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This one requires
a lot of trial and error. Generally, a paper's chances to be accepted
for a given venue depend on three major points:
- The paper addresses
an important problem and has a good point. This is obviously the most
important thing. Some papers propose a solution to an important problem,
while others simply investigate a problem offering better understanding
of it. The second kind of a paper is usually easier to write than the
first one, since it takes less time to analyze already gathered data,
than to design and implement a solution to a known problem.
- The paper is well
written. This is extremely important. You may have the greatest idea,
but if it is not well presented the paper will be rejected. How to learn
to write good papers? Read a lot of papers, discuss them in your research
group, ask different people to read your writeups, and take a technical
writing class. Generally organizing your presentation well, and using
simple vocabulary and a lot of examples and illustrations works much
better than usign a complicated jargon. People like nice, simple, tangible
explanations, not boring, complex rambling. Also very important is to
do your homework and write a good 'Related work' section. Be sure to
mention all the related work (people hate if their work is left out)
and to present an objective and well documented critique of the related
work (people hate if you criticize their work without any supporting
arguments).
- The chosen venue
welcomes the kind and the topic of the paper. Sometimes an excellent
papers will be rejected if you send them to ill-suited venue. Look at
the papers published in this venue in the previous years to get the
feeling whether your paper is the right match.
If your paper is rejected,
read the reviewers' comments and learn from them. Then fix the paper and
send it to another venue. Having a paper rejected is definitely unpleasant
but it happens quite often. Don't get discouraged. In time you will learn
how to write to minimize rejections. Sometimes it also happens that you
wrote a perfectly good paper but the reviewer's didn't spend enought time
reading it and they misunderstood your claims. These things happen and,
although they fill you with righteous anger, there is nothing much to
be done about it. Fix the paper and send it to another venue.
Send your papers to
good enough conferences. I know it is tempting to send to mediocre venues in interesting
places (Hawaii, Carribean, Australia) so you get to visit those places
and you also greatly increase acceptance chances. However, once you graduate
and start looking for a job, those publications will not look very impressive.
Short
point summary
- Select good topic
- Write well
- Select a suitable
and well known venue
- Accept that some
papers will be rejected, and learn from the experience
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