Paper Reading

Overview

The goals of paper reading sessions are to develop the skills of critical reading, discussion, and presentation skills. In each reading session, we will go through a certain number of research papers related to a topic. During the session, students will play different roles derived from a style of paper reading for seminars that allows each participant to bring different perspectives. For more details, refer to the slides on How to read/review a paper. Note that every student is expected to read the paper regardless of the role. Submit the presentations/reports in PDF on Canvas. The different roles are:

Author-style Presenter

A presenter will prepare a presentation in the style of the author that is between 10 to 15 minutes. CS 589 students must be presenter for one paper during the quarter. In your presentation,

• Highlight the motivation behind the paper.
• Summarize the most interesting contributions of the paper.
• Explain the design/methodology/approach. Include examples wherever possible for illustrating the details.
• Report the results from evaluation/experiments.

Upload your presentation slides as a PDF or PPTX on Canvas by the due date.

Some useful resources on giving research talks:

• How to give a technical presentation (how to give a scientific talk) by Michael Ernst - Excellent and comprehensive.
• How to Give a Great Research Talk by Simon Peyton Jones - This video gives great guidelines and practical advice.

Reviewer

A reviewer should prepare a report in the following format:

• Title of the paper
• Summary of the paper in 3-4 lines
• 3 strengths of the paper
• 3 weaknesses/areas of improvement of the paper
• Other comments about the paper (e.g., related work, presentation style)

Note that strengths and weaknesses should discuss content of the paper and not the meta-level details (e.g., the paper is well written; the author is affiliated with X etc.) which can be included under “Other comments”.

Quiz designer

A quiz designer reviews the presentation slides as well as the research paper and prepares Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ) that will be used in the quiz for that topic. Prepare at least 5 MCQs such that 3 of them are based on the lecture slides and 2 of them are based on the paper. Examples of quiz questions are available in this Google Doc.

Historian

A historian must determine where this paper sits in the context of previous and subsequent work. Find and report on one older paper cited within the current paper that substantially influenced the current paper and one newer paper that cites this current paper. One option to find the older paper is the “Related Work” section of the current paper. You can find newer paper using Google Scholar (or similar). I suggest you read the abstract and introduction of the older paper and the newer paper to prepare this report. Write a short report with the following details:

• Summary of older paper (3-4 sentences)
• Summary of newer paper (3-4 sentences)
• Explain the relationships between all three papers, the older one, the current paper, and the newer one in terms of scientific contribution (1 paragraph)

Award Committee member

As a committee member, you are required to determine what is the impact of the paper. Prepare a report with the following details:

• Imagine the positive impacts of this paper on the world. The paper might likely include a self-assessesment of this. Are there any positive social impacts left out? Did the paper overlook any possible negative impacts? (1 paragraph)
• Put yourself in the shoes of the committee member and prepare a convincing pitch to the industry sponsors on why they should give this paper the award. Discuss the pros and cons of implementing this approach in an industry setting. (1 paragraph)
• Propose an imaginary follow-up project that is only possible due to the existence and success of this paper. (1 paragraph)

Paper and role assignments

The paper for each reading session will be available after the first lecture corresponding to that topic. Students can sign up for the different roles using Google sheets. Any conflicts regarding the assignment of papers will be resolved by the instructor.

Participation

During in-class session, we will have the paper presentations followed by a detailed discussion in the style of a panel with students playing their respective roles.

• Discuss the reviews of the paper and identify any disagreements in the understanding of the paper.
• Examine the chronology of this paper by listening to the historian accounts.
• Evaluate the understanding of the paper and presentation slides based on the Quiz questions.
• Decide on whether the paper is worthy of an award based on award committee member reports.
• Finalize the takeaways from the paper.

Grading

Grade will be based on submissions and discussion participation.

This document is inspired by similar approaches to paper discussion in other classes such as 1, and 2.