Scientific writing - essay and thesis

The following English version is based on

Anderberg, L. Informationsteknik - rapportskrivning. Studenlitteratur, Lund, 1992.
Jarrick, A., Josephson, O., Från tanke till text. En språkhandbok för uppsatsskrivande studenter. Studentlitteratur, Lund, 1988.
Mäkelä, M. Kirjoitelman laatiminen. http://www.cs.Helsinki.FI/~mamakela/kirjlaat.html.
Zobel, Justin., Writing for Computer Science. Springer, Singapore, 1997.

In the essay, the emphasis is on

writing a shorter scientific text (about 10 pages)
language
outer structure (format)

The thesis emphasizes on

writing a shorter scientific thesis (about 20 pages)
inner structure and composition of the essay
deeper understanding of the topic
language

Contents of the essay

The essays (thesis) consists of the following parts. Parts within parentheses are optional (and not included in this course).

0. Title (and headings)

concise and informative
specific rather than general terms
use words that accurately describe the contents
usually not complete sentences
avoid being catchy (you are not writing a tabloid paper); the user should be able to decide from the title whether s/he wants to read the paper or not
headings may be numbered

1. Title page

do not use page numbers
see English model
use author name but no titles

2. Abstract

The abstract helps the reader to (quickly) decide whether s/he finds the topic interesting. The abstract should

be short and concise, about 50 to 200 words in a single paragraph
contain only the essential: aims, scope, and conclusions
contain no unnecessary text, such as an introduction to the topic, acronyms, abbreviations, definitions, mathematics, references to other articles
be understood without reading the entire article
written after the body of the essay has been written
Note! Other bibliographic information is also included on the abstract page, see model
use Roman page numbers (or none at all)

(3. Preface)

4. Table of Contents

the heading is Contents, not 'Table of contents'
contains all headings (sub headings) and page references
contains also a list of (possible) appendices (and number of pages per each appendix)
uses Roman page numbers (or none at all)
also lists of figures or tables may be included (in separate lists)

(5. List of notation)

Introduction

The introduction should contain information needed for understanding the entire article. It should

describe the topic: the problem and the approach to the solution
describe the scope and limitations of the solution
describe the conclusions
include motivation: why the problem is interesting and why the solution is a good one (why the paper is worth reading)
include references to similar work
have a heading like "Introduction" or a more informative one, like "Background", "Problem", or the like
write the introduction first and then finish it when you have written the body of the essay

Note that you should reveal the secrets already at the beginning. A scientific paper is not a detective story.

6. Body

the structure of the essay is very important
- always use common sense
- try to focus on/highlight the most important thing of a certain section
- avoid breaking up the text into too small blocks using sub-subsections and subsubsubsections
- on the other hand, beware of having too few sections
all the time keep in mind what the message of the essay is: results, methodology, implementation, comparison with other results, "the big picture" (do not drown in details), conclusions, etc.
please use figures and tables when appropriate; and refer to them in the text so that reader knows when to look at them
Matti Mäkelä gives the following list of questions to consider when you write the body of the essay:
- Describe the type of the essay
- What purpose does it have?
- Which other work do you know in the same area?
- Do you explain the background?
- Which are the most important concepts? Have they been properly defined?
- What problems (subproblems) are processed in the essay?
- How was the data collected (not always applicable to computer science)?
- How was the data analyzed?
- What methods where used?
- How was the correctness of the results checked?
- How where the main results reported? Which is the single most important result?
- Does the author express his/her own critical standpoint?
- What conclusions are drawn or recommendations given? What are they like?

8. Conclusion

draws together the topics discussed in the article
may look beyond the context to other problems (open problems)
may contain possible future research

Please compare with the abstract and the introduction to avoid contradictory statements.

(9. Acknowledgements)

10. Reference list

With the help of the reference list (bibliography) the reader may check the statements of the essay. Include only references used in the essay (no others).

As heading use References.

The reference list may be sorted according to

the author's (authors') last name(s), or
the order the references are used in the article

All references are numbered or identified by a unique text string (e.g., Lin98). The format of references are as follows (according to type, note the emphasized parts):

Book (or an edited conference publication or other collection of articles): name of author(s), title (emphasized), publisher, address, year, e.g.,
- Janlert, L.-E. and Wiberg, T., Datatyper och algoritmer. Studentlitteratur, Lund, 1990.
- Grahne, G (ed.), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, SCAI '97, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 1997.
Journal article: name of author(s), title of article, name of journal (emphasized), volume (emphasized), issue, year, pages, e.g.,
- Brynjolfsson, E., The Productivity Paradox of Information Technology. Communications of the ACM 36, 12, 1993, pp. 66-77
Conference article (or an article in a collection (not journal)): name of author(s), title of article, name of publication or name of conference (emphasized), series, editor(s), publisher or organization, address (of publisher), year, pages, e.g.,
- Lemström, K. et al., An Open Platform for an Image Retrieval System. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, SCAI '97, G. Grahne, ed., IOS Press, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 277-278.
- Norrish, P., Semantic Structures of Text. Structured Documents, J. André et al., eds., The Cambridge Series on Electronic Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 143-159.
Note! When there are more than two authors (editors), you may abbreviate their names with et al.. Also include the abbreviation of the conference (e.g., SCAI). It often says more than the full name.
Report: name of author(s), title, series, number, institution, year, e.g.,
- Lindén, G. and Tienari, M. (eds.), Computer Science at the University of Helsinki. Series A, No. A-1998-1, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, 1998.

Note! The reference list should be written in a consistent way. Choose a format and stick to it consistently. Unfortunately, you may not always be able to find all the information that is required. For example, some conference publications do not list the names of the editors. In this case, you may (must) leave out this information.

An author has written his/her own publication. An editor collects material to be published in a collection (of articles, etc.). An editor may also include text of his/her own in the publication. The difference is noted by the abbreviation ed. (or eds. for many).

Informal references

uniform resource location (WWW): name of author(s), title, URL, year (date and time of printing out the web page)
- Kurhila, J. and Mäkelä, M., WWW as a source to support computer graphics studies. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/group/goa/artikkeli/article.html, 1997, printed 1 Aug 1998, at 12:20.
others: please ask

11. Appendices

General things about writing

The essay should be

clear, lucid, easy to grasp and well arranged
inspire confidence (so that the reader believes what you say)
objective (unbiased?) and independent

As an author you should help the reader to

find your publication by writing/choosing good titles, abstracts, conclusions
understand your publication by making it readable and easy to grasp
check the results (statements) by giving enough specific information so that a moderately skilled scientist could repeat your results (and come to the same conclusions) and by including a reference list

Some notes on spelling

A publcatio that inlcudes a lot of speling mstakes does not isnpire confidence.

please use a spell checker when possible
use dictionaries, thesauruses, style guides, etc.

Readability

language - avoid difficult language but please be precise
style - use a scientific style? - not necessarily, but use appropriate terminology
font - at least 12 pt
line distance - at least 1,5 lines
margins - at least 3 cm on each side
paragraphs - every paragraph should contain one concept, one thought or the like
explain (define) uncommon words, terms
use page numbers
use figures and tables when appropriate. Also use captions and refer to the figures in the text
if you are not the creator of a picture, please mention the reference (in the caption)

Hint: Remember to include space after a period or a comma, e.g., as in this sentence, If the period ends a sentence; within abbreviations there is no space.

Citations and plagiarism

Citations may be included in your text, usually emphasized or separated by citation marks, as in

``Alea jacta est''

Also include the reference (see above). Citations are not common in computer science texts.

Plagiarism must be avoided. Plagiarism means stealing other authors' texts (or parts thereof) and including them in your own publication without giving any reference to the original author.

Using references

When you reuse or borrow ideas of other authors you must reference their work. Technically you include a reference between square brackets, e.g., [Lin98]. The same text string (Lin98) must be found in the reference list at the end of the essay with a more detailed explanation (see above Section 10) of how to find the source.

Some things to think about when using references

place the reference as close as possible to the borrowed concept
use references even in captions if the figure or table is not your own
when borrowing long text parts, please state so clearly at the beginning of the part
sometimes the reference must be more detailed, e.g., [Lin98, pp. 34-45], especially if the source text is large
footnotes are seldom used in computer science (avoid them!)
refer to original articles, to the author who first published about the idea. Also refer (if you use them in your text) to publications that describe the idea in a better way. Refer to all work that you use.
mainly, refer to published work (on paper), in second hand to more informal sources like WWW addresses, personal communication, etc.
do not use references in the title, in the abstract or in headings
references are always included in a sentence (i.e., they do not appear after the period)
avoid speaking about the authors, but if you must, then say According to Brown [Bro89] instead of 'according to [Bro89]'
specify the references already in the draft, otherwise you will forget what sources you used