This
article will help you to write and publish your research paper. For
Research Scholars doing Phd it is mandatory to publish their research
papers at international level journals. And Many of the students who
will apply for further studies in technical courses will discover that
relevant published research papers help during admission process. So
here we are trying to post some guidelines that you can follow...
1. Preliminary
The first activity for publishing a technical paper is to figure out
your technical area of interest. Make sure the you had carried out
enough studies on basics of that topic. Then you have you to update
yourself with the ongoing technical happenings in your chosen field. You
can do this by
1) Reading and googling a lot of technical papers. There are a lot of journals and IEEE papers floating around in net.
2) Go to one or more conferences, listen carefully to the best talks, and find out what people are thinking about.
Once you are done with the above mentioned steps, then you are eligible for writing a paper
2. Read existing Papers
Read everything that might be relevant gives you different perspective
of the focus topic. But be selective too, for not getting to much
deviated from you topic of interest. Getting used to simulation software
is much useful for simulating your work. You can find a lot of time
during the days and utilize those holidays & free days.
3. A jump start
When you first start reading up on a new field, ask your fellow
researcher what the most useful journals and conference proceedings are
in your field, and ask for a list of important papers that you should
read. This activity will give you a jump start
4. Crack the jargons and terms
One of among the tough nuts to crack is to understand the paper
published by others. The easiest way is to is by reading it many times.
The more times you read the more will be revealed to you. Keep the
Internet handy so that you can crack the jargons and terms, which you
may find strange.
5. Write down your studies
Write down speculations, interesting problems, possible solutions,
random ideas, references to look up, notes on papers you've read,
outlines of papers to write, and interesting quotes. Read back through
it periodically. Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas
is very useful.
6. Bits and pieces together
Now you can identify important open problems in your research field and
also you will be very much aware of what you are doing and what you have
to do. The more you go, you'll notice that the bits of random thoughts
start to come together and form a pattern, which may be a bright enough
for a good paper.
7. Simulation softwares easies
Please don't pick overly ambitious topics; instead identify a realistic
size problem. Gather the Matlab files available in the Internet that is
related to your topic and simulate it for the claimed results. Please
don't expect the Mfiles readily available for a solution published in a
paper. But you can make it of your own by modifying and adding. Believe
me, Matlab is a very easy tool! Once you are able to get the simulated
outputs of your solution, you can carry on for making a paper out of it.
8. Essence of your work
The essence of your work can be diagnosed by analyzing below listed
points. We can increase the maturity of the paper by improving these.
Significance: Why was this work done? Did you solve an important problem
of current interest or is it an obscure or obsolete problem?
Originality/Novelty: Is your approach novel or is it tried-and-true? Did
you need to develop new tools, either analytical or physical?
Completeness: Have you tested a wide range of scenarios, or is this just a simple proof-of-concept?
Correct: Is your solution technically sound or are there errors? [3]
Consider improving the same.
9. Anatomy of Paper
Generally a paper has seven sections and a maximum of four pages. They are
1. Abstract,
2. Introduction,
3. Existing techniques,
4. Your contribution,
5. Results and
6. Conclusion.
10. The procedure
As a part of your paper publication, you can start documenting the
'existing techniques' from the scrap journal you did during the studies.
Here you have to extract what all are the techniques existing as a
solution for the particular problem and the pros and cons of those.
Next, document the 'introduction' about what is the topic and what you
are going to do. Better to keep it short. Follows your contribution and
the simulated results.
1. Describe the problem
2. State your contributions'Abstract' is one section you can
work on in the last, as it has to cover the all the sections very
briefly. Please note that Abstract makes the committee members to decide
whether or not to read your paper. Generally four lines are sufficient
for this.
1. State the problem
2. Say why it's an interesting problem
3. Say what your solution achieves
4. Say what follows from your solution
11. Section by section
The divide-and-conquer strategy works on a day-to-day level as well.
Instead of writing an entire paper, focus on the goal of writing a
section, or outline. Remember, every task you complete gets you closer
to finishing your paper.
12. Get a pre-review
Now your paper is ready. You can ask your peers or professors to review
your paper. Next is to find the right place to publish it. You can start
of with national level conferences, which often gets conducted in many
universities. Then once you gain a level of confidence, you can proceed
to international conferences and journals.
13. Read the reviews carefully
This is really, really, really hard. Only a small proportion, 5 to 10
percent, are accepted the first time they are submitted, and usually
they are only accepted subject to revision. In fact, anything aside from
simply "reject," Neal-Barnett reminds, is a positive review. These
include:
* Accept: "Which almost nobody gets," she says.
* Accept with revision: "Just make some minor changes."
* Revise and resubmit: "They're still interested in you!"
* Reject and resubmit: Though not as good as revise and resubmit, "they still want the paper!"[2]
Read every criticism as a positive suggestion for something you could explain more clearly
14. Don't panic
After reading the review the first time, put it aside. Come back to it
later, reading the paper closely to decide whether the criticisms were
valid and how you can address them. You will often find that reviewers
make criticisms that are off-target because they misinterpreted some
aspect of your paper. If so, don't let it get to you -- just rewrite
that part of your paper more clearly so that the same misunderstanding
won't happen again.
It's frustrating to have a paper rejected because of a misunderstanding,
but at least it's something you can fix. On the other hand, criticisms
of the content of the paper may require more substantial revisions --
rethinking your ideas, running more tests, or redoing an analysis.
15. Rejected? Be Positive
If your paper is rejected, keep trying! Take the reviews to heart and
try to rewrite the paper, addressing the reviewer's comments. "Remember,
to get a lot of publications, you also will need to get lots of
rejections," says Edward Diener, PhD, editor of APA's Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual
Differences.
16. Common mistakes
Wrong sequence in Figure and Table numbering
Misalignment of columns
Usage of figures from another paper without credit and permission
17. Where to publish
Generally, there are three main choices:
* National Conference: A conference is the right place for beginner
scholars, since the level of scrutiny is minimal. The conferences will
accept papers which details about the comparison of existing
technologies, mathematically proven but practically unproven proposals,
etc.
* International Conference: A conference is the good play ground for
Intermediate scholars. This mostly same as National Conference but the
sensitization will be more.
Conferences offer rapid time-to-publish, plus you will often get feedback on your work when you present it.
Page lengths and acceptance standards vary widely from conference to
conference, but generally conference papers are shorter than full
journal papers. [3]
* Journal: Journal papers are generally the Alfa and Omega of publishing
papers and they are considered as more prestigious than conferences.
