Knight Talks Tech

Category: 01 – What is an Academic Paper?

  • Sample Papers

    The following show how a research project has progressed from the initial idea through to implementation: New idea Paper: AODV protocol (Perkins & Royer, 1999) Publication: Perkins, C.E., Royer, E.M. (1999), Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing, 2nd IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, New Orleans, pp90-100 Experiment Paper: Simulation comparison of AODV with DSR (Das, Perkins…

  • Sources of Academic Papers

    Many places to get papers on the Internet. Some run as businesses so charge registration fee or fee/paper. ITALICS, as referenced in the Research Activity, make no charge. IEEE and ACM make published material available for members.

  • Research Activity

    The Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences journal has plenty of papers available for reading.

  • References

    In style required by publication. Comprehensive list including every source cited in paper.

  • Acknowledgements

    May be at the beginning or end of paper. Sponsor – may be a company or funding body. Colleagues or co-workers. If they made major contribution, they should be mentioned as author.

  • Evaluation and future work

    Usually weakest part of Bachelor dissertation. Covers what went well and what has caused problems. Critical evaluation of own work in order to do it better next time. Required for final year project. Provides next set of research questions.  

  • Conclusions

    How evidence supports, or not, the tested hypothesis. In mathematics we can formally prove things, in other areas we can state the body of evidence supports the theory.

  • Contribution to knowledge

    Presentation of research work and detailed discussion of what has been done. Includes ideas, concepts, tested hypothesis and evidence that conclusion is based on.

  • Related work

    This is the literature review. Outlines what others have done – current knowledge in area.

  • Introduction

    Brief overview of subject area & context for research. Takes reader from current level of knowledge to be able to follow rest of paper. More comprehensive introduction required if target audience is more general reader.