A few of my favorite tips

These are a few of my favorite tips about writing, reviewing, and presentations - and about careers. Many thanks to those who have prepared and shared their tips!
-- David Kotz

Tips about Writing

David Kotz, Dave's writing guidelines. My recommendations about usage and style, including about bibliographies.

David Kotz, How not to write a MobiSys paper. Tongue-in-cheek advice gleaned from reviewing for MobiSys.

Lin Zhong, Tips about writing systems papers. Really good advice from one of the leaders of the SIGMOBILE community.

Roy Levin and David D. Redell, An evaluation of the ninth SOSP submissions; or, how (and how not) to write a good systems paper. ACM Operating Systems Review, 17(3):35-40, July 1983. Still a must-read for anyone writing a systems paper.

Michael Ernst, Choosing a venue: conference or journal? December, 2006.

Peter Gutmann, Common Problems with Conference/Journal Papers. February 2008.

Sujay Kakarmath, et al., Best practices for authors of healthcare-related artificial intelligence manuscripts. npj Digital Medicine, 16 October 2020. Although it is specific to this journal, I expect the concepts may be useful for other prominent venues.

Lennart E. Nacke, How to Write CHI Papers, Fourth Edition. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 25 April 2020.

Harold S. Stone, Copyrights and author responsibilities. IEEE Computer, 25(12):47-51, December 1992. Useful explanations and advice about copyright law and about what you can and cannot use in your scientific papers.

Elizabeth Jakob, Adam Porter, Jeffrey Podos, Barry Braun, Norman Johnson, and Stephen Vessey, How to Fail in Grant Writing, Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 December 2010.

Sources and Citations at Dartmouth. Particularly important for Dartmouth undergraduate students.

Books about writing

Hilary Glasman-Deal, Science research writing for non-native speakers of English, Imperial College Press, 2010. Recommended by a PhD student.

Joseph Williams and Joseph Bizup, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, Fifth Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. 2015. Highly recommended by a former PhD student.

Steven Pinker, Why Academics Stink at Writing. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014. A fun read, though mostly aimed at non-sciences.

Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press, 1983. Outstanding book! still the go-to reference for visual design.

Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information. Graphics Press, 1991. Not quite as relevant to researchers.

Older books about writing, less useful

Robert A. Day, How to write a scientific paper. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, PC-20(1):32-37, June 1977. A fun read; although old and not specific to computer science, it still has a lot to say. As an older book, it may be hard to find.

Robert A. Day, Scientific English: a guide for scientists and other professionals. Oryx Press, 1992. An older book, it may be hard to find.

Robert A. Day, How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper. Oryx Press, Phoenix, AZ, 5th edition, 1998. An older book, it may be hard to find.

Lyn Dupré, Bugs in Writing: A Guide to Debugging Your Prose. Addison Wesley, 1995. A good book, but it may be hard to find.

William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style. Avoid this book! It has many good features, and is a classic, but I and many experts now recommend against it.

Tips about Reviewing papers

Hugh Gusterson, Want to Change Academic Publishing? Just Say No. Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 September 2012. Should you review papers for journals from for-profit publishers? It's a complicated question.

Alan Jay Smith, The task of the referee. IEEE Computer, 23(4):65-71, April 1990. Read this before you review conference or journal papers.

Tips about speaking and presentations

PhD Comics on Your conference presentation. Fun!

Susan McConnell, Designing effective scientific presentations (video). Stanford, 2011. A great resource for learning how to give a good talk.

Patrick Winston, How to speak: Lecture tips from Patrick Winston (video). Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University. A great resource for learning how to give a good talk.

Brad Hungerman, Irina Issakova, Paul Needham, Binu Sudevan, Use body language to rock your next presentation (video). Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2016. Recommended by a PhD student.

Bruce Donald's Tips for giving a talk.

Tips for current graduate students

Mike Locasto, What it takes to be a good grad student, and links to other resources. Advice from a computer-science professor.

David Evans, Advice for prospective research students. Advice from a computer-science professor.

Marie desJardins, How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors. ACM Crossroads Magazine, Part 1 (Winter 1994) and Part 2 (Spring 1995).

Karen Kelsky, Graduate School Is a Means to a Job, March 2012. Skewed toward academic careers, and maybe less oriented toward the sciences than would be relevant to my students, but still some good stuff here.

Tips about Careers and Job searching

Job search: Edward D. Lazowska, The Ph.D. Job Hunt - Helping Students Find the Right Positions

CV preparation: Julie Miller Vick and Jennifer S. Furlong, The CV Doctor is Back: a brief discussion of how to prepare a successful academic (or non-academic) c.v.

Job interview: Show them you really want the job -- advice on how to interview effectively for a faculty position.

Research career: David A. Patterson, How to have a bad career in research/academia, 2001. Originally presentated at OSDI, October 1994. Funny and informative. See the video version presented at Google in 2016.

Industry lab career: John Wilkes, Is work hell? life in industrial research. Technical Report HPL-SSP-97-1, HP Laboratories, January 1997. Slides for a presentation at CMU's `emigration course'. A great complement to Patterson's lecture.

Tenure: Getting — and not getting — tenure. Science, 2009. A series of articles.

Corporate research: Google's Hybrid Approach to Research

Advising: David A. Patterson, Viewpoint: Your students are your legacy. Communications of the ACM, 52(3):30-33, March 2009, DOI 10.1145/1467247.1467259.

Advising: Jeffrey D. Ullman, Viewpoint: Advising students for success. Communications of the ACM, 52(3):34-37, March 2009, DOI 10.1145/1467247.1467260.

Tips about Research

Vern Paxson, Strategies for sound internet measurement. In Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference, Taormina, Sicily, Italy, October 2004. An excellent paper, worthy of reading by all experimentalists, especially those that conduct measurements.

John Ousterhout's favorite sayings.