Home page of the course
Research Methods

The lectures are taught in presence at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and are also broadcast online via MS Teams.
Students who intend to participate remotely should contact Diego Calvanese so as to be added to the MS Team of the course.

Course Overview

Unit 1: Introduction to research and scientific paper reading and writing - Diego Calvanese (20/1/2025 - 24/1/2025)

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: Monday 20/1/2025, 9:00-13:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.09
• Lecture 1.2: Friday 24/1/2025, 10:00-12:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.09

Unit 2: Empirical/experimental CS research methods - Niccolò Pretto (27/1/2025 - 30/1/2025)

Schedule:

• Lecture 2.1: Monday 27/1/2025, 14:00-17:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.11
• Lecture 2.2: Thursday 30/1/2025, 14:00-17:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.07

Unit 3: How to write a research plan - Antonella De Angeli (17/2/2025 - 21/2/2025)

Schedule:

• Lecture 3.1: Monday 17/2/2025, 9:30-12:30 - NOI BZ B1.1.15
• Lecture 3.2: Friday 21/2/2025, 9:30-12:30 - NOI BZ B1.1.15

Unit 4: Presenting scientific work - Marco Montali (24/2/2025 - 28/2/2025)

Schedule:

• Lecture 4.1: Monday 24/2/2025, 9:00-12:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.02
• Lecture 4.2: Friday 28/2/2025, 9:00-12:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.02

Unit 5: Good scientific writing style - Niccolò Pretto (10/3/2025 - 13/3/2025)

Schedule:

• Lecture 5.1: Monday 10/3/2025, 9:00-12:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.02
• Lecture 5.2: Thursday 13/3/2025, 9:00-12:00 - NOI BZ B1.1.08

Unit 6: Research evaluation - Werner Nutt (17/3/2025 - 21/3/2025)

1. Bibliometrics
2. Peer reviewing

Schedule:

• Lecture 6.1: Monday 17/3/2025, 9:00-12:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.07
• Lecture 6.2: Friday 21/3/2025, 14:00-17:00 - NOI BZ B1.2.01

Assignments

Each unit foresees an assignment, which will be communicated to the students during the first lecture of the unit. In the time period between the first and second lecture of the unit, the students should complete their assignment, and (part of) the second lecture will be devoted to discussing the assignment.

The time estimated to complete each assignment is 19 hours, which, when added to the 6 hours required to atted the two lectures of the unit, results in 25 hours of work. These correspond to 1 ECTS credit. Hence, upon completion of all assignments, a student can be granted 6 ECTS credits.

Course Material

The slides used for each unit will be made available by the lecturer of the unit in the MS Teams channel for the course.

Writing for Computer Science (3rd Edition). Justin Zobel. Springer. 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-4471-6638-2 (Print), 978-1-4471-6639-9 (Online).
Electronic edition available via the unibz library through SpringerLink.

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.
• Peter M. Dahlgren. Instructions for Reviewer 2 How to reject a manuscript for arbitrary reasons. 2022.

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.