The guidelines were developed by Professor Saiedian in mid
2000's for his software engineering (SE) students. Any EECS student may
use these guidelines for other classes by ignoring SE-specific requirements.
A PDF version of these guidelines is
available.
Preparing a term paper proposal
Due date. The term paper proposal is due during
the third week of the semester.
Those who would like to write a term paper for their research
project should submit a term paper proposal by the third week
of the semester. The proposal (2-3 pages) should include
the following:
- A tentative title for the proposed term paper. Make the
title as descriptive, precise, and focused as possible. Avoid
a general topic; try to narrow the research area it as much
as possible to make your job simpler (e.g., when searching
for references).
A simple heuristic for developing a title: try to write a
single, full sentence that describes your research objective,
and then modify it to a paper title. When searching for researhc
paper in that area, pay attention to their titles to get ideas.
-
A clear problem statement that defines the problem you
intend to address or the research work that you plan to do:
- Do not describe the symptoms of the problem.
- Do not describe a proposed solution.
- Define the problem and its significance (note: even
if you decide to write a survey or taxonomy paper, you must
still define a problem statement that calls for or invites
such a taxonomy).
-
Clearly articulate the objective and motivation for your work,
and the significance of the topic you have chosen.
-
A clear description of the intended contributions of the term paper.
-
A clear description of your intended research methodology, e.g.,
- Basic research (studying, synthesizing, organizing,
evaluating, and summarizing existing research results)
- An empirical study
- A research work involving experiments
- A survey and literature review. If you plan to prepare
a literature review:
- Do not prepare a fragmented, disjointed summaries of
individual articles (or experiments, or studies)
- Prepare a critical and analytical synthesis of different
findings or case studies (e.g., compare, contrast, relate)
- Be sure to have a well-defined focus or theme;
chronological focus is not always good; strive for a thematic
approach (e.g., different theoretical, contrasting approaches)
- You need not be exhaustive (i.e., to cover everything)
but you must cover the most significant contributions
- A tentative schedule
- References. In addition to the proposal, include a list
of 10--15 references (from credible, peer-reviewed sources)
related to the topic of your term paper proposal. You must
CAREFULLY follow the citation format and bibliography
style described in the paper guidelines (also presented
below). No exceptions here.
Depending on the focus of your proposed work, most of your
references, especially for introductory papers, should be
drawn from the following journals:
- Communications of the ACM (general computing/IT)
- ACM eLearn (IT/computing research meets practice)
- IEEE Computer (general computing/IT)
- IEEE Software (software engineering)
- IEEE Security & Privacy (security)
- IEEE Communications (communications and signal processing)
- IEEE Network (computer networks)
- International Journal of Project Management (software/IT project
management)
For more advanced graduate papers, you should consider
transactions and high quality conference proceedings.
- Formatting references.
The reference listing should be as complete as possible. It is
very likely that your references will include journal articles,
conference proceedings articles, books (or chapters in a book
or in a collection), and technical reports.
Follow a bibliography style like the APA.
The following is a list of required items for each article:
- Journal articles: author, title, journal, volume,
number, year, pages [month].
- Books: author (or editor), title, publisher, year,
edition, publisher address.
- Book chapters: same as book and/or conference
proceedings articles.
- Conference proceedings: author, title, proceedings
title, pages, year, publisher, [editor, month, place]
- Technical reports: author, title, institution,
year [number, address]
- Thesis/dissertation: author, title, school, year,
[address]
Two powerful digital libraries (links)