Hi.
I’m the RE Mentor for research papers and I’m here to do what I can to help you.
Having served on a number of editorial boards as well as conference program committees over the years, I have had the opportunity of reviewing several hundred research papers. Some of these papers were great and some of them were less than great. I have always considered myself lucky to have had this opportunity as it has provided me with a view to the past, present, and future of requirements engineering. I welcome this RE’13 assignment as an opportunity to share a few thoughts that have come to me as an author being reviewed as well as a reviewer “being authored.”
I am looking forward to providing any help that I can to those of you who want to get started with your research contributions to a relatively new field, literally loaded with possibilities. A wide variety of topics are suggested in the Topics/Call for Papers. You may also find yourself working in areas involving human beings to the degree that the human being has to be considered as an integral part of your study. In this case you should consider the wide variety of research methodologies that are available to your work from the social sciences such as Action Research, Case Study, Ethnography, Grounded Theory, and many other approaches.
The following FAQs are literally based on the most frequent shortcomings I have seen in first drafts submitted by authors getting started in their publication of research papers1.
FAQs that never get asked but should
Are reviewers always looking for the worst in submitted research papers?
Believe it or not, many reviewers are looking for the best in papers, even in the “bad” papers. No one wants to abandon a good idea. True, reviewers have the responsibility of maintaining the reputation of the event or journal but they also have the responsibility of making sure that papers are presented and published2. Otherwise, the reviewers would be out of work, as would conference and journal publishers and sponsors not to mention the loss of great ideas and the sharing of knowledge. Writers need to keep in mind that the reviewer can be the author’s best friend in strengthening even the best of papers.
What makes for a bad research paper?
Obviously, bad research but comments on this come later. But, what many early researchers don’t realize is that even good research methodology can mislead a reviewer into a rejection bias by not paying attention to the form of the report. A common example would be a disorganized paper that looks like it has been written by several authors (and probably has been), no one of which has read the complete paper. Making matters worse, I have reviewed papers in which the reader could easily be convinced that one or more listed authors had not even seen the paper, let alone read it thoroughly before submission. It is hard for a reviewer to feel good about a paper when the reviewer gets the idea that he or she has put more time into understanding the paper than the authors have spent in writing it.
What makes for a good research paper in the first submission?
In Form: The paper is well-written and understandably organized. The figures, tables, and graphs are located appropriately throughout the paper3 and of size to be readable without a magnifying glass.
In Substance4: This is where I can say a few words about good research, or at least abeyance to well accepted research methodologies and documentation. The good research paper addresses each of the principle issues, these principle issues being:
I hope you find these very brief comments helpful in getting started. I welcome your comments and questions, and wish you the best of luck in the documentation of your research findings.
Don Gause, November 2012
http://www2.binghamton.edu/bioengineering/people/gause.html
1 Glass, Robert L.,Ramesh, V., and Vessey, Iris (2004) “An Analysis of Research in Computing Disciplines”, Communications ACM, 47(6), pp.89-94. June 2004.
2 You can read all about the role of the reviewer here: Smith, Alan Jay. (1990) “The Task of the Referee”, IEEE Computer, 23(4), pp.65-71. April 1990.
3 The appearance of a figure, table, or graph is normally placed immediately after the paragraph of its first reference in the text.
4 Gause D.C. (2004) “Comparative Evaluation in Requirements Engineering: Is it too much too soon, too little to late, or just the right amount at just the right time?“, Keynote Address. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Comparative Evaluation in Requirements Engineering. Kyoto, Japan, pp.3-16. September 2004.
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