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How to Write a Great Paper

How to Write a Great Paper

Speaker: Gernot Heiser – Sydney, NSW, Australia
Topic(s): Society and the Computing Profession

Abstract

Publication in prestigious venues is key to academic impact, and in computer science this mostly means the top-tier conferences. These venues receive large number of submissions, resulting in a very competitive paper selection process. In order to succeed, a prospective author must understand what is expected from a manuscript, what makes research significant enough to be considered for publication, and how presentation can help or hinder acceptance.

Over more than a quarter century I have certainly experienced my fair share of rejections of what I thought were good papers, and, in hindsight, most of these rejections were justified (although it is obvious that there is a degree of good or bad luck involved as well). And from many years of serving on all of the top-tier program committees in my field, I have a good idea of what reviewers look for.

In this talk, which is aimed at PhD students and early career researchers, I will discuss what makes a good research problem, how to perform a convincing evaluation that shows that yo have made a significant contribution, and, importantly, how to present the work in a convincing paper that has a chance of getting accepted in a top-tier venue. While based on my experience in the core systems discipline (conferences like SOSP, OSDI, ASPLOS, EuroSys, Usenix ATC), it applies to "systems" research in general, including in programming languages, databases and security. My experience is less relevant for more theoretical research.

About this Lecture

Number of Slides: 50
Duration: 25 minutes
Languages Available: English
Last Updated:

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