How to conduct good research with high impact ?

Mark Liao

2009.12.4

Part 1: How to conduct good research ?

• Based on ``How to be a winner: advice for students starting into research.’’

General Concept

• The biggest challenge one faces to any new project is that there is a huge amount of stuff one needs to know to tackle related problems properly.

• So learning how to cope with this challenge is an important skill to master to become a good researcher.

Coping mechanisms employed by winners

• Prioritizing (what do I need to know most)• Read (everything made available to you, and se

ek out more)• Multithreading (When blocked on one path, is th

ere another path ?)• Wishful thinking (if this subproblem is solved, do

es that allow me to go on and solve other problems)

• Pester people who might have information you need

Communicate and Synchronize

• When you have to build your own models, solve unexpected problems, make assumptions, do make sure to communicate and synchronize with your fellow researchers.

Decompose

• The whole problem often seems overwhelming. Decompose it into manageable pieces. Tackle the pieces one at a time. Divide and conquer.

Be Organized

• Keep careful track of what you have done and what you need to do. Make lists; write it down; don’t rely on your memory to hold all the things you need to do.

Prioritize

• Make priorities in your efforts and check your priorities with your supervisor.

Realize that your supervisor is busy

• He/she hired you to help him get more accomplished than he could have on his/her own. Your biggest benefit to him/her is when you can be self moving and motivating.

• Your supervisor gives you the seed and some directions, then goes off to think about other problems

Deliver

• Losers keep promising a great thing in the future but have nothing to show now

• Winners can show workable results along the way to the solution

Don’t trap yourself into unnecessary details

• If solving a subtask right is key to the overall goals, maybe it will be necessary to devote time to this sub-problem. However, for most sub-problems, this is not the case.

Learn to solve your own problems

• This is the only way to strive for independence.

Part 2: How to write a good paper ?

• Prof. John W. Chinneck’s point of view

• John’s original topic is ``How to Organize your Thesis”

What Research is All About ?

• The distinguishing mark of a good research is an original contribution to knowledge

• Therefore, a good research work must show two important things:

1. must identify a worthwhile problem

2. must solve the problem

What a research paper must cover Reviewer’s Side

• The reviewers who read your paper would like to find out some basic components:

1. What is your research problem ?

2. Is it a good problem ? (or real problem)

3. Did the authors convince me that the defined problem was adequately solved ?

4. Have the authors made an adequate contribution to knowledge ?

What a research paper must cover Author’s Side

• To prove the originality and value of your contribution, you must cover:

1. A thorough review of the existing literature

2. By making direct reference to your literature survey, you must demonstrate two things:

a. the problem has not been previously solved;

b. the problem is worth solving.

A Generic Research Paper Skeleton (1)

1. Introduction

2. Review of the State of the Art

3. Problem Statement

4. Describing How You Solved the Problem

5. Experiment Results

6. Conclusions

A Generic Research Paper Skeleton (2)

• INTRODUCTION -- is a general introduction to what the

paper is all about, therefore, it must cover 1. a brief summary of the problem 2. some of the reasons why it is a

worthwhile issue 3. an overview of your main results

A Generic Research Paper Skeleton (3)

Review of the state of the art

-- to present the major ideas in the state of the art right up to

-- should be a ``real’’ survey, must point out some milestone papers ( 不要隨便塞一些 papers, 敷衍了事 , 這件事的目的是引出將要解決的問題的重要性 )

A Generic Research Paper Skeleton (4)

• Review of the state of the art -- organize the survey by idea, not by author or

by publication• Example: tone reproduction originally global-based approaches then local-based approaches (due to some

bottlenecks)

A Generic Research Paper Skeleton (5)

• Problem statement

This section should cover three main parts

1. A concise statement of the problem that your work tackles

2. Justification, by direct reference to the state of the art section, that your problem is previously unanswered

3. Discussion of why it is worthwhile to solve this problem.

A Generic Research Paper Skeleton (6)

• Describing how you solved the problem

-- Try to convince the reviewers that you solved the problem that you set for yourself in Problem Statement Section. Of course experiment is a good support of the proposed solution.

A Generic Research Paper Skeleton (7)

• Conclusions

--- generally cover three things

1. conclusions

2. summary of contributions

3. future research

Part 3: How to evaluate the performance of a researcher ?

• One must know how his/her work is evaluated !!

• There are quite many evaluation tools available, ex. Google scholar, Publish or Perish, Web of Science, SCOPUS

到底什麼才是好的研究 ?

• 每個人看法不同 !• 每個領域標準不同 !• 但是使用絕對值 , 比如 : 論文數目 , 絕對是

錯誤的 .• 不同領域的比較也是不適當的 (biology and

computer science cannot be compared)• Reverse engineering helps.

What tools can be used ?

• SCOPUS

- how to search a person ?

- how to generate citation report based on the number of citations ?

• Publish or Perish

- how to search a person ?

- how to make use of the provided statistics ?

Scopus (1)

Scopus (2)

Scopus (3)

Publish or Perish

What tools can be used ?

• Thomson’s Web of Science

- How to generate citation report of a person or a department?

Some Metrics to Evaluate a Department

• Total citations within a 10-year window (the only absolute value used, ex. 1996-2006 this value

was 632 (ISI), therefore, a critical mass of faculty number is needed)

• Average citations per item

• H-index of an institute

• The number of top 1% papers

• The ratio of top 1% papers to all papers

1996-2006: total citations

A:Papers B:Citations C:Cites per Paper NR:No Record

What is H-index ?

• What is H-index of a department or of a person ?

ranking

(based on order) (# of citations)

#1 15 #2 13 #3 10 #4 6 #5 4The h-index of this case is 4

Search the H-index of a Department via ISI Web of Science• For example: the EE Department of USC or the EE Department of Natl Taiwan Univ.

• EE Dept of USC (ISI Advanced Search) type: AD=(Univ So Calif SAME Dept Elect Engn)

AD=(Natl Taiwan Univ SAME Dept Elect Engn)

An example (1)

An example (2)

An example (3)

An example (4)

An example (5)

An example (6)

What is top 1% paper ?

All Fields

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008All

Years

0.01%1562 1143 1138 1041 925 723 542 409 240 123 29 8380.10% 496 454 423 381 329 274 215 162 97 48 12 301

1.00%

161 153 143 129 114 94 77 57 36 18 5 98

10.00%

41 40 38 35 31 27 22 17 11 5 2 24

20.00%

23 23 22 20 18 16 14 10 7 3 1 13

50.00%

7 7 7 7 6 5 5 4 2 1 0 3

Computer Science

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008All

Years

0.01%6795 985 694 453 899 902 287 226 80 50 10 4620.10% 251 230 271 297 223 143 80 67 38 16 5 138

1.00%

70 65 56 59 56 39 27 21 12 7 3 37

10.00%

16 15 14 14 14 9 7 5 3 2 1 8

20.00%

8 8 8 7 8 5 4 3 2 2 0 4

50.00%

2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

H-index of different CS Departments in Taiwan(As of October 2009)

Items

h-indextotal #

papers

Average Citations per item (ACI)

# of top 1% papers

# of 0.1% papersUniversity

NTUCSIE

34 1711 4.20 12 2

NCTUCSIE, CS,

CIS42 2254 4.99 24 2

NTHUCS, ICDS

22 1406 2.35 0 0

NCUCSIE

26 629 5.37 10 0

NCKUCSIE

20 1928 2.34 4 0

Acad. SinicaIIS

31 1116 4.83 10 1

H-index of a Department

• Computer Science Department: - Purdue Univ:48 - Univ of Illinois:75 - Univ of Massachusetts:50 - Univ of Southern California:60 - National Taiwan Univ: 34 - National Chiao Tung Univ: 42 - National Tsing Hua Univ: 22 - Academia Sinica: 31 - National Cheng Kung Univ:20 - National Central Univ:26

H-index of a Department

-- EE department: - USC: 121 - Univ of Toronto: 86 - Univ of British Columbia: 56 - National Taiwan Univ: 57 - Princeton Univ: 142 - UC San Diego:79 - UC Los Angeles:99 - UC Irvine: 51 - National Tsing Hua Univ:40

Search the H-index of a Person via ISI Web of Science

• For example: Hong-Yuan Mark Liao of the Inst of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

• Search Hong-Yuan Mark Liao via ISI advanced search.

type: AU=(Liao HYM) if name is unique

Or AU=(Liao HYM) AND AD=(Acad Sinica SAME Inst Informat) if name is very common

An example (1)

An example (2)

An example (3)

An example (4)

An example (5)

1996-2006中研院與世界各研究單位高引用率論文之比較

The ratio of top 1% papers to all published papers

• From 1999-2006, Academia Sinica published 9,456 SCI papers. Among these papers, 110 papers are within top 1% in terms of citations.

• The ratio of top 1% papers of Academia Sinica (1999-2006) is thus 110/9456 = 1.16% (the average of the world should be 1%)

翁院長對評斷 researcher 的一個看法

• 年輕學者看被引用數前十名 paper

• 資深學者看 H-index

當然比較必須與同領域學者 (for example:multimedia, parallel computing, cancer research, etc.)

翁院長對的程度有多高 ?

• 來看看台灣資訊領域知名的學者 ( 做一下 reverse engineering)– 林一平教授– 林智仁教授– 曾煜棋教授

知名學者的一些數據 (Ⅰ) as of October, 2009

林一平 林智仁 曾煜棋ISI Google ISI Google ISI Google

294(0.1%)

475 883(0.1%)

2386 138(1%) 1381

234(1%) 426 180(1%) 1609 118(1%) 476

149(1%) 292 121(1%) 1474 99(1%) 427

140(1%) 269 105(1%) 666 78(1%) 342

101(1%) 236 88(1%) 338 66(1%) 293

Conclusions

• Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.

• We can identify some successful cases and do reverse engineering to find clues.