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Research Techniquesfor BME PhD students

Tamás Tettamanti, PhD

Department of Control for Transport and Vehicle Systems Budapest University of Technology and Economics

The firt steps of your scientific life

• Do research with extreme enthusiasm at any time!

Never give up!

• Create clear and realistic goals for short and long terms.

• Be professional in your scientific field but also in your career building as well!

You can be a genius but it is not enough! Be a good team player, good working partner, etc.

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You cannot avoid social networks…

• Social Network Sites– for Researchers (PhD students as well)

• www.academia.edu• www.researchgate.net• www.mendeley.com

– for Professionals (or Business): • www.linkedin.com

• Do not forget that networking is a key factor for yourprofessional success!

• Social network sites can also bring jobs to you!

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Be always visible!

• Create a website:– about you

or – about your working group/laboratory!

• Present your scientific and professional achievement!

• Keep it up to date at all times!

• Examples:– Dept. website– www.traffic.bme.hu

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Researcher websites for publication databaseand citation metrics

• Researcher IDs are important to solve the author ambiguity problem within the research community:– http://orcid.org

– www.researcherid.com

– Scopus Author ID

– Google Scholar ID (!)

• MTMT (acronym for The Hungarian Scientific Bibliography)

• Interestingly: Google Scholar is somehow the best site for citation metrics!

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How to start your research?

• Do not waste your time for already existing solutions!

• Keeping pace with up-to-date scientific results of your field!

• Search for publications!

Look for the state-of-the-art research!

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Where to research? – Library of Budapest University of Tech. and Econ.

www.omikk.bme.hu/en/online-thematic-literature/databases

– www.sciencedirect.com

– ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/accessinfo.jsp

– onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

– For Hungarian students free dictionaries: https://www.szotar.net

– …

• VPN access to university IP network: www.net.bme.hu

• A brief “how to do”: http://kjit.bme.hu/images/stories/targyak/ResearchTechniques/MatlabInstallGuide_EN.pdf

• Or simply „google” it:

– www.google.com

– www.scholar.google.com

• Or use free access options:

– https://openaccessbutton.org/

– https://unpaywall.org/

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How to read through a scientific paper?

• Read first: – Abstract, – Introduction, – and Conclusions! It helps to understand the main goals and results of a paper.

• Introduction is extremely important:– It always contains some literature review… citations in the Introductions will open further doors for your research

• An example: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X15003447

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How to choose a journal for publication?

• Impact Factor (IF) is one of the most popular metrics published by Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters)

• IF of an academic journal is a measure to reflect the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal.

• Calculated yearly .

• If you publish in a journal with IF, you merit the IF of the year of publishing.

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IF by Web of Science – Citation Reports

• Web of Science: www.webofknowledge.com/

• Go to Journal Citation Reports!

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How IF is calculated?

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IF and Quartiles in a given category of journals Journal Citation Reports

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For IF calculation, ClarivityAnalytics only consider the journals which already have IF!

https://www.scopus.com/sources.uri?zone=TopNavBar&origin=searchbasic

• CiteScore is publicly available and calculated the same way as the Impact Factor.

• At the same time, not only the journals with IF are considered!

• Note that to gain IF for a specific journal:

– the journal must apply to get listed in Web of Science and

– after several years of indexing it might get an impact factor.

• For example: https://www.scopus.com/sources?sortField=&sortDirection=&isHiddenField=&field=idTitle&idTitle=&idTitle=Periodica+Polytechnica+Transportation+Engineering%2316884

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Beside IF, also consider CiteScore of Scopus!

www.scimagojr.com

• SJR is publicly available that includes the scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database.

• SJR is a measure of scientific influence of journals that accounts for both:

1) the number of citations received by a journal and

2) the prestige of the journals where such citations come from!

• For example: www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=16884&tip=sid&clean=0

• The journals are divided according to their SJR into four quartiles (groups):

– Q1 (green) comprises the quarter of the journals with the highest values,

– Q2 (yellow) the second highest values,

– Q3 (orange) the third highest values ,

– and Q4 (red) the lowest values.

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You can also consider SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)!

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• One of the most important goal of your paper should be the expectable citations to it in the future!...

• Therefore, it is worth publishing in Open Access journals (even if it is not IF journal)!

• Take care with unknown journals which promise high IF fake and fraudulent journals exist also…An example: http://www.ijmra.us/

• Always check the editorial board and archive articles of the targeted journal… An example: http://www.ierjournal.org/pupload/vol2iss8/INDOOR%20WIRELESS%20TRACKING%20USING%20WIFI.pdf

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Some tips for journal choice

After submitting the paper…

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The peer review process for submitted papers

• Peer review helps to control the quality of individual articles before publishing in the journal.

• The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was the first journal who formalized the peer review process.

• Peer review is still the only widely accepted method for research validation.

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The peer review process is hard and long…

• Authors need patience and endurance during the review process.

• Generally, authors are asked for corrections and resubmission for several times before acceptance!

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Let’s see a peer review process exampleTettamanti T, Luspay T, Kulcsár B, Péni T and Varga I (2014), "Robust Control for Urban Road Traffic

Networks", IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. Vol. 15(1), pp. 385-398.

• Sept. 2012: Our manuscript was submitted to IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (high impact factor journal)

• Dec. 2012: 1st review arrived: Major revision correction and resubmission peer review

• April 2013: 2nd review arrived: Major revision correction and resubmission peer review

• July 2013: 3rd review arrived: Minor revision correction and resubmission peer review paper is accepted!

• Sept. 2013: Final proof of the paper

• Febr. 2014: The paper was finally published!...

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Let’s see the review rounds

• I show now the review rounds of my paper targeting the Transportation Research Journal…

• Cover Letter…

• Author’s Reply…

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Main conclusion on impact factor journal publication process

• Very long: min. 1-1,5 years considering the publishing date

• The reviewers might be harsh but generally:– they really help you with their criticism and – they will finally improve the quality of your paper

• The main problem was always the lack of clear and concise wording of the novelty of the paper.

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How NOT to write a scientific paper?

https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/

…

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How to write a scientific paper?

• Useful website of The European Association of Science Editors (EASE):

www.ease.org.uk/

• EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles http://www.ease.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/EASE-Guidelines-2017-English.pdf

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2nd Homework• Do not forget that the final goal is to write a scientific paper in your own research field in LaTeX.

• Prepare the structure of your own paper!

• To do this it is also suggested that you consult with your supervisor! So she/he can help you restructure the draft more efficiently, in accordance with your research.

• An example for it:

– Authors: XY, … (Reasonably, your supervisor should be your co-author!)

– Title: The two-level control of autonomous intersections

– Abstract (5-10 sentences): The paper’s aim is to propose a control design methodology for autonomous vehicles in urban traffic

network by considering the network-wide performance. The proposed two-level control strategy solves a …etc.

– Section titles:

1. Introduction

2. Model (2.1 Junction model, 2.2. network model)

3. The proposed control (3.1 Low level control, 3.2. Macroscopic level control)

4. Simulation study and evaluation

5. Conclusion

• Deadline: until next lesson

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Thank you for your attention!

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