Notes on Final Papers
From Simson Garfinkel
For students
Sections you should have
- Background
- Prior work
- What you did
- Results and Evaluation. (Be sure to *explain* how you evaluated what you did, and why this evaluation is valid.)
- Summary
Formatting
- Include headers on pages 2-Last with Name, the date, and course
- Include footer on every page with page number
- Sections should be numbered
On finding references
Instead of typing search terms into Google, try:
On references
- References should appear *in the text* of what you write as footnotes or end-notes.
- There is no need to include a list of "sources" at the end of your paper; your bibliography is the list of references
- References should be in ACM or IEEE style. Be sure to include author(s), title, publication venue, and date. Do not include just a URL.
- If you are writing a literature review, you should discuss how you found your references, including your search terms and the venues that you searched, so that you can claim that you have performed a *systematic* literature review.
- Reference every source that you use, no matter how trivial.
- If your reference is more than 20 pages, include the page number of where the specific item was found.
For Faculty
- Don't write what the papers do wrong, write how they could be improved.