Sample short survey paper
Check this paper to get an idea of how survey papers are written.Prof. Ranade's Writing Tips for Seminar Reports (VERY useful)
Further Tips/Rules on writing
Main Credit: Malathi Veeraraghavan, Director of Computer Engineering,
University of Virginia
(*ed entries are additions/modifications by Varsha)
Read all the following items before starting a writing project:
*For seminar reports, apart from simply describing ( in your own words) what you read, you are expected to add your own insight – for instance, you should “critique” what you read, compare the approaches, state what you think was good about one paper and not about the other, etc. Write about the material instead of just re-telling the material.
*An analogy I frequently give is that of a theatre/movie review. In a review, you cannot just tell the story of the movie! You have to write about the movie. Writing a seminar report is like watching complicated movies – not only do you re-tell the stories in a simple way, you also analyze them, compare them, etc. etc.
*“Summary and conclusions” should also contain such insights in brief and also you must try to come up with some concrete improvements that can be done in this topic. (Then you will not be caught off-guard when this question comes in the evaluation.) There should also be one paragraph that truly qualifies as a “conclusion” from your survey (again be ready for the “what did you conclude from all this reading?” question).
Generic outline of a seminar report: Introduction, motivation for/definition of the problem, approaches for solving the problem, comparison of approaches, summary and conclusions.
Taking text from some other document VERBATIM is an ABSOLUTE NO-NO. If you do so, you MUST place the text within quotation marks and place a citation to the reference right after the text in quotation marks. Try as much as possible to use your OWN words. If in special circumstances the text is so beautifully written in some other reference that you want to place the text verbatim in your paper, then please do so in quotes with the citation.
*Do not cut-and-paste figures from other papers. (If you must, cite the Figure number, etc of the source, and of course for publishing, you need the permission of the copyright owner).
Always read your writeup (however trivial, an email, a paragraph of a paper, a whole paper) at least THREE times in PRINTED FORM after you think you have finished it before submitting it to a me. PRINT IT ON PAPER AND READ IT.
*Again, do NOT use your guide as a “proof-reader”. If I find myself proof-reading your document, I will stop and not read further. Specifically
*Absolutely no spelling mistakes, no obvious errors e.g. due to wrong cut and pastes, no Figure/Table reference errors, no reference list formatting errors and no errors that have been pointed out below.
Pay attention to the format of references. Study how books, journal articles, conference articles, web sites, etc. are cited in a published article. Use that format.
When consulting other papers for ''phrases'' or ''format,'' only look at published IEEE journal or magazine papers. Do not consult conference papers because typically conference papers are not edited by a professional editor.
IMPORTANT: Every sentence must follow from a previous sentence. Tell a story. Don't jump from one idea to another in consecutive sentences or consecutive paragraphs.
Please do not use the word ''works'' – as in ''related works'' or ''other works''or ''prior works'' when referring to existing literature. Correct usage: ''related work'' or ''other work'' or ''prior work.'' When you are not sure whether to use an ''s'' or not, consult a published paper.
''Notation'' not ''Notations”.
*“Software”, not “Softwares”.
Check your usage of singular and plural nouns. Should it be ''file transfers on circuit-switched networks'' or ''file transfer on circuit-switched network.'' It depends on the context. Pay attention. Even more important, check if the verb in the sentence corresponds to the noun with respect to it this singular vs. plural aspect.
Pay attention to the usage of the article "the."
Always cross-reference citations to references, figures, tables, section numbers, etc. Never type these numbers in manually!
Always be consistent. For example if you refer to a node in a figure as "Node 1" in the text description of the figure, then consistently use capital "N" even when the words "Node 1" occur in the middle of a sentence. Same thing applies to names of messages, parameters, etc.
Do not reference "forward." This means in Section 2, don't say this is explained in Section 4. Only exception is in the introduction section where you describe the whole outline of the paper. Or in a section introduction where you say what each sub-section does.
Use a comma before the last phrase if there are many phrases separated by commas in 1 sentence. Use "and" before the last phrase. Place the comma before the ''and''.
Quotes inside punctuation mark, could be a comma or a period, e.g., "Switch Mapping Table."
Always have exactly one space between the end of a sentence and the start of the next.
*There should be a space after a comma also.
Always have a comma before "which" - use "that" instead of ''which'' in cases where a comma "feels" inappropriate.
If two words form an adjective, then use hyphen except if the first word ends with "ly." (*e.g. “erroneously transmitted data” vs. “Fast-retransmit mechanism of TCP”).
A paragraph needs a minimum of two sentences, i.e., no one-sentence paragraphs.
Do not use words like ''don't,'' ''doesn''t,'' ''can't'' in technical writing. It should be ''do not,'' ''does not,'' and ''cannot,''respectively.
Do not start a sentence with ''Because'' or ''And.''
Draw a distinction between “connection setup procedure'' where ''setup'' is a noun versus ''to set up a connection,'' where ''set'' is a verb.
Use present tense in the abstract, introduction and in the whole paper, except the conclusions and/or summary section. In the conclusions/summary section, use past tense.
When saying something like ''as shown in Equation (14)'' in your text, you should omit the word ''Equation.'' Just say (14).