M2 Cyber Physical and Social Systems – Course unit on Scientific Writing

Institut Henri Fayol - MINES Saint-Étienne

Syllabus

The objective of this course is to know about research community and processes, dig available literature, learn how to write good scientific reports and articles.

Students will practice LaTeX writing.

This teaching unit counts for 4 credits (/30 total for a semester).

Link with other courses

This course helps you define your R&D project, and forces you to write a draft of a scientific article related to your R&D project.

Slides of the lectures

All the slides in one file: lecture_all_2x2.pdf

Evaluation

The grade for this course assesses your regular progress, your ability to conduct a bibliographical study, write a scientific article, etc. The major part of the grade is given by your advisor, and another professor that will read and evaluate your paper. An example of evaluation grid is below:

  • Originality

    • Novelty

    • Pertainance

  • Manuscript

    • Clarity and quality

    • Conclusions

    • Ressources

  • Impact

    • Relation to the call for paper

    • Grounding in the literature

    • Impact of the contributions presented

  • General evaluation

Organization

01.10 Introduction

Lecture

  • Research community & processes

  • Types of scientific documents

  • Typical content of a scientific paper

  • introduction, hypothesis, research questions, related work, contributions, … evaluation of some sort, discussion, conclusion …

Slides
Practical work

  • read papers and identify the key elements

  • see good and bad examples

09.10 Digging available literature

Lecture

  • Introduction: the scientific community, state of the art, do not reivent the wheel, the chicken and egg dilemma.

  • Discover: searching the literature, sources, search strategies.

  • Screen: evaluate title, abstract, venue, date of publication.

  • Read: fast reading, scientific quality, writing quality, originality, significance.

  • Snowball: explore the surroundings of relevant papers (citations, authors, venues, keywords, artifacts).

  • Organize: managing bibliography, good practices, reference management tools, LaTeX/BibTeX.

Slides

part_2_digging_available_literature.pdf

Practical Work

  • Get started with a reference management tool such as Zotero (install, get familiar with the main features)

  • Make actual use of the reference management tool of your choice for the research project that you have ongoing.

16.10 Writing a State of the Art

Lecture

  • State of the Art (SotA) in primary vs secondary research

  • Methodological foundations

  • Practical guidance

  • SotA in computer science/engineering

Slides

part_3_state_of_the_art.pdf

Practical Work

Short presentations from students with group discussions about approaches, tools, and challenges faced while discovering, filtering, reading, writing for their R&D project.

23.10 Dissemination and reviewing

Lecture

  • Options for research dissemination

  • Tailoring your communication to your audience

  • The reviewing process

  • You as a reviewer

Slides

part_4_dissemination_and_reviewing.pdf

Practical Work

  • Download a published article in PDF format that presents a variety of LaTeX writing and formatting challenges.

  • Reverse-engineer the article: using your preferred TeX editor (e.g., Overleaf), recreate the LaTeX source code so that the compiled output matches the original publication as closely as possible.

05.11 Best practices, red flags, tips, checklists

Lecture (1h)

  • How to organize ideas and start adding contents: start with a few words to organize ideas, then sentences, then paragraphs.

  • Concise, short sentences, etc.

  • Canonical contents for typical sections

  • What to start with

Best practices:

  • back up claims with references, …

  • make research accessible, reproducible, …

Red flags:

  • Lack of related work

  • Plagiarism or Data Fabrication

  • Poor Study Design or Methodology

  • Inadequate Sample Size or Bias

  • Lack of Ethical Considerations

  • Incomplete or Misleading Reporting

  • Conflict of Interest

  • Unsubstantiated or Exaggerated Claims

  • Poor Quality Data or Analysis

  • Lack of Reproducibility or Data Availability

Checklist:

  • title, keywords, abstract: for the SEO!

  • research question, contributions, methodology, results at first glance

  • Figure 3. the figure 3, … internal references to sections, figures, tables, equations

  • keep proportions for screenshots and images !

  • sectioning, title case, introductory sentence, …

  • connective words

  • acronyms

  • check references

  • experiment + evaluation

  • if ressource: FAIR, canonical citation,…

Slides
Practical Work

With one or two more professors: short review of the current status of papers, guidance.

25.11 Open Science

Lecture (1h)

  • Open Science, FAIR, …​

Slides
Practical Work

With advisors: short review of the current status of papers, guidance.

01.12 Current progress will be graded by the teachers (scale 0-5)

06.01 Full paper submission to the professors

Each paper will be reviewed by two professors.

Warning
 The papers are graded by the professors (scale 0-20)

20/01 Presentations

During this session, students present their work.

Warning
 The presentations are graded by the professors (scale 0-20)