOS. In: N. W. Paton, ed. Active
Rules in Database Systems. SpringerVerlag, New York; 1999: chapter 12.
Vancouver Style - Web Page
• citation: [5]
• reference: [5] Davison, R. and Kock, N.,
eds. Professional Ethics [online], 2004.
Available from:
http://www.is.cityu.edu.hk/research/resourc
es/isworld/ethics/index.htm. Accessed 27
June 2007.