EDGE™ Preparing a Technical Article for a Conference Proceedings Prepared by Edward Hensel Copyright © 2005 Rochester Institute of Technology All rights.

EDGE™

Preparing a Technical Article for a

Conference Proceedings

Prepared by

Edward Hensel

Copyright © 2005 Rochester Institute of TechnologyAll rights reserved.

EDGE™

Outline

• Motivation • Four Step to Technical Writing

• Typical Conference Paper Outline

• Challenges of Technical Word Processing

• RIT Academic Honesty Policy

• Examples

Copyright © 2005 Rochester Institute of TechnologyAll rights reserved.

EDGE™

Motivation

"You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your brains won't get you anywhere."

• Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler CEO

EDGE™

Motivation (Continued)

• A 1985 study indicated engineers spend up to 50% of time writing, with amount of writing related activities increasing directly with job responsibilities

• A 1998 study of more than 350 engineers found:– Within 2-3 years of graduation, engineers spend 30% of time writing on the job– Engineers in middle management spend 50-70%– Engineers in senior management spend 70% or more (up to 95%)

• A 1996 survey of electrical engineers indicates that – “general and technical writing, and group and interpersonal communication skills” are considered

to be the most valuable assets during hiring– over half of workday spent communicating

• A 1994 survey of 67 companies and government agencies that recruit entry-level engineers listed communication skills among top 6 most important attributes

• A New Mexico State University alumni survey (Riley & Pines 2000) indicates communication skills are among top 3 skills required of a practicing engineer

Dr. Patti Wojahn, New Mexico State University, January 2001 Presentation to Multi-Disciplinary Senior Design Class.

EDGE™

Four Steps to Technical Writing

• I learned this four step method from my son, Nick, when he was enrolled in a multi-age (grades 3,4,5) classroom.

• I realized that this simple summary captured what I had done for many years, without really articulating my process.

• Following this process will help you become an effective and efficient technical writer.

• The hardest part of writing is simply to begin.

EDGE™

Brain Drain

• Identify your objective in writing the document.• Identify your audience – the reader.• Write a series of questions from the reader’s point of

view• Rank order the reader’s questions in rough order of

importance, to them.• Respond to each question in sequence.• Do not worry too much about format, grammar, tense, or

details at this point. • Your response to the questions can be in the form of

bullets, or statements, and need not be complete sentences at this point.

EDGE™

Sloppy Copy

• Organize the sequence of questions into logical groupings, to form the basis of paragraphs

• Write an opening sentence for each paragraph.• Convert each sentence fragment into a complete

sentence.• Draft a transitional sentence to conclude each paragraph

and lead into the next.• This is a good time to request feedback on the structure

of your document. Will it achieve your objective?• Can another person read your document now, without

you having to explain it to them?

EDGE™

Neat Sheet• Reduce the total number of words in the document - I

use a rule of thumb of 3 to 1…• Search for compelling phrases to get your point across.• Eliminate redundant wording used over and over again in

a redundant fashion.• Avoid saying the same thing again and again.• Although … you may want to conclude with a re-cap of

the most important items.• The neat sheet should be a first draft that is essentially

complete except for formatting.• This is a good point to get an expert reviewer to evaluate

your document. Where allowed, I recommend peer review prior to submission.

EDGE™

Final Form• Check the margins, run spell check. Double, triple,

quadruple check grammar.• Confirm your margins, typeface, and watch for widows

and orphans.• Use white space and contrast to make the document have

higher impact.• Submit the document for reproduction and distribution.• Make sure the document reflects positively on you!• Assume that this document will be archived and other

people are going to read what you write!

EDGE™

The Conference Paper…

• The target audience for the conference proceedings consists of– Your peers– Engineering faculty– Engineering professionals from the private and public sector

• You will have 6 to 8 pages to present the results of your senior design project

• The papers will be published in a proceedings and distributed widely both in hard copy and electronic format

• Will often be viewed by others as your first professional quality publication.

• Is an important element in your professional portfolio.

EDGE™

Typical Senior Design Conference Paper• Title Block

– Title– Authors and Affiliations– Date

• Abstract• Nomenclature• Introduction and Literature Review (Coming from your needs assessment)• Design Process (Summarize your Specifications, Alternative Concepts, and Feasibility assessments)• Preliminary Design (Summarize the entire design with an exploded view and critical design analysis)• Engineering Model (Describe your fabrication processes, show photos of the finished devices)• Experimental Setup and Procedure (Describe the testing apparatus and methods used to assess

performance)• Data Analysis (Present the results of your performance testing on your engineering model)• Results and Interpretation (Compare and contrast the actual results achieved with your engineering

model against the project performance from your design)• Conclusions (Articulate which of the original design goals were and were not achieved)• Recommendations for Future Work (Precisely describe the next steps that a follow-on team should

pursue)• Bibliography (provide a listing of all works cited to a level that the reader could locate the document)• Acknowledgements (Acknowledge your client or sponsor, people who may have contributed to the

success of your project)

Copyright release form must be submitted for publication in the proceedings

EDGE™

Examples of Prior Work• Check the Archives

– Proceedings from prior years of senior design conferences are available in the resource center for the class

– Most past teams post their conference papers on their websites– Note that the content and quality of the conference papers

continues to evolve. This year, we anticipate much more emphasis on results of testing your engineering model!

• Ask Your Mentor and Coordinator– They may be able to point you in the direction of specific articles

that should have a flavor similar to your project.– Ask them for a copy of a conference paper that they have

written for a professional conference, not for senior design, so that you can get a feeling for that format and level of quality

– Ask them for a copy of a journal article, so you can understand the difference between conference and journal publication.

EDGE™

The Title Block

• When you read the title … what do you anticipate will follow?• What is the paper about?• Is it primarily analytical, numerical, or experimental in nature?• Who else do you think would be interested in this article?• Be specific with your title, but not too wordy. A good title is no

more than about 10 words long. 20 words is too much, and 5 words probably is not specific enough.

• Every author should be listed with their departmental affiliation. Your mentor, coordinator, sponsor, etc. should be listed if and only if they were a direct contributor to the work described within. If you relied on their support, but they were not directly involved in the project design, they should more appropriately be listed in the acknowledgments vs. as an author.

EDGE™

The Abstract

The one paragraph abstract is used by prospective readers to decide if your publication is really what they are looking for. You should answer these questions, implicitly, for the reader of the abstract. Many people may read your abstract, and may not proceed to read the rest of the article.

• What is the paper about?• Who is the paper written for?• What methods and processes are described in the

paper?• What conclusions do you expect to be presented in the

paper?• Will this paper appear be of interest to the reader?

EDGE™

The Introduction / Background / Literature Review

The 3-5 paragraph introduction should summarize all of the findings from your needs assessment. The background should describe to the reader what your design project is, who cares about it, and how you went about creating your design specifications from customer inputs. You need to demonstrate to the reader that you have not conducted your work in a vacuum, and that you are familiar with similar design work that has been done in the past, so you are not reinventing the wheel.

• What is the motivation for this work?• Who else has contributed to this field of research, based on the

citations presented herein?• Your bibliography should point the reader to additional items

listed in the bibliography, that look like they may be of interest to your work?

EDGE™

Theory / Analysis / Model / Experimentation

• Can you reproduce the mathematical development, and fill in the blanks?

• Are there errors in the analysis?• Are the units (dimensions) correct?• What assumptions underlie the analysis?• How are the assumptions justified? (If indeed they are) – Are

they driven by limitations of technology, or are they driven by an application consideration?

• Can you repeat the experimental setup, and perform the experiments described, based on the information presented?

EDGE™

Experimental Results / Data

• Is the description of the experimental apparatus sufficient to allow you to reproduce the experiment?

• Were the sensors, signal processing, and data errors described and quantified?

• How did the data compare against the theory presented in the paper, or against theory presented in another paper, or vice-versa (was analysis herein compared against data presented elsewhere?).

• Do you understand the errors associated with the data presented?

EDGE™

Results and Conclusions

• Do the results presented follow logically from the analysis, experiments and correlations with the work of others?

• Do the conclusions presented follow logically from the results and their interpretation?

• Would an unbiased reader agree with your conclusions?

• Would your argument convince a skeptical reader of your conclusions?

• If not, how would you modify the conclusions or your logic?

EDGE™

Recommendations for Future Work

• Could a peer take your recommendations, and truly use them as a foundation for starting the next generation of the design project?

• Have you articulated not only what should be done, but what resources would be necessary to accomplish those tasks (people, money, time, etc)

• Are your recommendations for a subsequent single design project, for a series of three years, for transition to a commercial product, or what?

• Does your customer support your recommendations?

EDGE™

Your Bibliography:Proper Citations, Avoiding Plagiarism, and

General Academic Conduct IssuesHelp is available!

Cite it Right! Workshops at Wallace Library

• Sessions offer free, fast, informal assistance.RIT Libraries encourage all those interested to come in for an informal session on proper formatting of APA and MLA citations. If you know anyone who might benefit, please encourage them to stop in for some quick help.

• Do you need help with proper formatting of citations for your bibliography/works cited pages? If so, come to the Reference Desk at Wallace Library’s Re:Search Zone for some valuable assistance.  We will be available to answer your questions during the following special open session:

EDGE™

RIT Academic Dishonesty Policy

The following excerpt is from the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities web site at RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities 

“The Rochester Institute of Technology does not condone any form of academic dishonesty. Any act of improperly representing another person's work as one's own is construed as an act of academic dishonesty. These acts include, but are not limited to, plagiarism in any form, or use of information and materials not authorized by the instructor during an examination.

If a faculty member judges a student to be guilty of some form of academic dishonesty, the student may be given a failing grade for that piece of work or for the course, depending upon the severity of the misconduct.

If the student believes the action by the instructor to be incorrect or the penalty too severe, appeal may be made to the Academic Conduct Committee of the college in which the course is offered.”

EDGE™

Challenges of Word Processing a Technical Conference Paper

• Technical Conference papers often have –A high level of mathematical content–Numerous figures and tables–Extensive citations to the literature

• Technical Conference papers –Are revised often during preparation–Form the basis for subsequent publication–May be published in libraries, and on the web

EDGE™

LaTeX Word Formatting Package

• Is a public domain package – Available for Unix, Linux, Windows, etc.– Is designed by technical users for technical users – Is widely utilized throughout the international research community

• Has a learning curve… – It takes some training and examples to learn how to use the LaTeX

word formatting package– A reference book by Knuth on LaTeX is excellent– LaTeX is a document package built upon the foundations of TeX.– TeX is the scientific basis for most equation editor technologies used in

popular commercial packages such as MS Word, WordPerfect, etc.

EDGE™

Why do I promote LaTeX?

• To engage our graduate students in the traditions and tools common to most major research universities

• To introduce our graduate students to THOUSANDS of public domain and open source scientific and engineering software packages that are in many ways superior to commercially available software

• These packages are not designed for the general public – they are designed for technical professionals. As a result, you will experience a steeper learning curve, but will be much more productive after you attain proficiency

• It is an excellent tool! – High quality equation editor and technical formatting.– Supports web publishing and .pdf production of highly technical documents.– Easy to maintain cross references to figures, tables, etc.– Links in with other tools, such as BiBTeX, for managing citations, and referencing those citations

properly in the text of the document.• It’s Free (but the popular editing interface, WinEDT, charges a nominal $40 license fee).• It is professional quality – major publishers routinely accept LaTeX source code for

typesetting technical textbooks. For example, Prentice Hall published my book directly from my source code. I can still compile my source documents, created as much as 20 years ago, and re-publish them, almost trivially, to the web, pdf format, or other modern output medium.