This presentation expalins you the simplest way to write a scientific research paper. The elements / parts of a research paper, how to write every part of a paper i.e title, abstract, keywords, introduction, literature, experimental studies, results and discussions, conclusion, references, acknowledgements etc. The characteristics of a dull paper are also addressed. Steps to conduct research and write the research paper is also mentioned.

1. Webinar on
Writing an Effective Research Paper
– Means and Methods
Dr. Murugananth Gopal Raj
Professor & Head,
Department of EEE
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2. CONTENTS
 What is Research?
 Structure of a Technical Research Paper
 How to write the various parts of technical research
paper?
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3. WHAT IS RESEARCH?
A Short definition “gathering the information
to answer a question and thereby helps to
solve a problem”.
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A systematic investigation into reality to
gain knowledge.
from an old French word,
“sercher” - to seek or search
prefix “re”- again

4. RESEARCH CONTD…..
 Find a problem – gather the information – answer the
questions arise in you
 Information gathered from trusted sources as articles from
 Journals
 Magazines
 Refereed proceedings of conferences
 Books
 Beware that articles published only on the Internet are not
necessarily considered trusted sources and should be used
sparingly.
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5. 5
STEPS TO CONDUCT RESEARCH
1.Identify the problem
2.Review the literature
3.Specify the problem
4.Conceptual Framework design - Clearly define the
terms and concepts
5. Chose the methodology for data collection
7. Analyze and interpret the data
8.Report and Evaluate the research
6. Collect the data and verify it
9.Communicate the research findings i.e.
recommendations

6. RESEARCH AUTHENTICATION
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How to substantiate your research
work?

7. WHY TO PUBLISH?
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Publishing
 Advances the career
 Enhances the creditability of
 Scholar
 Institution

8. • Research paper is a kind of academic writing based
on original research.
• It features analysis and interpretation from the
author.
RESEARCH PAPER
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9. STEPS TO WRITE RESEARCH PAPER
 Understand the audience
 Choose a research topic
 Conduct preliminary research
 Develop a Thesis statement
 Create a research paper outline
 Paragraph structure
 Write a first draft of the research paper
 Revise the paper
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10. CHARACTERISTICS OF A DULL PAPER
• No focus
• Lack of originality
• Too lengthy article
• No indication of potential implications
• No reasoning
• Use of abbreviations and terms that can be understood only by
the experts.
• No significant discussion
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11. STRUCTURE OF A TECHNICAL PAPER
Parts of a paper
 Title
 Abstract
 Keywords
 Introduction
 Literature – Background and Motivation
 Experimental Section - Methodology
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusion
 Acknowledgement
 References
 Appendices 11

12. Should
Clearly say what the work is about
Be simple
Attractive
Simulate interest in reader
Use correct grammar and capitalization
Avoid
Acronyms known only to specialized community
Lengthy title
TITLE
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13. EXAMPLE
 Quality Analysis of Rice Grains Using ANN and SVM
 Quality Assessment of rice grains
 Performance comparison of ANN and SVM algorithms based
rice grain quality assessment.
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Title
Predicts
content
Interesting Methodology
Important
Keywords
1 Yes No Yes Yes
2 Yes No No No
3 Yes Yes Yes Yes

14. ABSTRACT
 To briefly introduce the reader to the aims of the study, the
methodology, results and findings
 Keep it short, simple, informative and effective
 Should not be more than 250 to 300 words
 Be creative in generating curiosity
 Avoid detailed experimental procedures and data
 Should not be written until the paper is complete
 Don’t copy the words from the paper
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15. HOW TO WRITE ABSTRACT?
Answer to these questions
 Why the study or project is made?
 What and how it is done?
 What are the findings?
 Meanings of the findings.
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Tense to be used:
General Statement - Simple Past
Introductory phrase – Present Perfect
Facts – Present Tense

16. COMPONENTS OF ABSTRACT
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17. EXAMPLE
 Rice is the most favorable and most consuming food for all the
human being in all over the world. Market for rice depends on
the quality of it. Currently the type and quality of rice are
assessed by visual inspection method through naked eye. This
process is however tedious, time consuming, needs human
expertise and depends on physical fitness of the inspector.
 To overcome these drawbacks, in this paper, an automated
system is introduced which identifies and classifies the rice grains
based on digital image processing techniques. Image processing
method is most suitable as it is a non-contact technique, where in
the image of the rice grains are captured.
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Why the study or
project is made? What and how it
is done?

18. EXAMPLE
 The captured images are pre-processed, segmented and
features are extracted through MATLAB. From the extracted
features the quality of rice is assessed based on Neural
Networks (NN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM)
classifier algorithms.
 A comparative study is made between these two methods and
the results infer that SVM based classification outskirts its
counterpart.
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What are the
findings? Meanings of the
findings.

19. KEYWORDS
 Important to include most relevant keywords
 Keywords
 Capture the essence of the paper
 Makes the paper searchable
 Ensures to get more citation
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20. KEYWORDS
How to write?
 Must have at least one keyword or as guided by the journal
 Think from reader point of view
 Think whether that particular keyword suits or relates the
work
 Include closely related words to the topic
 Should be words or phrases that says what the topic is about
 Single word keywords are acceptable, but may lead to false
matches
 Capitalize the first letter
 Use full phrases, avoid acronyms or abbreviations
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21. EXAMPLE
Rice
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Single
Word
Rice, Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector
Machine, Colour Feature, Geometric Feature
Artificial Neural Network,
Support Vector Machine
 Most readers search
 Relates the work
 First letters capitalized
 No abbreviations used

22. INTRODUCTION
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 Introduce the topic and explain the problem of investigation.
 State a clear overall purpose for the study.
 Start the section with a general background of the topic.
 Give a very brief background of relevant theory and practice
for the topic.
 Define the research question(s) of the study.
 After reading the introduction, reader should have a good
idea of where the author is going to take them.

23. HOW TO WRITE INTRODUCTION?
Endow with
 Brief description of the topic
 State
Why the topic could be interesting
Why the topic is worth researching
The objectives of the research
The methods and scope of study
 Overview / organization of the rest of the paper.
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24. TENSE TO BE USED
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Mixture of Present and Past tense
• True facts – Present tense
• Earlier research efforts – Past tense
• Demonstration unknown or not
important – Present perfect
• Conclusion of introduction – simple Past
• Something existing in the past but not
now – Past Perfect

25. EXAMPLE
 India is the second largest cultivator of rice through approximately 44
million hectares of land. 65% of Indian population eats rice and it
accounts to 40% of the rice production. About 50 million of
households rely on rice cultivation as main source of income and
employment. Currently, 6000 rice varieties are being cultivated in
India. Out of these the major rice variety cultivated in south India
includes, polished white rice (ponni), brown rice, Palakkad matta rice,
fragrant biryani rice and Kavuni (Black) rice. The quality of rice
depends on moisture content, grain purity, cracks, presence of
immature grains, grain dimensions, whiteness, milling degree and
chalkiness.
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26. EXAMPLE
 The quality of rice depends on moisture content, grain purity, cracks,
presence of immature grains, grain dimensions, whiteness, milling degree
and chalkiness. Of these parameters, grain purity, dimensions and cracks are
the main features that decide the grade of the rice and cost. So, the correct
assessment of quality of rice is an important task. The analysis of type of
grain, grading and assessing the quality attributes are being done manually.
 Manual checking process is more complex. It depends on working condition,
human factors, rate of cleaning and recovery salvage. The other factors that
affect rice quality include addition of impurities viz. stones, damaged seeds
and broken granules. The accuracy of manual inspection through human
inspectors is less, and so the possibility of mix up of impurities is more. This
deteriorates the quality of rice.
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Why the topic is worth researching?

27. EXAMPLE
 In order to overcome these difficulties,
image processing based automated
classifier systems are designed to test
the quality of rice grains.
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28. LITERATURE REVIEW
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 Depending on the length of the paper it can be long or short.
 Add 2-3 paragraphs that discuss previous work.
 Summarize what conclusions have been reached in the
research literature and whether different writers agree or not.
 Highlight main issue and controversies around the
problem.
 End of the literature should be the motivation for the
problem / problem statement.

29. HOW TO WRITE LITERATURE REVIEW
Answering the following presents the literature
• Current situation of the Knowledge on the topic of study or
research
• Outcome revealed by the studies made
• Relation between the proposed method / study with the studies
made already
• Contribution of proposed study to the existing literature
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30. EXAMPLE
Literature Review
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From the aforementioned literature studies, it is evident that quality
of rice grains plays an important role in human health. The manual
inspection method of assessing the quality of rice grains possess
certain drawbacks which include tedious, time consuming,
inaccuracy, eye irritation and other health problems which affect the
evaluation process.
Summary

31. EXAMPLE
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Highlighted
Points
The manual inspection method of assessing the
quality of rice grains possess certain drawbacks
which include tedious, time consuming,
inaccuracy, eye irritation and other health
problems which affect the evaluation process.
In order to overcome these entire drawbacks
image processing based rice grain quality
assessment system has been proposed in this
research work.
Motivation /
Problem Statement

32. EXPERIMENTAL SECTION
• Divide this section into
• Materials & Methods
• Characterization
• Measurements
• Data analysis
• Demonstrate the awareness of the research methods used to
study the topic of interest.
• Explain and justify the method of data collection and analysis.
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Tense to be used - Use Passive voice in simple Past

33. EXAMPLE
Block Diagram of Proposed System
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Methods
Creating Awareness
Data Analysis
Measurement –
Data Collection

34. EXAMPLE – EXPERIMENTAL SECTION
ANN TRAINING & TEST SETS
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35. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS
• These two sections can be combined or separate.
• Present the findings of the research in an orderly manner.
• The order of figures should follow the discussion themes and
not the sequence they were conducted.
• Describe the results in detail and include a healthy, detailed
discussion.
• Comment on the trends/findings and show understanding of
what the data suggests.
• Highlight anything unexpected that came up.
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36. TENSE TO BE USED
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Results
 Simple past and present tense
 Referring figure or table – Present tense
 Mix both active and passive voice
Discussion
 For findings of own work – Simple Past
 Cited information – Perfect tense

37. EXAMPLE - RESULTS
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a) Sample Rice Grain (b) Pre-processed image
(c) Segmented Rice Grains
Figure 3.3 Results of Image Processing System

38. EXAMPLE - DISCUSSIONS
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Figure 5.1 Comparative Analysis

39. Classifier Performance Accuracy Classification
Time consumption
for training
SVM Very high High
One type of
classification at a
time
low
NN High Less
More than one type
of classification at a
time
high
Table 2 Comparison between Results of ANN and SVM
Classifiers
EXAMPLE - DISCUSSIONS
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40. SCOPE FOR FUTURE WORK
• Not essential.
• Some questions that have been unanswered can be
presented to proceed further.
• The results addressed may also hint about the future
work.
• Can be addressed as a puzzle and leave space for further
researchers to solve it.
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41. CONCLUSION
• Summarize the research work and its findings.
• Highlight the significance and outcomes of the study.
• Discuss the limitations of the research conducted.
• If limitations are discussed, scope of future work can be
intended.
• Can be combined with Scope for future work.
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Tense to be Used:
 For the findings of that work – Present Perfect
 Future work – Future tense

42. EXAMPLE
Consumers of today are very conscious about
the quality of food grains. In order to ensure
the quality of rice grains, an automated rice
grain quality assessment system based on
ANN and SVM classifiers has been addresses
in this research work. Two types of rice grains
viz. Ponni and Matta are taken up for study.
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Summary of
Research
Work
The proposed system identified and
classified the rice grains based on their
morphological and geometrical features.
Summary of
Findings

43. EXAMPLE
The experimental analysis showed that the proposed
ANN classifier has an overall accuracy of 83%,
whereas SVM resulted in 91%. On the other hand,
when the other parameters are considered, such that
the computational time and parallel processing
(classifying more than one samples at a time), the
performance of SVM is far better than its
counterpart.
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The reasons for better performance of
SVM classifier may be due to
imbalance training ratio.
Highlight of
Features
Limitations
or Puzzle

44. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• Area to acknowledge, those whose who supported the
research work.
• Any organization that has funded the research work has
to be acknowledged without fail
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45. REFERENCES
• Other names
• References cited
• Literature cited
• Selected Bibliography
• List alphabetically all the reference materials cited in the text
part
• All the works cited should be listed here
• Should follow one recognizable system
• Usage of software viz. LaTex or BibTex or end note ease the
organizing of references
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46. EXAMPLE FOR REFERENCES
 Aran M O, Aneesh G Nath, Shyna A “Automated cashew kernel grading
using machine vision”, International Conference on Next Generation
Intelligent System (ICNGIS), September 1-3, 2016, Kottayam, India.
 Bhagyashree mahale & Sapna korde “Rice Quality Analysis using image
processing techniques”, International Conference for Convergence for
Technology, 6-8 April 2014, Pune, India.
 David J. Attokaren, Ian G. Fernandes, A. Sriram, Y. V. Srinivasa Murthy,
and Shashidhar G. Koolagudi, “Food Classification from Images Using
Convolutional Neural Networks”, Proceedings off the 2017 IEEE Region 10
Conference (TENCON), Malaysia, November 5-8, 2017.
 Megha R Sidhagangappa & A. H. Kulkarni “Classification and quality
analysis of food grains International Organization of Scientific Research –
Journal of Computer Engineering (ISOR - JCE), ISSN:2278- 0661, Volume
16, Issue 4, July-August 2014, pp. 48–55.
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47. APPENDICES
Present
• Relevant details such as letters to participants and
organizations.
• Details of questionnaires, surveys and other relevant
instrument that you developed for the purpose of the study.
• Relevant documents, e.g. Reports/policy/ historical
documents.
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gmurugananth@gmail.com
+91-9942116780
+91-8248257377