Research Notes
A personal collection of research advice and materials I keep coming back to: how to do research, write, present, and navigate a Ph.D. and an academic career.
Getting Started & Doing Research
- You and Your Research — Richard Hamming. Transcript · Talk video · “Learning to Learn” lectures · Tao Xie’s slides
- Technology and Courage — Ivan Sutherland
- Desires and Diversions — Allen Newell (talk video)
- Advice for Researchers and Students — Michael Ernst
- Doing Research in Software Analysis: Lessons and Tips — Zhendong Su
- How to Look for a Research Idea — Zhiyun Qian. 知乎 (Chinese) · PDF
- Research ideas — Marco Tulio Ribeiro. Coming up with them · Organizing and evaluating them
- Low-Level Advice for Systems Research — Lalith Suresh
- The Heilmeier Catechism — DARPA (framing a research program)
- How to Win a Best Paper Award (an opinionated take on how to do important research) — Nicholas Carlini
- 科研筑基（全 10 讲） — Yue Li, Nanjing University (Bilibili, in Chinese)
- Introductory Readings of Software Testing Research — Tao Xie
- Research Skills — Tao Xie
- A Categorized Advice Collection — Tao Xie (the full original list)
- What Makes Good Research? — Andreas Zeller
- On Facts and Dreams in Software Research — Andreas Zeller
- The Virtue of Simplicity — Andreas Zeller
- The Devil’s Guide to Incremental Research — Andreas Zeller (satire)
- The Navigators Research Book of Style — Navigators group, University of Lisbon (slides on picking a topic, doing the research, and writing it up; archived copy)
- TIPS: How to Do Research — Silvia Miksch (research, papers, talks, posters, and reviewing; mirror)
- Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught — Gian-Carlo Rota
- Advice on Research and Writing — Mark Leone (a classic link collection)
- Research Skills: Resources — Simon Peyton Jones (his curated collection)
PhD Life & Grad-Student Advice
- Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student — Manuel Blum
- Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students — Stephen C. Stearns
- On Offering Advice to Aspiring Scientists — Oded Goldreich
- The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific Research (EWD1044) — Edsger W. Dijkstra
- 3 Qualities of Successful Ph.D. Students: Perseverance, Tenacity and Cogency — Matt Might
- PhD or No PhD? — Xiao Ma
- Stress in Research, Part II: Research Worth and Self-Worth — Charles Sutton
- Increasing Well-Being in Academia — Isabelle Augenstein
- What’s It Like to Be a PhD Student in Germany — Andreas Zeller
- How Do Different Fields Review Papers? Experiences from ICSE, PLDI, and CCS — Andreas Zeller
- Graduate Student Survival/Success Guide — Tao Xie
- Critical Skills for Research/Career Development — Tao Xie
- Research Ethics — Tao Xie
Writing & Presentation
- Advice on Writing Research Papers — Tao Xie
- Tools and Tips for Writing Papers — Tao Xie
- Common Technical Writing Issues — Tao Xie (slides)
- Checklist for Preparing Camera-Ready Versions — Tao Xie
- Advice on Technical Writing — Rich Sutton (Google Doc)
- Advice for Writing Peer Reviews — Rich Sutton
- How To Write A Dissertation — Douglas E. Comer
- Common Bugs in Writing — Henning Schulzrinne
- Why I Gave Your Paper a Strong Reject — Matt Welsh
- 9 Ways to Turn a Boring Topic Into an Engaging Presentation — Peter Khoury
- Twelve LaTeX Packages to Get Your Paper Accepted — Andreas Zeller
- Patterns for Writing Good Rebuttals — Andreas Zeller
- My Top Ten Presentation Issues in Others’ Papers — Andreas Zeller
- My First Talk at a Scientific Conference: A Complete and Utter Disaster — Andreas Zeller
- How to Write a Great Research Paper — Simon Peyton Jones (slides and talk video)
- How to Give a Great Research Talk — Simon Peyton Jones (paper and slides)
- Writing and Speaking with Style — Benjamin Pierce and Rajeev Alur (course notes, Google Doc)
- How to Write Papers So That People Can Read Them — Derek Dreyer. Slides · Talk video
- A Scrutiny of the Abstract — Kenneth K. Landes
- Teach Technical Writing in Two Hours per Week — Norman Ramsey
- Notes on Presenting Theses — Aaron Sloman
- Mathematical Writing — Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, and Paul M. Roberts
- How to Write Mathematics — Paul R. Halmos
- How to Write Math Papers Clearly — Igor Pak
- Giving a Good Research Talk — Nicholas Nethercote (mirror)
- A Guide for Session Chairs — Emery Berger
- How I Became a Story-teller (and How You Can Be Too) — Sumit Gulwani (talk video)
Evaluation & Presenting Data
- Producing Wrong Data Without Doing Anything Obviously Wrong! — Todd Mytkowicz, Amer Diwan, Matthias Hauswirth, and Peter F. Sweeney (ASPLOS 2009)
- How Not to Lie with Statistics: The Correct Way to Summarize Benchmark Results — Philip J. Fleming and John J. Wallace (CACM 1986)
Research Agenda, Career & Faculty
- Mapping Out a Research Agenda — Tao Xie
- PhD-Program Preparation for a Successful Post-PhD Career — Tao Xie
- The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc — Radhika Nagpal
- The CS Assistant Professor Handbook — Vijay Chidambaram
- Amazing Career Advice for College Grads — Reid Hoffman
- Advice on Preparing a Personal Statement — Tao Xie
- Advice Collection on Fellowship Applications — Tao Xie
- Twelve Tips on How to Prepare an ERC Grant Proposal — Andreas Zeller
- How to Write a Great Grant Proposal — Simon Peyton Jones (slides and talk video)
- Elevator Pitch Essentials — Chris O’Leary (pitching an idea in a minute; also useful for proposals)
- How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia — David Patterson. Slides · Talk video
Blogs
- Andreas Zeller’s Blog — academia and software development, often with a humorous touch (selected posts are filed under the sections above).
References
Most of the links above are curated from the advice collections of Tao Xie, Ting Su, and Simon Peyton Jones, and from Andreas Zeller’s blog. Many thanks to them for compiling and sharing these resources.