Links for writing a scientific paper

• A rather extensive description of how to do a research paper assignment is given by Paul Brians
• Literature search: Searching for literature -- help by the library
• How to read a scientific paper by Mihai Pop
• Writing academic papers (in English)
  • Rules of thumb for writing a research paper
  • translation help by our university (check out the word list)
  • Transition words in an English text
  • A humorous list of writing rules
  • My favorite on-line dictionary
  • Common errors in English
  • And finally, a checklist for technical reports
  • The Keables Guide gives a number of tips, also for teachers, to learn to improve your writing skills.
  • Some more links for academic writing
• Making references in the right way, conform APA (note that BibTeX does this automatically right)

Finally, some tips by Mathijs de Weerdt:

• on finding literature:
  • Read this Simple guide to the research process: a tutorial.
  • Start with books and survey/overview papers: they are generally easier to digest. Then try some more specific journal papers. Use conference papers mainly for finding out about recent results.
  • Use our library's virtual knowledge center for computer science.
  • Search in Google "Scholar, PiCarta, TU Delft Library Mult-database search, Citeseer (ResearchIndex), Scopus, ACM, IEEE, and your own University library's catalogue.
  • Keep track of conferences (e.g. see the list at Confy), and journals on your topic and check (once in a while) whether some interesting articles have been published in those.
  • As soon as you find an interesting article, also check the author's homepage(s) for more recent results, and of course follow the references made in this paper.
  • Find people in your own university, or otherwise nearby who have more expertise in this field than you have and ask (email?) them to recommend some literature or conferences.
  • Search on-line using a computer on the campus of your university; many journals are available only to subscribers, and this is often checked using the IP address your browser sends along.
• on reading a paper:
  • Add a paper to your BibTex database as soon as you find it (before you even print it).
  • If it is not there already, write the publication year on the print.
  • Make some notes immediately after you read it.
• on writing a paper:
  • Try to focus on one original idea in your paper. Summarize it in the abstract, introduce it in the introduction, explain it in detail in the body, and draw some conclusions in the final section.
  • Use a dictionary and a thesaurus! On the web you may like Merriam-Webster or the Oxford English Dictionary (the latter is subscribed by the Delft University). The TU Delft has made the Van Dale locally available.
  • Should be obvious, but apparently it isn't: use your spelling checker!
  • Use LaTeX (Windows:MikTeX) for your text, with for example the LyX frontend.
  • Use BibTeX and for example JabRef for your references. (Both programs are included in any Linux distribution.)
  • Use GnuPlot to generate your graphs, and for example GasTex, GraphViz, or XFig to draw figures like graphs.
  • Last, but not least, you really should use Subversion to keep track of all your files and documents (both code and text). Request a subversion repository from our IT support.

Especially for PhD students: you should read these excerpts of the book Promoveren--Een wegwijzer voor de beginnend wetenschapper.