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Research Methods

Course Overview

Unit 1: Introduction to research and scientific paper reading and writing - Diego Calvanese (1/12/2020 - 4/12/2020)

1. What is Research?
2. Research in Computer Science
3. Selection of PhD topic
4. Reading scientific papers
5. How to write a scientific paper

Schedule:

• Lecture 1.1: Tuesday 1/12/2020, 8:00-12:00 (MS Teams)
• Lecture 1.2: Friday 4/12/2020, 14:30-16:30 (MS Teams) - Held by Marco Montali

Unit 2: Empirical/experimental CS research methods - Matteo Ceccarello (7/12/2020 - 11/12/2020)

Schedule:

• Lecture 2.1: Monday 7/12/2020, 9:30-12:30 (MS Teams)
• Lecture 2.2: Friday 11/12/2020, 9:30-12:30 (MS Teams)

Unit 3: Good scientific writing style - Enrico Franconi (12/12/2020 - 18/12/2020)

• Writing style for computer science
• Slides on LaTeX (by John Lees-Miller, University of Bristol)
  1. The basics
  2. Structured documents
  3. Presentations and more
  The Overleaf online LaTeX tool is used in this course.
• Introduction to SVN
• Additional material on LaTeX
  • LaTeX Cheat Sheet (by Winston Chang)
  • The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List (by Scott Pakin)
  • Writing Mathematical papers with LaTeX (by Jerzy Trzeciak)
  • Typesetting Tables with LaTeX (by Klaus Höppner)
  • Small Guide to Making Nice Tables (by Markus Püschl)

Schedule:

• Lecture 3.1: Tuesday 15/12/2020, 9:00-12:00 (MS Teams)
• Lecture 3.2: Friday 18/12/2020, 9:00-12:00 (MS Teams)

Unit 4: How to write a research plan - Antonella De Angeli (11/1/2021 - 15/1/2021)

Schedule:

• Lecture 4.1: Monday 11/1/2021, 9:30-12:30 (MS Teams)
• Lecture 4.2: Friday 15/1/2021, 9:30-12:30 (MS Teams)

Unit 5: Presenting scientific work - Marco Montali (18/1/2021 - 22/1/2021)

Example presentations:

• BPM 2014 presentation - Check in particular the introduction and slides 14-16.
• KR 2014 presentation - Check in particular slide 2 and slides 12-23.

Schedule:

• Lecture 5.1: Monday 18/1/2021, 9:30-12:30 (MS Teams)
• Lecture 5.2: Friday 22/1/2021, 9:30-12:30 (MS Teams)

Unit 6: Research evaluation - Werner Nutt (8/2/2021 - 12/2/2021)

1. Bibliometrics
2. Peer reviewing

Schedule:

• Lecture 6.1: Monday 8/2/2021, 9:00-12:00 (MS Teams)
• Lecture 6.2: Friday 12/2/2021, 14:00-17:00 (MS Teams)

Course Material

Additional useful material

On Writing

• David Evans, Paul Gruba, Justin Zobel. How to Write a Better Thesis. 2014. Electronic edition available via the unibz library through SpringerLink.
• Robert A. Day. How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper. 1998. [Slides]
• Razvan Andonie, Ioan Dzitac. How to Write a Good Paper in Computer Science and How Will It Be Measured by ISI Web of Knowledge. 2010.
• Robert F. Dugan Jr., Virginia G. Polanski. Writing for Computer Science: A Taxonomy of Writing Tasks and General Advice. 2006.
• Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, Paul M. Roberts. Mathematical Writing. 1987.
• P. R. Halmos. How to Write Mathematics. 1970.
• Jan Mendling, Hajo A. Reijers. How to Write a BPM Conference Paper? 2015.

On Reading

• S. Keshav. How to Read a Paper. 2007.

On Scholarly Publishing

• Alice Meadows, Karin Wulf. Seven Things Every Researcher Should Know About Scholarly Publishing. 2016. Original post available here.
• Jonathan P. Tennant et al. Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing. Publications, 7(2), 34, 2019.
• Kyle Siler, Philippe Vincent-Lamarre, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, and Vincent Larivière. Predatory Publishers' Latest Scam: Bootlegged and Rebranded Papers. Nature 598, 563-565, 2021.

On Doing Research

• Edsger W. Dijkstra. Three Golden Rules for Research. 1982. Available on request.
• Dianne Prost O'Leary. Graduate Study in the Computer and Mathematical Sciences: A Survival Manual. 2009.
• Mikael Berndtsson, Jorgen Hansson, Bjorn Olsson, Bjorn Lundell. Thesis Projects: A Guide for Students in Computer Science and Information Systems. 2008. Electronic edition available via the unibz library through SpringerLink.
• Committee on Academic Careers for Experimental Computer Scientists, National Research Council. Careers for Experimental Computer Scientists. 1994.
• Peter Wegner. Research Paradigms in Computer Science. 1976.
• David A. Patterson. How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia. 1976.
• Sven Koenig. What I Wish I Had Known Early in Graduate School but Didn't - and How to Prepare For a Good Job Afterward. AI Magazine. Spring 2020.