MIS 696A Guest Presentation

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MIS 696AGuest Presentation
Daniel Zeng
University of Arizona zeng_at_email.arizona.edu
Sept. 12, 2007
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Talk Outline

• My own backgrounds and research interests
• Publishing in top-tier technical/engineering
  journals
• Getting prepared for a research career

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Educational Background

• Undergraduate from Univ. of Sci. and Tech. of
  China (1990)
• Management Science/Economics (major)
• Computer Science (minor)
• Ph.D. from CMU (1998)
• Intelligent Information Systems and Artificial
  Intelligence (Robotics Institute)
• Operations Management (GSIA/Tepper)

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Research Interests

• ISI
• Monitoring
• Surveillance
• Spatio-Temporal
• Data Analysis
• Network Analysis
• Crime Infectious
• Disease

• Collaborative Info.
• Knowledge Mgmt.
• Recommender Systems
• Collaborative IR
• Social Computing

• E-Commerce
• Automated Auction
• Negotiation
• Bundle Purchasing
• Services

Agent-based Collaborative and Distributed
Computing
AI -multi-agent systems - machine learning

• OR
• optimization-based
• modeling
• - algorithm design

Game Theory - auction theory - mechanism design
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Publishing in Top-tier Technical/Engineering
Journals

• Topic coverage of several representative
  technical/engineering journals
• Special issue editorial experience
• Random collections of thoughts and tips related
  to publishing

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Journal Coverage

• ACM Trans. On Information Systems (TOIS)
• ACM Trans. On Internet Technology (TOIT)
• IEEE Trans. On Knowledge and Data Engineering
  (TKDE)
• IEEE Trans. On Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
  (TSMC)
• IEEE Intelligent Systems

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ACM TOIS

• Appeals to industry practitioners for its wealth
  of creative ideas, and to academic researchers
  for its descriptions of their colleagues' work
• Focused topic areas
• information retrieval and filtering (algorithms,
  inferences, models, evaluation, )
• information interfaces (representation,
  user/system modeling, )
• information systems design
• organizational interfaces for information access
  and social impact of information systems
• applications (digital libraries, GIS, tutoring,
  bioinformatics, )

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ACM TOIT Coverage

• Technology Subjects
• Electronic commerce
• Security and privacy
• Electronic payments (protocol, and device)
• Internet application programming environment
• XML/HTML document management
• Performance and scalability issues (at related to
  the Web)
• Protocol (HTTP and same-level/above)
• Applications such as Web-caching, content
  distribution, adaptation
• Web measurements
• Embedded web server
• Personalization
• Networking and communications (as related to the
  above issues)

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ACM TOIT Coverage (Contd)

• Social Issues and Public Policy Subjects
• Commerce
• Taxation and international trade
• Government
• Crimes and law
• Medical care
• Digital mass media
• Library and education
• Entertainment (music, movies, games, art,
  museums, etc.)
• Social issues
• Policy and Internet-related regulatory issues

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IEEE TKDE

• Well-defined theoretical results and empirical
  studies that have potential impact on the
  acquisition, management, storage, and graceful
  degeneration of knowledge and data, as well as in
  provision of knowledge and data services
• The role of knowledge and data in the development
  and use of information systems and in the
  simplification of software and hardware
  development and maintenance

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TKDE Topic Coverage

• Focused areas
• data mining
• databases and data modeling
• knowledge engineering and intelligent systems
• underlying computational platforms for knowledge
  and data engineering tools, techniques and
  systems (e.g., agent-based systems)
• emerging knowledge and data engineering
  applications
• E-commerce
• security

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IEEE SMC

• Part A Systems and Humans
• systems engineering issue formulation, analysis
  and modeling, decision making, and issue
  interpretation in the definition, development,
  and deployment of large systems
• human-machine systems human systems and human
  organizational interactions
• Part B Cybernetics
• computational intelligence communication and
  control across humans, machines and organizations
  at the structural or neural level as well as at
  functional and purposeful levels (robotics,
  vision, etc.)
• Part C Reviews Applications

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IEEE Intelligent Systems

• Top AI publication serving
• software engineers, systems designers,
  information managers, knowledge engineers,
  researchers, and professionals in such fields as
  finance, manufacturing, medicine, defense, and
  the sciences
• Sample topics
• knowledge-based systems
• intelligent software agents
• natural language processing
• knowledge management,
• machine learning/data mining
• adaptive and intelligent robotics
• the Semantic Web
• social issues relevant to intelligent systems

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Paper Processing An Editors View

• TKDE (acceptance rate 25) and IS (non special
  issues 10)
• Top reasons for paper rejection decisions
• Relevance (to theory, practice, this journal) not
  strong
• Validation not sufficient
• Minor technical contributions
• Too narrow (too few people would care)
• Need at least one strong reason to accept
• Discovering/formulating a new, potentially
  significant problem?
• Interesting/counter-intuitive empirical findings?
• Reasonably fresh angles on hot topics?
• Very significant applications with real-world
  data/experience?
• Making connections between different streams of
  research not known before?
• Impressive improvements over existing methods for
  well-studied problems

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Thoughts and Tips (collected from various sources)

• Conference papers
• Timely feedback
• Special issues
• Before targeting at a particular journal, read
  from that journal!
• Cite (recent) papers from that journal
• Case-Based Reasons
• Be creative about content
• No need to be creative about format
• Read author information kit
• Emulating the structure of published papers in
  the target journal

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Thoughts and Tips (Contd)

• Do recommend reviewers
• Be mindful about conflict of interest
• Ideas are necessary but NOT sufficient
• When a paper concerns a new piece of software,
  comparisons to similar programs, benchmarks, and
  a discussion of limitations should be included.
  (ACM TOIS)
• .. have been well analyzed or empirically
  validated, and are of value to .. researchers ..
  (TKDE)
• Language and style
• Read Strunk and Whites Elements of Style
• Preface and Chapter 1 of many books are good
  samples for learning academic English
• Pay attention to details

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Thoughts and Tips (Contd)

• Listening to reviewers
• Read every criticism as a position suggestion
• Thank them warmly as they provide their services
  and time for you and the community
• Write a very detailed response letter try your
  best to save the reviewers time as a
  professional courtesy
• Do NOT play one reviewer against the other
• Do (politely) follow up with the editorial staff
  for updates
• Do NOT play games!
• Sometimes excellent papers get rejected do NOT
  get dejected!!

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Research Methods

• Problem Driven!!
• Modeling
• Formal Logic
• Game Theory and OR
• Behavioral Study
• Operational-level Decision-Making
• OR/Economics and AI Algorithms and Heuristics
• Evaluation
• System Implementation and User Studies
• Simulation
• Experimental Methods/HCI

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Research Topics and Dissertation

• Established Methodologies and New Applications
• Relevance and Usefulness at any level
  (application, methodology, observations)
• Validation and Evaluation
• Be Realistic!

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Research Skills

• System Implementation Skills
• For your own research
• Understand technical issues
• Kernighan and Pike's The Practice of
  Programming
• Analytical Skills
• Presentation/Writing Skills
• Project Management Skills
• Time Management Collaboration ...