Hm, that wasn't quite what I meant (but it was interesting nonetheless :-) ). What I meant more so was: if I'm trying to tell the reviewer the reason that my paper is useful, I need to provide a clear description of my contribution to the state of the art. But I've always had trouble distinguishing between the technical implementation (which isn't a "contribution", apparently) and the more generally applicable results. Does that make sense?

This has consistently confused me. Let's say we've come up with a new algorithm to solve an existing problem. The algorithm itself isn't the contribution, apparently, so what is? The new way of solving the problem, whose *implementation* is given by the algorithm? Can anyone give me some examples of what is and is not a contribution?

MIKE

Hm, it is a tough decision. However, you've already said that you are writing your thesis, right? Let me share with you my experience learning how to do research:

Initially, I thought that all that was required was a good idea. However, a few journal rejections later and I'm starting to learn that there are a ton of different things to consider: have you clearly defined your contribution to the state of the art? Do your experiments sufficiently support your claims? Are your claims the right ones to be making?

How I learned all of this was by the process of peer review. I submitted (awful!) papers to journals with the high hopes of getting them accepted. But the rejections taught me a lot. The reviewers' comments were exceptionally helpful in guiding me towards learning how to properly structure my research. My advisors helped, but it was the reviewers who were the ones teaching me how to structure things. So try to publish, get rejected, and revise, and through that process learn to do science.

I'll also tell you that I had never felt that I was an expert on my topic until early into my 3rd year. I still feel that there is so much left to learn, but I feel that my knowledge is sufficient and growing to call myself an expert. It took a LONG time to get there, and a lot of other students feel the same way. Stick to it, I say.

I often find that it is very useful to make a reference section to reports like these even if it's not necessary. This is because, often, making a reference section in my thesis or paper writing is sort of a pain. If I already have all of my references properly formatted in the beginning, it just makes life easier down the road. So I suggest making a reference section now and any other time, so you make 5 little reference sections during your PhD, rather than one huge one at the end.

It also helps to write a reference section in even very small reports because, if you lose a reference but still have the report, you can easily look it back up again.,

MIKE

:-D awesome. "an" it is. It just SOUNDS better.

MIKE

Working in engineering, this comes up way too frequently. Which one is correct?

1) Let Di be *an* mx1 vector...
2) Let Di be *a* mx1 vector...

:-P Thoughts would be appreciated

Good points. I'll definitely adjust it and do more specific analysis of the literature so that it's not self-plagiarized. Thanks!

Howdy all,

I'm currently writing a journal paper on the same topic as one of my prior conference submissions. Although the approach and experimentation are dramatically different, the reasoning behind the ideas in the new paper is basically the same as that for the conference paper. As a result, the conference paper's intro is great to use in this new paper.

I don't want to adjust the wording just to avoid self plagiarism, but I will if I have to. Does anyone know what the procedure for this is? Can you re-use intro text without self plagiarising? Problem is that the conference is from one organization and the journal is from another, so it's not like I can just claim I'm extending the word (which i'm not anyway, the approaches to solving the problems are quite different...)

Thoughts?

Hm, you're right. It wasn't an arbitrary guess, but I had no idea that there was a useful theory that would have helped :-P I like your explanation: the experiment was original and based on a hypothesis, but the theory helps explain it.

Thanks!

Howdy,

I'm facing a bit of a strange situation. We determined the value for a parameter experimentally about 3 months ago. The value we determined works well. Just the other day, I found a reference that gives a theoretical basis for why that value works. This is pretty handy since the experiments are no longer the only source of justification for that value.

However, when writing this up, it might look a bit weird to say "we figured it out experimentally, but then found a reference that backs us up". To me that would seem like we just arbitrarily guessed but then happened to guess right.

How would I go about discussing this? The theory and the experiment are very close, but not exact, but it's still weird :-P

Hm, that does make sense. I love that "Vitae" website, I just wish my university subscribed to it.

Thanks!

MIKE

Howdy all,

I'm about 3/4 of the way through my PhD and am starting to send out some papers for publication. Unfortunately, both have been rejected. Although the comments from the reviewers were very helpful, they also made me question why I hadn't thought of these things before.

Also, when I'm watching my fellow graduate students, it sometimes seems that they all have read from the same book of "how to do research" :-P

Does anyone else get the feeling that other researchers were somehow trained to "do research" in some formal way that you've just not been exposed to? How do others learn all of this?

MIKE